Tearing apart cheap guitars, modding the shit out of them

[ryan summit]

theres an epi g400 faded for $1140 by me
so goddam tempted

[Obulus]

Soo, this used to be an Epi G-400 Goth SG:


It's got a GFS Loudmouth in the neck and no bridge pickup, so I made a cover for the bridge pickup cavity out of pickguard material. Did some of that funky Schaller wiring that I got from dubkitty's project thread: a 4 position rotary switch with tone bypass, hi-pass, band-pass and lo-pass. I tweaked the cap values to my taste but maybe I'll change it to get even more extreme hi-pass. Pickup selector is now just a humbucker/single coil switch. Dropped a pickup behind the bridge and measured the string length behind the bridge so it's about 2 octaves above the open strings. Each pickup has it's own volume control. Really did a shit job on drilling the string through because I don't have a drill press but it works fine so no biggie. It's got two outputs, one normal and one for the behind the bridge pickup, but I included a switch such that I can have the behind the bridge pickup in the normal output too. Lastly I sanded of the print on the headstock because I hated it.

Using the two outputs really brings out the good bits about this guitar. Tuned to AADGBE with just heavy fuzz (and maybe some reverb) on the normal output and dirt, chorus and a lot of verb on the behind the bridge pickup really brings them heavy gaze tonez

Still need to file down the bridge saddles a little because it does not really jive with this string angle as is (strings are popping out). I'm also dropping some lead in the empty pickup cavity to try and balance it because it has serious neckdive issues. I may be getting some new tuners for it too as they suck and I like chrome.

I also fixed the wiring on the Mockingbird and redid the way the normal output and the behind the bridge pickup work together the same way as the SG because it works really good!

[skullservant]

[colossus]

Holy shit that's cool. Where are the samples???

[ryan summit]

i gotba wool levys strap
really helps with dive
aint that loudmouth the shit
i gave him his proppers in another thread
love this thing

[Obulus]

Holy shit that's cool. Where are the samples???

I'm not getting anywhere near my recording setup the next couple of weeks I think. When I can I'll make some samples and post them here though!

i gotba wool levys strap
really helps with dive

I may try that if the lead thing doesn't work out, but I'd rather balance it without having another strap for it

[kosta]

Dude that rules! It's like a Yuri Landman White Eagle. So cool.

[weed_killer]

that's fucking incredible, and the bullhead sticker is just icing on the cake.

[Obulus]

Yeah, I guess it is very similar to the White Eagle but in a more conventional guitar looking way!

I also think the bullhead sticker really ties together the look of this guitar, aesthetically one of my better ideas for sure

[Obulus]

I did another mockup for the tele project I have lying around:


Does anyone know any good resources about burst finishing with a regular ol' spray can? Looks like this will be a challenge, which means I'll probably fail miserably

[Obulus]

Updating this thread to see how long it took me to complete this Tele project (well way too long, that's for sure). Anyway, I finished the Tele! I got sick of it lying in pieces, and part of it was that I didn't feel like ruining tons of pickguard material trying to get that triplebucker thing going. So I decided against it, and used parts I had lying around to finish it. Shell pink because I'm a man, mismatched headstock because I can. Tuned to B or drop A. Anyway, here it is!




Here's some progress pics:

NSFW: show

Ready for paint, showcasing the no fucks given routing (not proud of that)



Hardware installed (I just cut off the portion of the bridge plate i didn't need. Pickguard fully wired (pickguard is laser cut), pickups are those GFS wide range humbucker style things

[fcknoise]

That tele is bonkers!! I love this entire thread by the way. You've made the only mockingbird that hit me in the GAS nut and the SG is all kinds of awesome. Any other projects going on?

[Obulus]

Well, the other guitars in this thread are back to their project status. I had a small accident with the Mockingbird:


Glued it back together, got a new neck and redid the electronics (changed the 4-way rotary to a 4-way slider with pu's in series option):


Still needs a setup. The bridge is very high now, so maybe I'll reverse shim the neck + some notes fret out on the higher strings (the first few frets) and I think the nut is too high. It was the cheapest neck that would fit the guitar I could find, so I guess I could've known it needed some work...

The SG also turned back into a project, one that I'm not going to be able to do myself at all, so it is sitting with a luthier right now:


This is what it looked like before the neck was wrecked. I did some more things to it compared to the last pic of it in this thread:



#BASED

[Obulus]

Oh, and I do have some new projects!

Picking this up this week:


And I'm working on a reshaped Ibanez RG a friend gave me. It was in the most shitty condition imaginable:


Reshaped and then sanded, not too far of from my illustrator mockup



Trem route filled, neck installed (painted the headstock and had to repair a crack which I hope will hold), bridge installed (I already changed it for another bridge though), wiring done and pickguard mockup laser cut:


I still have to finish it (daphne blue), want to change the tailpiece and want the pickguard to be gold anodized aluminum but I have to figure out how to make that happen. In order to finish it, I still have to do some work to the body. I hacked it up quite badly while stripping, any advice on this would be most welcome!

Oh, and then there's this very ambitious project that's been on hold for ages:
viewtopic.php?f=192&t=41449&hilit=doubleneck