Recent content by Bruce Campbell

Took out the Fralins and put them up for sale on Reverb; now I need to clean this axe up in a few ways mostly cosmetically but also put in some fallaway up past the 12th fret so I can finally get proper action without buzz. Then Friday/Saturday hopefully new electronics, and maybe this 4/20 the...

The Duncan SNS set is on order, along with a Freeway 3-way switch to get normal 3-way toggle and also split neck, split neck & bridge in parallel, and split bridge tones. I can always change the wiring later on the Freeway and also add some other switches to get series/parallel and phase options...

Yeah, I don't think the P-Rails will nail any one thing I'd desire. The thing I want most is solid humbucker PAF type tones, with possible useful coil split. Seymour Duncan support is suggesting the Saturday Night Specials based on what I explained, and I was leaning towards that initially so...

Based on sound demos I listened to, I liked all neck tones, both rails in parallel, and bridge P90+rail in series. I don't have a P90 guitar so it could be cool to see how it complements everything else. I guess I really like Strat neck, humbucker neck, single coil neck+bridge, and bridge...

I haven't found any downsides to them yet, but I have also now considered Seymour Duncan P-Rails, which might work better with a different switching scheme. I do think the Freeways have made certain types of nonstandard switching easier and more full-featured than other solutions I've used...

Thanks for the input folks. Certainly there are a lot of builders already doing stuff with alternate materials - Ovation being a significant builder in this regard. The casting/mold type builds seen by Burls Art and others are kinda more what I'm talking about. The aluminum neck build seemed...

I do already use Freeway switches, and while I see the potential pitfalls, I've been comfortable with it in practice - just not getting useful enough sounds in the series positions to pull off stuff that "needs" buckers. It's great for the neck/bridge and all 3 in parallel sounds, but I don't...

How are you digging the positions with bridge pickup?

Kind of frustrated with my current Fralin Split Blade Blues output pickups at this point. They are certainly Strat-ish, but the in-between Dimarzio Minibucker type vibe (I am basing this partly on a few great-sounding jazz demos on YouTube) might be better for the majority of my playing...

Yeah, it's definitely harder to see the fretboard and your fingers that way, but I have to go that way for sake of my hands. It's tough because I am fighting neuropathy so I like to have visual confirmation of fretting, but I'm also finding that I rely more on the side dots now that the body...

I'm not opposed, but again if it ends up more expensive than Tru Oil or natural type finishing, wouldn't go for it personally. Also tough to work with if there are dings or other stuff that gets messed up. So on that note, I also prefer matte over gloss finish.

I had the opposite issue - went with strap button on the neck so it's SG/335-style - but moving the strap button around a bit while experimenting taught me that it makes big differences. The trick is taping or somehow fixing the prospective button locations in place before drilling/committing to...

I was dumb enough to ask about roasted quartersawn maple in the middle of my neck build several years ago - lost my spot in line - but the regular quartersawn maple is quite awesome in terms of stability etc. The detail about bends having a bit of give in a regular neck vs stiff in q-sawn is...

Although it probably wasn't part of the rationale here, I do prefer the look of the wide neck having a more similar width at the nut and heel/bridge. The more an instrument tapers to the nut (Jazz Bass), the more it annoys me looks-wise, even though I prefer the feel.

Hard to know until you try, but I often prefer a slightly larger (more flat) radius at the bridge than the 9.5 of my necks. This is mostly so the high E/B can be bent and rocked a little harder without fretting out.