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Guitar modding


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So whats the craziest off the wall mod you've done to a guitar, be it acoustic or electric. I have a bank holiday weekend coming up so I think i'll spend it doing something extremely stupid to one of my guitars.

 

So come on people! What did you do? Did it give you the results you thought it would? Would you do it again? What made you even think of doing it? etc etc yadda yadda yadda

 

:)

 

Lee

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Ok, here goes.

 

When I was a younger, I was one of those kids that liked to tinker with things. I used to take stuff apart all the time and had a bedroom full of "inventions" made up of parts of things, together with parts of other things. (I had one "invention" that was the rotary part out of a humidifier hooked up to some lights with several contact points. It made a really neat strobe light!

 

Of course, the guitar had electronics in it, so I had to tinker. I found a really cool switch from a toy. It looked like a layered, spiral parking area with a string out the bottom. Every time you pulled the string, a contact arm would jump up to the next level. I disconnected the wires from the tone control on my old Les Paul copy and a fixed them to the cool switch. I then added extra connections and added different capacitors on each one.

 

Once it was all set up, I put it in the body cavity and drilled a tiny hole in the back plate. Then, I put the pull string through the hole.

 

What I wound up with was a tone selector that would change the sound each time you pulled the string. The string was on the back of the guitar so no one ever saw it.

 

After a while, I felt stupid reaching to the back of the guitar to change the tone so I removed the switch and resoldered the wires to the original pot.

 

Don't judge me. :P

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when very young and before I learned to play my older brother had an old cheap acoustic that he no longer wanted so I recieved the hand me down and went about customising it with a paint job. So in my ignorance i used whatever paints I could find in my dads garage and painted it. It looked cool to me (aged 13 maybe 14)you can imagine how bad it was, not prepared surfaces etc... unfortunately some of the paints began to reacted with the lacquer and other paints used, paint peeling off, the stain on the guitar was horrible, genrally a bloody mess. i didnt care as i didnt really have an interest in the guitar then but my dad was pissed at the state of his garage.

We live and learn I now dont do painting.....

Love life, some twists and turns are more painful than others, but love life.....

 

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=592101

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I used to have an old Rickenbacker that sounded like ass with the original electronics. I putz'd around with various things until I came up with a keeper. I put in a Bill Lawrence Blade single coil and a Gibson PAF with a fader pot between the two. No tone control, just a volume and fader. It turned out to be a very cool sounding guitar.
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Ok here's one (this was actually done by a friend) take a Strat type guitar and mod it into a flying V!!! ... add wood where necessary,subtract where necessary, move your tone and volume controls where it's the most convienient per the new body shape etc. That should keep you busy and out of the pubs for awhile!! :D:thu:
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Originally posted by PBBPaul:

I used to have an old Rickenbacker that sounded like ass with the original electronics. I putz'd around with various things until I came up with a keeper. I put in a Bill Lawrence Blade single coil and a Gibson PAF with a fader pot between the two. No tone control, just a volume and fader. It turned out to be a very cool sounding guitar.

Bit on the sensible side tehehehehehe but sounds cool. Have you still got it?
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I bought an old Gibson Sonex and took out the crummy p-ups that came with it... and replaced them with an Andersen H-3 humbucker.... connected to a single volume knob.... and I replaced the pickguard with a chunk of diamondplate.

 

That guitar is far from stock... and it's bullet-proof.

 

This is me playing it at Don Hill's in New York City. http://static.flickr.com/19/22521108_a204577a6a.jpg?v=0

\m/

Erik

"To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting."

--Sun Tzu

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Originally posted by lee83:

Originally posted by PBBPaul:

I used to have an old Rickenbacker that sounded like ass with the original electronics. I putz'd around with various things until I came up with a keeper. I put in a Bill Lawrence Blade single coil and a Gibson PAF with a fader pot between the two. No tone control, just a volume and fader. It turned out to be a very cool sounding guitar.

Bit on the sensible side tehehehehehe but sounds cool. Have you still got it?
Hey, I thought I'd try to bring this back to Earth.

 

No, I don't have it anymore and kinda regret selling it. It was a funky looking guitar in that it was shaped like a 4001 bass and had slanted frets. I was playing a gig once and a guy came up to me between sets and mentioned that he wished he could find one of those slant fret guitars because he had been injured and it made playing alot easier for him. I told him I had one that I rarely played and ended up selling it to him.

 

Edit: Here's a pic of me playing it when I was young & skinny. http://home.centurytel.net/pontiacblues/Images/Paulric1.jpg

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I took my old P.O.S. warlock and removed the stop tailpiece, and replaced it with a full floating floyde rose. I also rigged up some homade fretlocks (work just dandy!) and painted it camo for good measure. I also added two b.c. rich pickups and a series/parallel switch for the bridge P/U. It's kinda cool now.

 

http://geocities.com/darthmcfaul/000_0258.jpg

Sorry for the big pic!

What a horrible night to have a curse.
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Lol @ CMDN's diamond-plate guitar.

 

The first acoustic I had was a piece of trash. So after I got one that was a little less trashy, I painted the old one with metallic silver spray paint. Only I tried doing it in two heavy coats.

 

And, the neck was separating from the body so I tried drilling a brace in to push the neck back. Obviously, didn't work and I was left with small 1/2" holes in the sides of the acoustic.

 

Yeah, I trashed that guitar before I was through. But, well, I can't really say that I'm that much older now. But, I can safely say that I'm not as stupid as I was then ;)

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Originally posted by A String:

Ok, here goes.

 

When I was a younger, I was one of those kids that liked to tinker with things. I used to take stuff apart all the time and had a bedroom full of "inventions" made up of parts of things, together with parts of other things. (I had one "invention" that was the rotary part out of a humidifier hooked up to some lights with several contact points. It made a really neat strobe light!

 

Of course, the guitar had electronics in it, so I had to tinker. I found a really cool switch from a toy. It looked like a layered, spiral parking area with a string out the bottom. Every time you pulled the string, a contact arm would jump up to the next level. I disconnected the wires from the tone control on my old Les Paul copy and a fixed them to the cool switch. I then added extra connections and added different capacitors on each one.

 

Once it was all set up, I put it in the body cavity and drilled a tiny hole in the back plate. Then, I put the pull string through the hole.

 

What I wound up with was a tone selector that would change the sound each time you pulled the string. The string was on the back of the guitar so no one ever saw it.

 

After a while, I felt stupid reaching to the back of the guitar to change the tone so I removed the switch and resoldered the wires to the original pot.

 

Don't judge me. :P

You were before your time. Impedance Filter

 

SDs website tells how you can use your tone knob to dial in the amount of coil tapping applied. I've wanted to try this but also have a pull out knob with a differnt cap in it to maintain that nice sound I get when rolling off that neck pickup.

Raise your children and spoil your grandchildren. Spoil your children and raise your grandchildren.
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