jagstang wrote: ↑Fri Apr 06, 2018 4:58 am
Great. Just would like to have one of these guys in my hands to compare it to my fender cyclone. Really love cyclones!
I'd love to try a Fender one too, just to get a sense of how the original pickup configuration sounded if nothing else.
I spent another hour or so on setting it up this morning. I don't know whether the original owner did much of any work on it, or if I got it more or less how it came from the factory. He said he'd hung onto it, but not played it much at all. In any case, the setup was a hot mess. Super low action, but it came with a set of 9s on it and when I replaced them with 10s, the truss rod was still far too tight (neck had practically no dip at all). I finally got the neck, trem, and action adjusted properly and it's sounding and playing worlds better than when I first got it.
The pickup balance is odd, since the humbucker in the bridge is so much hotter and darker than the single coil in the neck. I finally broke down and started doing things in the reverse order from what I'm used to with my Jazzmaster: start by adjusting the neck pickup so it's not too close to the strings, and then keep pushing the bridge farther down until it more or less balances. Not quite there yet, but getting there, and it's sounding better and better.
Both positions are pretty bright overall, the neck especially, but they're interesting; and playing both pickups has a really nice ringing quality that's still different than my Jazzmaster. So this is a score just in terms of having a guitar with different tonal possibilities, which was what I was hoping for.
Someone above said it's their punk rock guitar. I can totally see this heading in that direction for me too. A couple of different qualities of bright, sustain-y, ringing tone. This is definitely going to be fun!
