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> Blah! > Movies, Music, Guitars & Comics > Fiction
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Bugger. Just when things got really interesting, my camera was nowhere to be found. What got really interesting? Part 3 of this whole exercise: Pt. 3: Making Room For A Humbucker - Pickguard cutting This was tricky. The final product will have a brand new pickguard, but for now I figured I'd widen the existing cutout for the bridge single coil to make room for a humbucker. It's slanted, which should be interesting. I just wish someone could have told me how tough this material was to cut. We started first with a stanley blade, Alel helping out (the dude's helping me out on this whole project, actually). But the stanley blade wasn't that strong, so it was taking forever. We also needed to be quite precise since, due to the angled slot, the final cutout would teeter very close to the edge of the pickguard. One false move and it'd be cut right through. Henry popped over later on, saw what we were doing and commented that the blade's not strong enough. Noticing Saiful's Swiss Army knife, he suggested using that. "Careful," said Saiful, "you might cut right through the pick..." SNAP! "...guard." Fuck me blind. However, it still holds, and the humbucker fit neatly, though I can't seem to get it to go upwards straight, angling more towards the bridge. But now with the pickups in place, it's time for: Pt.4: Wiring and Soldering After reading through tons of material on-line I pretty much figured out what to do. Originally, I wanted to put a humbucker and two single coils all in series with a volume control for each, only to find out from the good people at Seymour Duncan that it's simply not possible, which I thought as much when I started drawing the schematic. So, for now, I decided to wire the pickups in parallel. I still wanted a volume control pot for each, after all, not much of a fan of a pickup selector. I prefer blending pickup tones together. One incredibly crap doodle on a scrap of paper later, I called up Alel for his help on soldering. I've never soldered before, so I thought it'd be best to ask someone who has soldered guitar wiring to do it first and just watch and learn. And by God does it look tricky. About two and a half hours later, all was done. Whilst Alel was soldering I was polishing the bridge with G&S guitar cleaner which works fucking wonders. The damn thing looks brand new. After soldering all the wires together there was just one thing left. Soldering the earth. This wasn't as easy as we thought. For some reason we just could get the damn thing to solder on. By the time we did, it was already 3am, and Alel needed to go back. But the wiring was done. A quick assembly, a new set of strings, and voila: As you can see, there's been a bit more sanding, but still a lot of chunks not done yet. And the back still needs doing too. But the aesthetics are not the important part (besides, I always felt Fender's looked better when they're beat-up). The important question is: how does it sound? Well, weird, at first: when any of the volume pots are fully on or off, the guitar is completely muted. So I brought it over to the Guitar Store in Hartamas to figure out what's wrong only to discover that some of the wires were the wrong way round. Twenty five bucks later, all is fixed. NOW, how does it sound? In a word: fucking awesome. This guitar is so close to the tone I'm looking for it's crazy, and all from stock pickups! I put the bridge single coil in the neck position, which sounds a lot hotter than the original neck pickup, the middle pickup is as is, but the star has to be that humbucker: SD$25 at Davies in Singapore and it sounds fucking HUGE. I love it. The humbucker has brought a bit of a problem though. A weird one. When it's on with any of the single coils, both at full volume, a weird, incredibly thin surf-guitary sound comes out as opposed to the super warmth I was expecting, proving that the humbucker is out of phase to the single coils, probably due to the polarity of the magnets. No biggie, all I have to do is switch the live and earth around on the pot. Intonation kept running, even after I did the intonation, so I brought it to Guitar store again to change the nut to a nice new bone nut and now it holds the tuning a lot better. So in love, though, with the guitar as I was, I decided to road test it in Penang, and it worked wonderfully. Next up will be a set of brand new tuning heads and I'm gonna cut the headstock to make it a bit more tele, and ofcourse keep sanding down the body till it's finished. But for now, this is my go to guitar. I like. The 'Bantal Busuk', in action, in Penang. And it sounds FAT. A bit too fat, actually. Maybe I need to change the volume pots. Finally. I've uploaded two of the four videos that were shown at the Y2k launch. Which video? Well, the first one and the longest out of the four: 1. SOME KIND OF SALSA. Just like 'Some Kind Of Monster', the 10 minute short shows the trials and tribulations of recording our album, to the point that FYI Entertainment hires a psychiatrist to sort out the problems. Some Kind of Salsa - RIGHT CLICK HERE and choose 'save target as...' to download. File's about 70MB in wmv format. Then, after that you can discover the secret origins of Y2k's guitarist in: 2. THE CURSE OF HERMANO GRANDE. A tale of Mexican tenacity and Japanese courage, complete with training montage. The Curse of Hermano Grande - RIGHT CLICK HERE and choose 'save target as...' to download. File's about 30MB in wmv format. Enjoi. Let's see if YouTube works in this biyatch. Some Kind of Salsa vid for those who don't like to download files into their computers. Man Method's been busy, but had time to send me some bullet points from the UK screening of Ciplak: · "Very well received · The ‘Censorship’ section got the most laughs · Laugh out loud funny in parts · Sound mixing was fine (except when you are in the car driving) · Eddy’s accent was really hard to understand for us non-Malays · Excellent editing- and I really mean it, excellent editing · And great use of music · The DVD did not play properly on some machines… do you know why that is? But generally, it has some of the attitude of CLERKS, but far more ambitious. And way more polished than anyone expected. Pat yourself squarely on the back, mon ami. The bad news is that I forgot to bring a camera with me. DO’H!" Noonch. This left-handed Epiphone LP100 is called 'Leslie'... ...and she's leaving home for greener pastures. Well, technically, she's not leaving. I'm making her leave. I've just sold her away. When I sent out the SMS that I was selling her Jay replied with "that SMS just broke my heart". I can understand why he'd reply that way. He likes his guitars with a heavy, chunky riff-tastic sound. But the truth of it is as much as I like the sound of a Les Paul and will not deny its place in rock history, I've never enjoyed playing them. Leslie was actually a bit easier to play since it had a very contoured body, but I still wasn't 100% happy with it. Les Paul body's are too small for me and most of the time I'm more of a single-coil kinda guy. But why am I selling it? Well, for starters, I'm not exactly making much bling at the moment. I also still have Sheila (my telecaster) and Danni (my Danelectro) as well as my custom project guitar and an acoustic. I'd rather sell Leslie and get some spare parts. But there's a more important reason why I'm selling it - this: An original vintage Hughes & Kettner Tubeman, selling for half the price it would cost anywhere else. These things are incredibly hard to find and I had to have it (such is the case with all boys and their toys). But, eventhough I've never been fully comfortable with Leslie, she's been dependable. And I've had some good times with her. For a good period when Triple 6 Poser was starting up and Danni was on the fritz, I had Leslie, and she played just fine every gig we played. So here's to you, Leslie. I hope your new owner (a friend of Izuan's) treats you well... even though he strung you up right handed (hate it when lefty's do that). Have a good one. (last gig with Leslie - Fete de la Musique 2006) It's saturday. Tomorrow will be the first day of fasting month. I have hardly had any sleep. Last night there was a booking that had me going to bed at 6 in the morning. And I had to be up three hours later for my brothers birthday. The day before that I slept at 4am and had to wake up at 8.30am. I am incredibly tired, beyond reason. My left foot and ankle are in absolute pain. Cold air conditioners, rain and a pair of slightly tight Air Jordan's are to blame. Changing gears is a bitch. The internet in this place is fucked. Took me half an hour to log in to 20six to write this damn blog. I'm quite sure my girlfriend's upset with me. I have work to do. I'm sweating in a strange manner. What a great fucking day. |
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