• Welcome to ASR. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!

Show us your guitars!

ahofer said:
I’ll post the “before” plek images below. “After” was perfect, of course.
Click to expand...
Thanks for that. Presumably orange is the measured fret heights and green is a target chosen by the Plek operator to grind down to. It's cool to see how good the guitar was out of the factory.

ahofer said:
I bought it because i haven’t really lived with p90 pickups before
Click to expand...
I've a Yamaha Revstar RS502T and it's my only experience with P90s. They are ok but I would trade it in for an RS620(*). I love strats and teles and humbuckers but I don't love P90s. What I have learned is to adjust the rear pickup as close to the strings as possible and then adjust the front pickup to get a sound that goes well with the sound you get from the rear.

(*) Yamaha completely revised the Revstar line in 2022, changing the neck to narrow and skinny so I'm sticking with the old ones, if I can find one at a good price.
 
Multicore said:
Thanks for that. Presumably orange is the measured fret heights and green is a target chosen by the Plek operator to grind down to. It's cool to see how good the guitar was out of the factory.
Click to expand...
Yes, About as good as you could get it by hand, I suspect.
 
ahofer said:
Yes, About as good as you could get it by hand, I suspect.
Click to expand...
Judging from Warmoth's videos, it seems likely there's not much need for the hand these days in the more automated guitar factories. CNC machine the neck and fingerboard assembly, and cut the fret slots. The use a machine press to put the frets in. If you do those steps precisely then there's no need for leveling, crowning and polishing, just finishing the edges. Ofc good hand fret polish and edge finishing will almost always make it nicer.
 
Multicore said:
it seems likely there's not much need for the hand these days in the more automated guitar factories.
Click to expand...

Regardless of how accurate and automated the manufacture is, wood will move in any which way it damn well pleases. I have seen Gibson custom shop Les Pauls that had been 'plekked' and were still essentially unplayable because ... well, Gibson ... and humidity. I'm sure @ahofer 's Tele is, if you measured it, just as far out of whack now as it was before it got plekked. Fortunately, as long as it's good enough then it's good enough.
 
Multicore said:
Something else?
Click to expand...

Gibson have always had a famously haphazard approach to quality-control, not to mention implementing some truly bizarre corner cutting 'solutions' to save a buck, e.g. bolt-on plastic bridges, kerfed braces on high-end archtops, 'adjustable' bridges with half a pound of metal in them on an acoustic etc. ...

They've always been more about bling than fine workmanship. There have been periods, even in relatively recent years where one sees reports of decidedly shoddy workmanship on 'custom-shop' instruments with eye-watering price tags.

Don't get me wrong, I love Gibsons, both their electrics and acoustics, especially the old ones. But you never quite know what you're going to get.

I've recently been restoring a Gibson-built Kalamazoo KG12 from 1940 which is basically a ladder-braced L-00. This was admittedly a low priced 'off-brand' instrument but the internal fit-and-finish was pretty rough. The neck on these KG12s was a L-00 neck with standard Gibson style headstock and even a trussrod (which was often left out on cheaper instruments) but no trussrod access! It was simply hidden inside the neck without any means to adjust it. Some of the frets were almost 2 mm out of true. Lovely guitar though.
 
bluefuzz said:
Gibson have always had a famously haphazard approach to quality-control, not to mention implementing some truly bizarre corner cutting 'solutions' to save a buck, e.g. bolt-on plastic bridges, kerfed braces on high-end archtops, 'adjustable' bridges with half a pound of metal in them on an acoustic etc. ...

They've always been more about bling than fine workmanship. There have been periods, even in relatively recent years where one sees reports of decidedly shoddy workmanship on 'custom-shop' instruments with eye-watering price tags.

Don't get me wrong, I love Gibsons, both their electrics and acoustics, especially the old ones. But you never quite know what you're going to get.

I've recently been restoring a Gibson-built Kalamazoo KG12 from 1940 which is basically a ladder-braced L-00. This was admittedly a low priced 'off-brand' instrument but the internal fit-and-finish was pretty rough. The neck on these KG12s was a L-00 neck with standard Gibson style headstock and even a trussrod (which was often left out on cheaper instruments) but no trussrod access! It was simply hidden inside the neck without any means to adjust it. Some of the frets were almost 2 mm out of true. Lovely guitar though.
Click to expand...
Or the most bizarre decision to bind the ends of frets so when the neck shrinks the binding cracks, instead of fretting over the binding and polishing the fret ends.
 
