Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Guitars, Amps and Effects => Topic started by: Peterku on September 05, 2005, 05:57:35 PM
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I brought her home from the luthier today. She's... perfect. My first impression was that this was THE guitar I'd be playing till the day I die.
Now I'm only posting some rough photos. I'll post a review after having played it for about a week. It was love at first sight, but now I need to get to know her better. ;)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v468/Peterku/dea02.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v468/Peterku/dea04.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v468/Peterku/dea01.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v468/Peterku/dea06.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v468/Peterku/dea07.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v468/Peterku/dea05.jpg)
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Now that's a class axe!
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Wow, amazing, I love the LP Standard/LP Doublecut/LP Junior kind of style that it has, nice looking woods too, what are they?...
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Wow, amazing, I love the LP Standard/LP Doublecut/LP Junior kind of style that it has, nice looking woods too, what are they?...
Thanks for the nice comments. It's actually based on the Ibanez Artist model.
The body and the neck are both Honduran mahogany, the luthier - Károly Filep - bought several such blocks from an old turner some 17 years ago. The turner had had them drying in his workshop for more than 20 years when Károly bought them. So the wood's been drying for almost 40 years now. It's very dense and heavy, quite bright sounding for mahogany. The top wood is also mahogany but a different kind, less heavy but very very stiff, and has that strong bright and 'old' tap tone. The fretboard is African Blackwood, a rosewood species with a darker, more mellow tone than ebony.
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that looks great! Really nice lookin woods etc. Any idea how I can route out my body so I can do it without a scratchplate, or is the only way to route it for a scratchplate, but then put a top on it or something? I was thiknin I could drill through to the control cavity but I doubt that actually.. haha
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That's very very nice.....
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very nice!
cant wait to get mine through now... especially as i'm guitarless after selling my LP :roll:
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That looks great and I am looking forward to the review. I assume that they are volume pots for each pup.
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I assume that they are volume pots for each pup.
The one closer to the neck is a blend pot for pickup selection, and the other one is a master volume.
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Absolutely beautiful................you're going to have fun with that one....I feel a silly grin coming on :D
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Wow that is a gorgeous guitar!! I'm well jealous!! What pickups did you choose in the end?
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Wow that is a gorgeous guitar!! I'm well jealous!! What pickups did you choose in the end?
A set of Alnico IV Mules. They're great! For example, I've never heard such a beautiful acoustic-like quack tone in the middle position on a LP-style guitar before! I thought that was only possible with Strats. :D
Thanks for the nice comments guys.
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if mules are good enough for a guitar like that, they're good enough for my tokai LP.
that's the problem with bkp - SPOILT FOR CHOICE... AARGGGHH!!
and nice guitar, of course. how much did you pay, or can you not say in case your other half finds this site? :lol:
haha, i just saw the d'addario ball ends as well, nice choice man
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how much did you pay
haha, i just saw the d'addario ball ends as well, nice choice man
Woods, frets + work fee for Károly was $650. I bought all the other parts and electronics myself.
Yeah, that's a set of d'Addario 10's, but I usually play Newtone strings because they last longer and play smoother. When the d'Addario set dies, I'll put Newtones on, probably 10/11's because Newtones have less string tension than d'Addarios.
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if mules are good enough for a guitar like that, they're good enough for my tokai LP.
Go for it. Ultimate PAF sound. What's more, my set gives a quack tone in the middle position that's almost acoustic! I couldn't believe my ears! :D
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that's a pretty guitar and should sound wonderful - ENJOY!!
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That's really nice Peterku. You're gonna get attached to that.
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can you get a decent lead tone out of the bridge mule? i've been considering an emerald bridge, mule IV neck.
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:D Yep just to ad my two peneth worth i think that looks great !!
i hope she plays as well as she looks !
:D 8)
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can you get a decent lead tone out of the bridge mule? i've been considering an emerald bridge, mule IV neck.
I like my Mule in my Epi LP for leads, if thats any help :lol:
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can you get a decent lead tone out of the bridge mule?
Definitely. Much more than merely 'decent'.
A calibrated set might have an advantage over another combination: in the middle position of the switch I get a clean tone from my Mules that's pure quack. I can even play acoustic parts on my Artist now! But it's just my theory, and maybe the Mule+Emerald combo would also give a relatively nice quack tone. I don't know. Also note that I don't have any tone pots on my guitar, that might influence cleans.
