77 posts
yeah, the same thing happens to my dress shirts when I get the iron too hot.
Did you refret it yourself? Preparing to be impressed...
yeah, I do it myself - this was the third one (ibanez and prs previously). no maple boards, fretboard binding or compound radii... my guitars are on the low end of the difficulty scale.
Ok, impressed. Most I've done is pull a bad fret out a bit and reseat it.
Do you have a fret press? you clip the ends, do all the filing, etc? I'd love to see some pics of your technique. Most I do is sand and crown.
I do the hammer-in method... lots of light (but sharp) taps with a plastic faced fretting hammer. get the radius mostly right with a fret bender... a little over (over is easier to adjust than under), then hammer it flush (carefully). filing off the cut ends is probably the worst part, but I get the bevel I like (steep) instead of the standard 35 deg. I do that freehand so can't really say what the final bevel is except its not too far off vertical - just enough to go easy on my thumb. I bought a couple radius blocks for leveling... it's all files, sand paper, steel wool and elbow grease after that.
it takes me about 18 hours or so... they don't come out absolutely perfect (file nicks, wood chips glued back... that sounds worse than it is, they look fine, just not exactly the same ;)) but they play great again.
I'll see about some pics next time I do one. hopefully, it might be a few years!
should add, the only reason I decided to do this myself was the price I was quoted for a refret... $12/fret + wire. that's almost a $1k for three guitars. considering how much labor is involved, a fair price really... but... oof.
the tool investment has paid for itself many times over.
With 20+ guitars in the studio a fret press is something I think about a lot... $12/fret! that's $264 for 22 frets... There are over 700 Warmoth necks that are cheaper than that, with whatever fret wire you want installed...
On bolt neck guitars, I've had that same thought Charger. I know several guys (Doc/Dale being one) who buy a new strat or tele style guitar and immediately order a deluxo, birds eye maple, steel fret neck to exact specs they like and put it on the guitar immediately. Then if 3-5-10 years down the road they want to sell it, they put the stock Fender or whatever neck back on and it's brand new.
Knowing that, I had wondered too about just replacing a neck rather than a roughly $300 fret job.
Gonna sound like a noob here, but it's funny because I have a guitar that's been driving me nuts for years, sounded harsh, kinda metallic. It's my first Ibanez, an 89 540, was my main workhorse when i was actually gigging. Thru various pickups and string gauges (as I made it my drop C guitar a few years ago) it has had this harshness that drove me nuts, that it did not have way back. Had electronics checked, nothing showed there. Finally figured it out last week - FRETS!!! so much fret wear especially on the G and B string areas. Unfortunately doing anything about them isn't in the budget for this year.
The harshness was very akin to what I heard in your last blue clip. Go figure...
huh, I get the reverse effect - low frets give me sustain problems (hard on the fingers) and note-outs. new frets are maybe brighter sounding... if only because they ring clearly. or my action is too low... the set-up never ends!! ;)
I did check my guitar via DI during the blue testing (while I was on what turned out to be the microphonic tube hunt...) - don't think it's the source. but it could be that I like harsh! heh.
if the clip you're thinking of had bass on it... that's probably what it was. I had another issue there with ringing at the bridge that I just found last night... (grr).
KrankZilla — Mar 20, 2013Gonna sound like a noob here, but it's funny because I have a guitar that's been driving me nuts for years, sounded harsh, kinda metallic. It's my first Ibanez, an 89 540, was my main workhorse when i was actually gigging. Thru various pickups and string gauges (as I made it my drop C guitar a few years ago) it has had this harshness that drove me nuts, that it did not have way back. Had electronics checked, nothing showed there. Finally figured it out last week - FRETS!!! so much fret wear especially on the G and B string areas. Unfortunately doing anything about them isn't in the budget for this year.
The harshness was very akin to what I heard in your last blue clip. Go figure...
I've got the same guitar ( I know because I once bought your pickups from you!). One possible factor is the body is very thin and there's a lot of metal in it, in relation to the wood... that bridge is probably as massive as the wood is. Another is the locking nut... I hate those things and I'd replace the neck if I could, but finding a new replacement Ibanez with the bolt pattern and cutaway etc is next to impossible. Anyway, I always liked the bright, cutting tone of it... that's why I bought your spare pickups, those things are ceramic and somewhere around 14k resistance, they're loud and midrangey. I don't know what you replaced them with but bottom line, with a guitar that thin there is not a whole lot of tonality imparted by the wood... so you could be hearing more pickup and bridge and nut, and less resonance.
