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A Practice bitsa - It's meant to look rough... honest


Mattpt85
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This is a practice project of mine, all the parts were obtained as cheaply as possible from a popular auction site.
I din't set out with a plan, just changed things as I went along, the body was obviously a project for someone else before me, I've never seen as many holes in the bridge area!
I play in a punk covers band so I've kept the look rough and ready (a happy co-incidence) starting off with a sanding down and re-painting with some red gloss I had lying around


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Then came the neck which is a leftie but I don't mind that, a quick de-logo was called for, I didn't want to tarnish the name of tanglewood by my butchery.
Some hardware plus P pups (I don't like white pups) were scavenged from a cheapo I had lying around, and strings were strung.

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Then the decoration begun!
I thought I may as well add my name to the headstock space, and the band name to the body.
I started off with the block fret marker stickers, then halfway down realised I could do them 'yamaha attitude' style so changed tack and put them off centre higher up the neck. Of course I told myself the wonkiness was intended as part of the rough and ready look.. looking back I must have been blindfolded or drunk, possibly both.
The green pole pieces were added as it took me ages to break into the pickup case so I wasn't going to spend all that time and not paint them green.
I also realised the bridge position was out so re-fitted that, adding yet more holes to the poor thing. Which was soon to be an issue no more...

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After trying it at the next band practice I realised it was ok but the output was low so I thought I'd get some new pickups ordered.
I'm now left with fair sized gaps where the new mm pickup doesn't fit the space for the old one, but that doesn't bother me really.
I haven't yet tested my dodgy wiring properly so I may be in touch with Kiogon for a wiring loom.
Then I saw a Kahler bass tremolo pop up for auction, I never knew these existed until seeing this so after a quick google I had to get it to try out.
I got hold of a router, never used one before so performed a couple of atrocities on an innocent piece of wood I had lying about as practice then got stuck in. I'm a big believer in learning by doing ;)
Amazingly enough it wasn't a complete disaster and the trem bridge actually fit!

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I've never been a fan of red or black guitars with a white scratchplate and had some blue paint leftover from doing up the kitchen.
So here it is in all it's glory (?!)
I'll get to try it out tomorrow night at band practice.
Probably have half an hours worth of annoying the rest of the lads with very un-called for vibrato and pitch bends then never use the arm again!
All good fun though and good experience putting the thing together!

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Cheers Guys :)
haven't had chance to try it out yet, need to do some fiddling with the bridge/neck first.

funkshui I would say go for it! It's hard at first but I've learnt so much through trial and error (with the help of t'internet of course)

If I'm even half as competent as Andy one day it would be a miracle!

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[quote name='Mattpt85' timestamp='1446023978' post='2896198']
Cheers Guys :)
haven't had chance to try it out yet, need to do some fiddling with the bridge/neck first.

funkshui I would say go for it! It's hard at first but I've learnt so much through trial and error (with the help of t'internet of course)

If I'm even half as competent as Andy one day it would be a miracle!
[/quote]
I use those special plastic pants with tight elasticated openings... :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm going to change the rest of the hardware for black, black and yellow is a good combo in my eyes.

Having trouble now though, after messing up the bridge position on the last one I measured from nut to 12th fret finding that was 16.5" so set the bridge at 33" (I think that's correct)
Which made it unplayable, I raised the bridge height as much as I could, which wasn't much, but I am wanting to persevere with this Kahler tremolo bridge to get it working properly.
Now gradually tweaking the neck relief and will probably raise the nut as well.

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