617 said:
Or the most bizarre decision to bind the ends of frets
Click to expand...

Yes, that's a classic, although we can't totally blame Gibson for that. I'm pretty sure I've seen examples of the same technique on early 19th Century instruments and even earlier. Probably with ivory binding too ... :eek:
 
  • Like
Reactions: 617
bluefuzz said:
Yes, that's a classic, although we can't totally blame Gibson for that. I'm pretty sure I've seen examples of the same technique on early 19th Century instruments and even earlier. Probably with ivory binding too ... :eek:
Click to expand...
I think that essentially sums up the biggest problem with the guitar market, everyone wants something from the late 50s.

I'd prefer a guitar with a richlite fingerboard and stainless frets but we have to pay more for endangered hardwoods and 1950s manufacturing techniques.

Especially comical with Fender given that those designs were supposed to be futuristic.
 
Hmm. I suppose rosewood is considered endangered, but maple, ash and poplar?
I think Leo took some good ideas from a lot of sources (eg. Bigsby) and combined them into something that could be mass produced cheaply...futuristic was just marketing of electronics. He made refinements with professional musician feedback. It was musicians that demanded simpler control and comfortable contour. You can still buy cheap telecaster and Strat clones for a couple hundred bucks… probably all that they are worth in parts and labor, but brand loyalty goes quite a ways, doesn’t it? Fender wasn’t first, but didn’t need to be.
 
617 said:
but we have to pay more for endangered hardwoods and 1950s manufacturing techniques.

Especially comical with Fender given that those designs were supposed to be futuristic.
Click to expand...
They say all DACs sound the same, well I'd argue against that, to a point. However all fender strats do sound the same, literally. If there ever was a design in guitar to have a consistent sound it would be those, whether it costs free from the local salvage site to 100s to millions. So people can get off their high horses and just get over it. These are low-fi instruments anyway, and being picky about nuances sound or 'tone' as many snobs go on about is just daft. Of course there'll be variables with electronics and coil windings but generally these things are pretty much impossible to tell apart in blind tests, given they're in tune and for the most part well made. Even cheaper copies have 'that sound'.

If jimi had a Squire or even Gear4music copy cheap one, all that music would still exist and they'd all be paying over priced for those. If anything the manufacturing methods of today far exceed anything made in those days. But 'a good' luthier could make a decent instrument out of pretty much the worst chibson or whatever anyway.
 
I have two Mexican-made Telecasters besides my Travis Bean. I have installed aftermarket pickups in one of the Telecasters, which are not only cleaner-sounding than the stock ones, but also clearly more dynamic when looking at the waveform of the DI recordings.

So if anyone is looking for new pickups for their guitars, I can gladly recommend Creamery Pickups from Manchester. They are hand-made by a guy named Jaime, and he can make them exactly the way you want them. (I don't know him personally, just a happy customer).

Here is my pair of Creamery pickups before I installed them.
1769254501871.jpeg
 
Multicore said:
That's true so long as you don't plug them in. Fender Stratocasters have come with a bewildering array of different pickups that represent quite a range of sounds.
Click to expand...
thats the thing, there's just so many different windings on them. And ones with hum buckers, well lets just not go there :)
 
‘79 “The Paul” in walnut and ebony… kind of an oddball, but not without its charms.
IMG_0160.jpeg
Not too many famous players of this model, however this well known guitar god saw fit to lay down some crunch with it:


IMG_0242.jpeg
 
Last edited:
The "Troubadour" guitar pictured below was sold by mail-order catalogue (Sears & Roebuck) to a young Les Paul (b.1915) who sent in his paper-boy savings of US$3.95 sometime before 1929. He learned Wisconsin "hillbilly" guitar and rigged with his boiling water soaked harmonica (self-taught age 8) calling himself "Red Hot Red" busked for tips by the time he was 14 years old.

IMG_5340.jpeg
 
Last edited:
Got the short, stubby little David Gilmour trem arm for my Strat. Added a little spring in there too to tighten it up a bit. Much happier now, and will probably actually leave the trem arm in for once.

20260223_214445.jpg


Not sure why ASR is back to turning these photos right by 90 degrees but in this case it looks nearly natural.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom