March 9th, 2010 by Bancika
When I decided to swap the stock DiMarzio/Ibz pickup for Crunch Lab I was hoping that will keep me entertained for a while before having to change something else. But we all know that’s not how it works 
Stock neck pickup was matched well with other two stock pickups, but paired with Crunch Lab it was too warm and too powerful. I read good things about new LiquiFire which should be a great match with Crunch Lab. Also, I had a brand new Dimarzio Evolution single coil pickup lying around. It’s supposed to match well with Evolutions which are much brighter than stock pickups, so it’s probably a better match with Crunch Lab/LiquiFire than stock single coil. Since I’m taking the pickguard off it’s not a bad chance to swap both neck and middle pickup at the same time. Here’s how it turned out:
I love the way LiquiFire sounds! It’s much much tighter than stock pickup and also lower output. No matter how hard I tried, it never sounds muddy, which is awesome for a neck pickup. It can even do palm muting stuff. On the other hand, it still has that “singing” quality you’d expect from a great neck pickup. Looks like they have tuned lows and low mids so that it’s warm enough but never too warm. Great job from DiMarzio and Petrucci!
As for the Evolution single, it worked out rather well. It’s much more like Strat single than the stock pickup – brighter and with a bit less output. That makes the 3rd position sound very Strat-like, nice and clean. Also, 2nd and 4th positions are a bit brighter and sound closer to single coil sound. That’s also a good thing because I like those position for clean sounds.
This swap will definitely keep me entertained for a couple of months before thinking of changing something else on this guitar. New Petrucci signature pickups are awesome. As far as I’m concerned, this was money well spent.
March 9th, 2010 by Bancika
It took me almost 3 years to notice that string spacing on my RG2550 is actually a bit wider than F-spaced humbuckers and that pickup is aligned slightly off axis towards controls. Below is a cropped photo from Musician’s Friend that shows the low E string barely crossing over the magnet pole.
Sound wise I can’t tell any difference, as low E appears to be just as loud as others. When swapping the other two pickups I had a chance to address this and make it at least look better. The idea is to bend base plate legs to make the whole pickup move for approx 1-1.5mm towards bass side. Pickguard hole is large enough to allow for the pickup to move around. Diagram below shows what I did.
It’s a two step process for each leg. First I bent the leg at the base plate, then bend the “heel” so that it’s still parallel with the base plate. That way there won’t be problems with pickup mounting screws.
It’s perfectly symmetrical now, but I still can’t hear any difference. At least it looks cool
Cheers,
Bane
February 25th, 2010 by Bancika
Got my parts from customs (bastards!) to kick off a new build – AX84 4-4-0 amp, a 2w version of famous Trainwreck Express. Stay tuned.
January 30th, 2010 by Bancika
After almost two years of playing with this guitar completely stock I decided to try to swap the pickups. Being a total gear slut I couldn’t resist trying out the new DiMarzio John Petrucci signature pickups. As I’m mostly using the bridge pickup it’s the one to replace first. I bought DiMarzio Crunch Lab to start with and replaced stock DiMarzio-IBZ pickup.
Don’t get me wrong, stock pickups are pretty good. Unlike some “Designed by <put brand name here>” pickups, these are actually built by DiMarzio for Ibanez Prestige models. They are designed to work good for anything between rock and metal and as such cannot be awesome for everything in between. What I wanted to change is to have tighter bass response that would work better for palm muted rhythm sections. Too much bass and it starts to sound a bit flabby. For hard rock, chords and solos stock pickups are just fine.
It turned out to be just what I hoped for. I can’t tell any significant difference in power, but it’s much clearer for rhythm parts which was my goal. Highs are about the same or just a tad hotter than stock pickups. Harmonics pop out easily. Now that the bridge pickup is swapped I will have to do neck as well. Stock neck pickup is very warm and doesn’t go perfectly with the Crunch Lab, so getting Liquifire or Air Norton is probably the next step for me. I’m happy that I swapped the pickup but I’m not sorry for not doing it sooner as it used to be the case for some other guitars. Stock pickups are really nice and they can provide few years of fun.
January 28th, 2010 by Bancika
Finally got myself a new camera – Canon SX200 IS. Hopefully my closeup shots won’t look as bad as they used to be I took few quick pix to see how it performs in macro mode.
Cheers,
Bane
January 25th, 2010 by Bancika
Today I’ll try to explain how to work with the shielded teflon wire. Below is the step by step guide with photos. Click on a photo to see more details.
Note: don’t try to do this with PVC insulated wire as it’s likely that you’ll melt the insulation and short the shield with the center conductor.
January 23rd, 2010 by Bancika
This could be useful for those of you who have Edge (Pro) equipped Ibanez. The idea of replaceable washers is nice because any material will wear out after some time, so why not make it replaceable.
The only problem is that they can hold tight for two weeks before wearing enough that the trem arm doesn’t stay in place any more. I tried a couple of things, none of which worked, before finding the best solution on the web. The idea is to use heat to harden the washers and expand them a bit. 5 seconds over a cigarette lighter flame while slowly rotating the arm did the trick for mine. Two years later and I still haven’t replaced them.
January 22nd, 2010 by Bancika
In a typical tremolo equipped guitar we have a couple of springs that are stretched between the bridge and the body. When you hit the strings bridge and body resonate and cause the springs to resonate too. Pickups are not that far from the springs at all. In most guitars there’s no more than half an inch of wood between them and wood doesn’t do anything to prevent the pickups from picking up vibrations from the springs.
It’s very easy to test this, plug your guitar into the amp, turn the volume up, place the guitar on the bed or something with strings and pickup facing down. That will silence any string movements. Now tap the springs with screwdriver. If you can hear the tapping sound from the amp it means that pickups have…err picked up the vibration from the spring.
When playing this may add some reverby character to your guitar which gets even nastier when run through an overdriven amp or a pedal.
To get rid of it, we want to prevent the springs for vibrating, but keep them doing their main job – expanding and contracting without resistance. I found that the easiest way to do it is using isolation stripped from a typical UTP network cable most of us have in our homes. Cut the insulation in as many 1″-2″ pieces as you have springs and install them inside each of them. Try to repeat the test with tapping the springs and make sure that tremolo operates normally. If both test pass you’re ready to rock Photo below shows installed “spring silencers” in my Ibanez RG2550.
Edit: I found that cable I used in one of my guitars had different insulation material which made squeaky sounds while springs are contracting/expanding. It’s probably safer to use some softer material to tame springs, like mouse pad foam or something similar.
Cheers,
Bane
January 19th, 2010 by Bancika
I finally moved all (or close to all) things from my old site to WordPress. If you need something on the old site you can use this link http://diy-fever.com/old.
Enjoy,
Bane
January 19th, 2010 by Bancika
I’ve completed Pearly amp, a hybrid with JFET preamp and 12K5 based tube output for total of 35mW of raw power Check it out.