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Thanks for the kind comments.
I only have one problem with the guitar: it really wants to be fitted with Dunlop 6000's! :wink: :lol:
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Totally loving that axe!!! i love the look of how its finished (or not finished?) bet she feels nice! :lol:
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i love the look of how its finished (or not finished?) bet she feels nice!
Thanks. :) She has a satin finish. I don't know whether it's poly or nitro. It's enough to protect the wood but lets the body resonate freely. That's the concept of the guitar already: to be as natural as possible, to let the woods play the main role.
I didn't want wax or oil finish because I had seen some Framus guitars that only needed a few years to get REALLY dirty... :roll: On the other hand, those multi-layer glossy finishes found on PRS guitars felt like plastic to me. So the choice of natural satin finish was obvious. :)
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gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous
don´t you have any climatic problems with this natural finish of the guitar?!
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Have you had a chance to have a good go at her?- If so, what do you think? Your forum Bro's need to know PeterKu.
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don´t you have any climatic problems with this natural finish of the guitar?!
I'll see it in winter. :lol: But honestly, I don't think so. Even with this finish, the pores of the wood are well sealed.
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Yesterday I had a rehearsal with my band. My amp's not ready yet, so I took my small hybrid practice combo (Kustom Tube12) to the place. I'm listing my impressions:
- That thick block of old mahogany sounds like thunder when played hard!!! 8) It's not the amount of mids or bass, but the feel of the sound. Very, very dense and heavy.
- The guitar's by far the heaviest axe I've ever played. By the end of the rehearsal my left arm got very tired at the shoulder, although I'm usually training every day. I'll need to switch between my Strat and this guitar at concerts.
- Despite the weight, the body resonates like mad, and has a strong clean acoustic sound I haven't heard from any LP before. Now I use Newtone 10-49's on the guitar, so it also has a nice tight feel.
- Now about the amplified sound: THE MULES ARE GREAT!!! :D They have lots of articulation and just the right amount of tightness for the music I play. At the rehearsal we played things ranging from funk to some heavy metal, and the three sounds I get from a set were just enough for that.
NECK: Surprisingly balanced. I was expecting to hear a bassy/slightly muddy sound (the sound I hear on LP's with different pickups), but I was wrong. Tim was right when he mentioned that as a LP player he knew how important it was for a neck pickup to sound clear and articulated. The neck Mule sounds clean and woooody. The sound of mahogany perfectly comes through, the sound reminds me of the acoustic sound of the guitar.
MIDDLE: My favourite... A clean quack sound with heaveny sparkle. That's the kind of sound I thought to be only possible with a Strat. But it's still different because it has the warmth of mahogany. The wound strings have that hollow metallic ring (not as much, though) as on a Strat in quack position, and the unwound strings are pure sparkle. Altogether, a nice acoustic type of sound.
BRIDGE: Again: balanced. 8) My practice combo has a range of gain more suited for classic rock, but still enough to make a Dimarzio Air Zone muddy. With the Mules I could max the gain and still hear individual notes in chords and things sounded bigger then ever! So low output doesn't necessarily mean you have to sacrifice definition, you have to work a lot more for it, though. Although perfectly balanced, the bridge Mule has a certain 'cut' I really like. It's kind of a singing quality with lots of attitude, which sounds good for blues. When chicken-picking some gritty bluesy licks, I could even hear some Tele character, but my ears might be wrong and I don't have a Tele either.
These Mules are cool pickups indeed, I'll make a more precise testing when my amp's ready at last. And some clips, of course. You must hear that quack sound... :D
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Sounds really nice, looks really nice...nice axe! :)
How much does she weigh, Peterku?
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How much does she weigh, Peterku?
I don't know. I only got a rough minimal estimation with our weighing machine: around 6 kgs (13.2 pounds). So I guess it doesn't weigh more than 6.5 kgs (14.3 pounds).
I forgot to mention, the rehearsal was more than 3 hours long, and I forced standing most of the time to learn how much the guitar actually weighs. So the weight issue isn't really that bad. :)
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6kg!! I think my guitar comes in at ~5.5kg, and thats more than enough!
Still, you must get ridiculous sustain with all that mass.
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6kg is indeed enough to rip your bloody arm off!!! thats sooooooooooooo awesome. i really want a ridiculously heavy natural, pure, hardtail, set neck sustaining tone machine like that!!! i might check out gordon smith, see what they can do me.