Happy 2012

Hello - first post of 2012 - I hope you all have a great 2012!

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Hybrid Shape Shifter Tele on the way

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I'm building a new guitar. So three things influenced this one.   A hybrid tele / Strat body I saw, an interesting neck and particularly an interesting electronics option.  Here are the bits as arrived.  The body is a telecaster shape, telecaster neck pocket, telecaster control cavity but routed for 3 Strat pickups and a Strat style vibrato bridge.  The control cavity makes it different to many hybrid Telecasters a la the John Mayer model which have a more Strat like control cavity.  The body was advertised as "mahogany" it's quite red in nature but nice looks to be two piece centre jointed.  The neck is mahogany with a maple fingerboard and a maple skunk strip. So a bit reverse look from normal.  Electronically I'm going with three Strat pickups from Tonerider, having used there nashville set in the nashville tele conversion I did I was impressed. Five way switch master volume and tone.  But I'm putting in a shape shifter switch ...
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Let's talk plectrums...

... or should that be plectra I'm no good at that kind of English... to boldly go and all that. (If you are not a guitarist here is a health warning about this post, it may lead to you attempting to chew off a limb to retain conscious or keep your sanity...) My history of plectrum use is... Bloody huge triangular Gibson ones, heavy, I used to wear them out so they ended up pretty much circular in a matter of days/weeks. Odd at that time I had a Strat copy and used Gibson Strings and Gibson picks - I even went for Gibson strings with a wound third at one point after reading heavier strings gave a better tone... yes but you can't play the damn thing and could never get the intonation sorted out after an older mentor showed me what that nonsense was all about. For a long time there after I used Fender medium the hard once, often in tortoiseshell as I thought that classy for some bizarre reason. "Hello darling look at my tortoiseshell picks." I never had many girlfriends ...
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Fitting a Fishman Rare Earth pickup

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I've fitted the Fishman Rare Earth Pickup I got as a birthday present. I was fitting it to my trusty old Yamaha LL11.  I bought this guitar brand new in London in the old London Acoustic Centre, which was based down in Wapping in those days, it was in the mid 90s at some point.  So this is heading for 20 years old now.  It is a lovely guitar, most of my recordings have featured this guitar via a microphone.  However live I've used a CPX500 for some time or I have used the LL11 with a Dean Markley soundhole pickup but whilst that sounds ok it isn't the best solution.  Recently I bought a Vintage Gordon Giltrap that has a Rare Earth Blend pickup, that was really impressive when I used it live and I thought I'd get one of them, but the blend (which has a magnetic humbucking pickup and a small gooseneck mic as well) is £250 vs about £130 for the humbucking only model.  So this is the non blend model I'm fitting here - which the darling Mrs F bought me for my...
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