Musician Gear & Tech Discussion

Maybe some of you remember my old pic of all my gear together. Well a lot has changed since then. The economy has kept me on a tight budget. But I managed to make due with what I had accumulated over the years, and made a couple of cheap purchases on some pawn shop specials that turned out to be real gems.

I did buy a Squier and Hamer that totaled $140 for both of them, and gave some of my others some real interesting changes. It took a few months, but now I have a nice complete collection that I can use for live gigs and recording. All wiring and intonation set-ups have been made, and I'd have to say it was well worth the time and effort.





So here's some pics of my new line-up of guitars for now. I don't really have the money to fix the rest right now, so this will be it for a while.



On the left is my Squier HM-3. It has a Dimarzio Steve's special in the bridge, the other pickups are basically dummies. The guitar has a coil tap and kill switch installed. It's an extremely light-weight, thin guitar. Nice for those 3-set nights when the weight can get to you with heavier, non-contoured bodies. The midrange is very controllable on this guitar. It's Ryan's favorite to use these days.

On the Right is my newest addition. It's the guitar you see the guts in above. I found this 1994 Hamer in a pawn shop for $90 and it's every bit as good as any $800 Strat. I wanted to take this one to the next level. I installed 2-Seymour Duncan JB jr and a Duckbucker middle. The wiring is Super-Strat wiring utilizing 3-toggle switches instead of a standard 3-way or 5-way switch. It creates 13 different sounds with this wiring design. With the Duncan pickups and some fine tuning setups, the guitar sounds as well as any guitar I can imagine now. Great for the studio!!



The guitar on the left of this pic has been my main live guitar for a while now. It's a Squier Stagemaster neck-through with 2 Seymour Duncan PA-TB1 installed. Standard 3-way switching. The PA-TB1s are the best sounding humbuckers I've run across so far. Very clean sounding in the clean channel, and with the sustain of the neck-through design, it screams like no other when distorted.

The guitar on the right is my other newest addition. It's a Squier Affinity body (bought the whole guitar for $50 and parted it out) with a Westone neck much like the HM-3 neck. I wired it up with an EVH pickguard. It has a Dimarzio Air Norton pickup wired straight to a volume knob. This thing is balls to the wall with a fast low action neck. Very Van Halen-esque to play.



The guitar on the left is my other Stagemaster. I went a different direction with this one and experimented a little. It has a Dimarzio HS-3 in the bridge, and a Super Distortion in the neck. The top vol. knob and 3-way switch have been dummied. It's wired with one vol., one tone knob, and a toggle switch to play either the Bridge or both. You get the best of both worlds here. The marriage of an HS-3 and Super Dist. is outstanding!! Especially with such a great sustaining guitar.

The guitar on the right is an Ibanez RG. It has a Dimarzio Steve's Special in the bridge, Tone Zone in the neck, Lace Silver in the middle. I scrapped the 5-way in favor of Super-Strat wiring in this one too. This guitar is like the Hamer on steriods. Much higher output, faster, thinner wizard neck. With the 24-fret neck, it's probably the most versitile guitar I have. Another great studio guitar!!

So there you have it.. My rig is set. All pawn-shop and ebay specials. Initially I never paid more than $200 for any one of them. The upgrades were minor compared to what you would pay for guitars that perform this well brand new. Each has it's own identity and sounds. I feel like I'm ready to take on the world. I couldn't be happier with the results.

Sweet, Shredd!

I came very close to buying a Fender Korean Squire Strat, yesterday. for $50. It's purple with a white pickguard. Absolutely strange looking axe, with a nasty lil 3rd string rattle at the 12th fret, but for $50, waddaya want, right? Easy enough to fix. Other than that, it plays pretty well. Nice action, not too noisy (other than the pretty loud color!), & it feels good to me.

I'll prolly go get it Monday, just to be the only kid on my block to have one. Then of course I'll rig it up with USA partses.

My '88 Squire (Japanese) works goodly with the USA guts I put in it. I think I'll leave the whammy tightened down on this one, though. I never had much use for a whammy.

I'm thinking about playing more electric than I have in the past. Might be good for my left hand to work it out on these instead of my trusty acoustics that seem to tear me up these days.

Cool post Shredd, nice axes too, though for the life of me I understood about half of what your saying.

Phil, other than for "purest" reasoning, with the advances in amps and effects, there is really no reason why you cant use electric guitars exclusivly, even for the acoustic tone / flair. It would generally decrease the stress to your ligaments.
Adapt and overcome.

Philby, to be honest, the Korean and Japanese made squiers are the highest quality Squiers made. The Japanese guitars getting the highest marks. The neck on my HM-3 actually came from a Korean made Squier that I can't find a pickguard for, so it'll have to be custom made..

What color is it??



Purple as can be. Hahaha.

The reason I can't find a pickguard for it is because it was made during a time period in the 80's when Squier actually outsourced bodies and necks made by Ibanez. Any standard Squier or Ibanez pickguard won't fit. Ibanez necks won't fit in the neck pocket either. It's a hybrid guitar that's pretty rare. So if this looks like the Squier you're talking about, snag it without hesitation. It's a nice piece of Squier history.

On a side note.. The Westone neck was originally on the HM-3 body. But as I found out later, Westone did their own outsourcing in the 80's and bought Squier HM-3 bodies, and the same Squier/Ibanez hybrid necks. So there was a time period in the 80's when a lot of outsourcing was happening in Korea between the different guitar companies.

Both of my Stagemasters and the HM-3 are Korean made, so I can vouch for the quality of Korean made Squiers. The necks are as good as any Strat I've ever run across. The attention to detail on the frets is superb.

Their was a lot of planning that went into putting together these guitars. And to see it all fall into place is pretty rewarding to say the least.

