The Bantal Busuk: Pt.5 & 6 - justin_guber

The Bantal Busuk: Pt.5 & 6

As you may or may not remember, the last time you saw the 'Bantal Busuk' it had three volume knobs and a rosewood neck, right? Well, prepare yourself for:
Pt.5 : More Rewiring
I've gotten into rewiring quite a bit. There's something about it I enjoy, more so than the woodwork aspect of guitar-building. I'd always had a thing for electronics but was never blessed with interesting physics teachers.
But why re-wire it? Well, the whole 'three volumes' thing didn't work out too well. I didn't get a smooth blend of the different pickups mixing with each other and it was all wired in parallel, which I didn't want. So what do we do?
We take a cue from Brian May and stick some switches in the fucker. Three switches, to be exact, each wired in series.
Unfortunately, first time I tried it I wired them in parallel by mistake which pissed me off to no end because the guitar still sounded the same. Once I changed the wiring to series, though, it was beautiful.
However, deep down I'm still not happy with the wiring. There are some things I still want to do to get the right 'palette' of sounds that I'm searching for with this guitar and this one is close, but no cigar.
Also, wiring isn't everything. I was hoping it was, but unfortunately not. A lot more things affect the tone of the guitar and I know it's an obvious one but I never really noticed it until I tried it as I did in the next part, ignorant as I am to the craft of guitar-building. What am I talking about, you ask? Simple: wood.
Pt. 6 - Got Wood? Changing the Neck
I've always wanted a maple neck n' fretboard. The look, the feel, ooh... yummy. My sheila (telecaster) has a maple neck but it's over-lacquered for my liking. I like my necks a bit more nekkid.
I brought the guitar body to the shop and it turned out all the necks in the shop don't fit, so I figured fuck it, I'll buy it anyway.
Photo on the left: the new maple neck compared to my old Encore rosewood fretboard neck.
It's not really the neck I want. The neck I would love is a 70's style fat headstock fucker. But it's expensive and unavailable in this country and beggers can't be choosers.
Fitting the neck into the pocket would still be a problem, though. That's when I sms-ed Alel. A couple of hours earlier he popped over to the studio brandishing a wood file.
"Will this do?" he asked.

Some wood-filing later and the neck fit. After that I brought it to Guitar store to install the tuning heads and flip the nut (it's originally a right handed neck). Once that was done, I strung it up and goddamn! Why's it so bright now?
Wood, you see? Damn wood. Whilst the feel of the neck is exactly what I was going for, smooth like butter and slick as an eel, the tone I was getting from it was something I wasn't used to. The old rosewood neck gave the guitar a huge low-end, whereas the maple neck has brightened everything up considerably. After a while I got used to it and the single coils sound even better with the maple neck.
The humbucker, however, leaves a lot to be desired. I guess with the previous set up although its slanted position so close to the bridge would've made the output bright the rosewood fretboard countered it. Not so anymore. This is gonna take some getting used to.
Hence the reason I want to try wiring it differently, to get the best balance I can out of this guitar. And then, of course there's the rest of the body to finish sanding and a new pickguard.
Soon, my pretty... hehehe...

20.10.06 09:26

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