Sorry, mistyped - fret BUZZ from worn frets.... And I'm not 100% sure its the cause yet. Heh hope I didn't offend you sheep - i just heard something on that clip that bothered me a bit, and then reread your post about getting the frets evened out, and it rang a bell. maybe the wrong one, lol!
All good theories charger, except I have 4 versions of that guitar and only that one has the issue. Which I admit doesn't mean you are wrong. In fact one is also an 89, just in HSS (and unbound neck w/rosewood fretboard versus bound/ebony) rather than HSH. Thing is, it wasn't always harsh. The funny thing was I put a dimebucker in there looking for clarity... LOL, talk about exacerbating the issue! Hoping to salvage the guitar but wary of putting in new frets only to still have the issue.
I have found a thin layer of foam under the springs helps reduce spring/bridge noise, and doesn't seem to mess with the stability.
offense!? no no, far from it... just sent me into "omg, what do I have to sleuth out now??" mode! lol.
ok, last clip! probably ;)
this is a (very) rough mix from a tune I was messing around with today.
http://www.ironsheep.com/mp3/ironsheep/Media/bbluelast.mp3
Maybe I should have bought the blue. Yikes that sounds great.
thanks - I'm not quite sold on the boost tone yet but I really like the clean-ish sound a lot.
Wow... I love the cleans (ishes) in that. The boost tone is super down low but seemed a tad thin maybe when you hit the high notes. But wow... killer tune and playing too.
thanks - yeah, I'm going to have to use something else in the middle... the gained up blue is a bit too compressed in the mids or something, sounds great with single notes but kinda gets weird with more than that... and it's hard (for me) to mix.
So after almost a month with the blue, does it deliver that 3rd channel option you were looking for?
hmm, yes and no.
it does a very nice job as an eq filter to spice up my clean channel... so that's good.
but, I think it's a little too middy with it's distortion. I suspect that the people who really love it's drive/gain sounds usually play with pretty scooped tones. it's usable, though... just maybe a little too compressed in the mids since I tend to go for frowns instead of smiles when it comes to eq... stacking mid bumps, not so great.
on the whole, I don't regret buying it... and I haven't tried it out with my THD amps yet! heh, just realized that bit.... probably says how it ranks vs. the flexi (pretty even, just a bit different tonally).
edit: just remembered that I did run it through the flexi's fx return for a little bit... ah well, it was forgettable, apparently. ;)
not convinced yet, but I think I might be on to something... slam the crap out of the echoplex (blue (plexi mode) gain and out vol. max), then into the uber clean channel! oh, and slam the blue with fuzz for boost... hmmmmm.
the occasionally interesting, somewhat lengthy and noodle-y results: http://www.ironsheep.com/mp3/ironsheep/Media/04122013blue69.mp3
(blue's boost is on in there too at some points)
((need to turn down the echo volume and repeats a little in the future :/))
Some new Bogner transformer based pedals:
http://youtu.be/Bp1CKKK5dNE
Sheep, just saw this. Interesting.
J, nice find. Something really new in pedal design??? As far as I know it is. Could be cool.
New, not if you've read through Jack Orman's site, which is pretty much the bible for fx builders. http://www.muzique.com/lab/pickups.htm ...He described this in 2002... and there are a couple of builds out there for fuzzes etc that use transformers as inductors.
It's not actually a power transformer, the guy even says no power runs through it in the video... it's basically a fancy way to add an inductor... in other words, a "gimmick" that costs them $1.50 to add to the circuit, and then adds $20 to the price (was pretty funny to hear the guy talking about how much it adds to the cost). Still if they sounded good I'd be willing to give it a try... I know it's a video with a camera mic but they sound fairly blech to me...
Not sure whether it was the mic, the dude, or the pedals, butI hearya!! heheh Juss been checking out the Musikmesse shtuffz.
Nu Kemper con power amp:
http://youtu.be/i3EUsv4Yzq8