Cool post Shredd, nice axes too, though for the life of me I understood about half of what your saying.

Thanks Sans. One of these days you should try changing out a pickup on your Squier. From what I remember, it has a humbucker in the bridge. A Dimarzio Super Distortion in the bridge would bring a new life to the guitar. It would be much the same as going from modern to NOS tubes in your amp. I don't use stock pickups in any of my guitars anymore.

It took me while to teach myself how to rewire a guitar. I couldn't read a scematic to save my life. But once I understood how to read a wiring diagram, it took me on the path of fixing my own guitars instead of paying someone else to do it. So it's been a learning experience that has proven to be golden.

My Strat has EMG HZ P/Us in the front two positions. Being a Tex / Mex set up with the Humbucker at the bridge and singles mid and neck.
I have considered selling her. But just cant seem to turn loose.

Good looking gear...and you can't beat the price with a big stick!

I couldn't play a guitar to save my life, but to read everything you did to bring em up to speed is pretty cool. Major feeling of accomplishment when you can do that stuff for yourself...and it really works!

Basically, everything I know about guitars you could engrave on the head of a pin, and still have room for the Gettysburg Address!

Whoa Shreddo!

That purple git fiddle rocks even when it aint being played!

What color are the pickups?

HJ

Good looking gear...and you can't beat the price with a big stick!

I couldn't play a guitar to save my life, but to read everything you did to bring em up to speed is pretty cool. Major feeling of accomplishment when you can do that stuff for yourself...and it really works!

It does feel good to finally get it done. It all really works very well. I take a lot of pride in restoring what are considered cheap guitars. At this stage of my career, I've learned that craftsmanship can get looked over due to a mass perception that the guitar world begins and ends with high dollar Brands. Along the way certain guitar companies really apply great quality and detail to their mid level guitars to the point that a little tweaking can bring it to a high dollar quality without putting a serious dent in your wallet.

With the economy being where it is right now, Squier is really stepping up to the plate with their Classic Vibe series . Has anyone gone to GC or Sam Ash and checked out the Classic 60's series?? My God that thing is great! The new John-5 is outstanding as well.

When I bought my Hamer, I checked out a couple of Strats first. One was a MIM, the other was a USA Standard. The Hamer actually had a better feel, better sunburst, and was equal in parts. In the mid 90's they must have really wanted to pump out some really good Slammers, much like Squier with their Classic series today, and Stagemasters in the early 2000's.


Howlin,
the Purple Squier body is just gutted and on a shelf right now. I might get to it later, but a custom pickguard can be costly. As soon as the day comes when I have one for it, I'll get it up and running. But I'm still going through mortgage problems. So it may be a while.

I was really contemplating whether I should buy the Squier Aff. and Hamer when I did. But the thing that really made me want to do it was, between the 2-guitars I got the 3- Duncans and the Dimarzio HS-3 out of them. Those pickups alone were worth about double than what I paid for the 2- guitars combined. (Not to mention that the Hamer really is a pimp guitar anyway.) If I wanted to, I could have sold 2 of the pickups, and both guitars are free!! Pawn shops know nothing about custom pickups, they only know guitar brands and price according to what they see on ebay.

They don't stand a chance when I come walking through their doors.

Very cool post <B>Shredd</B>!

Ah yes.. A new addition to my Squier collection.

Sold one of my practice amps to get this little gem. Good thing it was still at the pawn shop. $50 for a 20th Anniversary Bullet Special. I was kind of surprised by the neck. It's hit or miss with Squiers, but this one is freaking smooth.

I love simplicity sometimes. One pickup, one volume knob, hard-tail bridge.

I brought it home, installed a Dimarzio Super Distortion I had lying around here, new CGE linear high output 500k volume pot, new wiring with extra grounding, graph-tech saddles, shielded with copper tape, all setups complete, saddles adjusted and intonated, truss-rod adjusted.

It's a lot of fun to jam with. I'm still kind of amazed by it. It f**king screams! The thinner, lighter, Basswood body really brings out the top end of the pickup. It has an amazing bite when you distort it. Think Van Halen's Mean Street.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2R2KXNQ ... re=related

Yea.. Like that!!

There are a lot of people who think Bullets are crap... It'll be a lot of fun to show this one off.

all these strats and not a one with single coils... wth?

interesting fact about korean made strats... they are(were) all made by cort... formerly cortez.

the pro tone series is really the best "non american" line ever made. widely regarded as 'every bit as good as a japanese'... but they have never been worth what the jap models are... and now that fender no longer makes jap models... you can guess what's going to happen.

interesting lineup shred.

These are my gigging guitars. The Hamer and Red Stagemaster have single coils, but the Stagemaster has a Dimarzio HS3 in it which is pretty low on output, so I always use it with the Super Distortion together.

My other two Fender Strats are a 1992 Strat Plus and a 1984 '57 RI. I don't take those to the shows. I don't trust people enough not to run off with one of them. You'll find that generally, nobody wants to steal a Squier.

imo, nothing beats the sweet spots on a 5way loaded with high quality singles... you can split humbuckers all day... just isn't the sm.

don't get me wrong... I love buckers in my les paul, and jem.

in my collection I've tried to get a wide variety of sounds... p90s in my es295, buckers in my lp, lipsticks in my dano, hum/sng/sng in my hamer, sng sng sng in my strat, sng sng in my tele, hum sng hum in my jem, mini buckers in my frankenstrat, humbuckers in my carvin...

Shredd,


Not to hijack your thread, but have you ever had 60 cycle hum issues using a regular cord to connect to your amp?

I don't use a wireless at all. (I think they change the sound too much for me) And now someone suggested to me that I shield the cavity with copper professionally.

I am afraid I will lose some of the grandiose feedback I live on thus far.