ThePearDream's Talman Projects

[ThePearDream]

My new guard arrived today from Pickguardian. I proceeded to transfer my previously wired up pickups and wiring to the new guard. It was a snug fit, with the US spec switch and pots, but I managed to squeeze it all in. The volume pot is a push/pull to activate the neck pickup in any position, for those great neck/bridge tones. The next step is to solder the ground to the bridge claw, finish up the new nut and do the setup.

[ThePearDream]

And we're up and running. The body was basically stripped back to nothing and everything was replaced.
The reissues use nickel hardware, but I needed it to be chrome, to match the lipstick tubes.

- The trem mounting holes have an odd spacing, so it took some research to find something. I eventually settled on the Wilkinson WVP6SBCR 5+1 trem. The block saddles and saddle surround give it a similar look to the bridge from the 1994 TC530 models.
- Replacement chrome control plate from guitarpartsresource, along with dot indicator chrome barrel knobs.
- Red Pearloid guard from pickguardian (really hard to capture in photos, but it looks great).
- Duncan Designed lipstick pickups from a Squier (I may upgrade these in the future).
- CRL switch, 500k pots, push/pull for neck on/off
- Gotoh locking oval tuners
- Graphtech nut

In a lot of ways, I feel that this is a better guitar now than an original TC630.
- Solid Alder body (TC630s came in mdf, then ash for the final two years, though these are fairly rare).
- strat sized pickups provide more options for upgrades.
- better neck joint: Reissue is sculpted and contoured with a plate, versus sculpted with ferrules.
- better neck construction: Fender style scooped headstock, versus scarfed headstock.
- Locking tuners
- Fender style nut slot is more stable, versus sitting at the end of the fretboard.
- wood bound fretboard.
the only real drawback is the 6 point trem versus the 2 point of the originals, but this is minor, as the trems on the originals weren't particularly good anyway.

I really believe that if Ibanez hadn't tried to force the reissues to be strats and teles and had stuck to weirdo pickups like the original run, these could have been really awesome guitars. This guitar is awesome now, but it took two different Talmans and a custom pickguard to get there.




Next up, I need to find a 5mm tip-less trem arm, I tried a cheap Chinese import one, put the short leg is too short so the arm sits too low.

As for refinishing the other body, I'm going to wait and see how the finish on my Coyote project turns out. If it looks good, I'll outsource the finish to guitarpaintguys. I don't have a great spot to spray and Colorado is a windy and dusty place in the summer.

On a side note, I now have two spare nickel Talman control plates. I somebody wants one, PM me and you can have one for the cost of shipping.

[ThePearDream]

Well, since I already had the pickups, and I knew it would be at least a few more months before I got around to having the body refinished, I thought I'd whip up a quick pickguard and wire everything up.

Holy hell, these pickups are nice, full and bright and take gain well. Since I had an extra push/pull pot, I put that in the volume position and did a direct through wiring scheme (to send the switch output straight to the jack) This lets me turn the tone control down fairly low, then quickly switch to a brighter tone.

[ThePearDream]

I took more steps on my scaled up Talman/Danolectro/Jazzblaster/Skyhawk mashup and finalized my drawings and sent them off for laser cutting in mdf.

This will be a thinline made from plywood (maple veneer for the extra tonez) as an experiment in cheapness. I plan to leave the plywood exposed on the back and sides and will try my hand at binding the top, then maybe do a flake finish on the top. I haven't made up my mind on color, but a fuchsia is possible:



The pickguard is also being laser cut from white acrylic. The template was big enough for two, so I'll have an extra if I ruin one while trying to chamfer the edges with my router.

Pickups will be a spare set of TexMex Strats that I have, plus one extra middle TexMex that I will buy, and covers from my shapeways shop. The bridge, trem and most other hardware will be from my parts bin. I will fabricate the control plate myself. It will have volume, treble and bass knobs and a five way switch. I will use a Schaller P Megaswitch for the following combinations: bridge series, outer coils parallel, inner coils series, inner coils parallel, neck series.

I may also try and come up with my own headstock design for this.

Edit: Another finish option I am considering is to just sticker bomb the top. There seem to be a ton of sticker bomb packs on etsy with different colors and themes for pretty cheap.

[blimpage]

That looks amazing! Very excited to see this one come together.

[ThePearDream]

Thank you.

I got my templates from Ponoko today.
There are some other bits, this is just a mockup.


Making sure my 3d printed cover fits.


Since, there was lots of space left on the acrylic, I decided to draw up some slide switch spacers. 10 each of 2 way and 3 way. I could have done more, but it would have increased the cost. This many should last me through the next few projects.


Also, I was looking at paint colors, and found someone who had painted a guitar with Krylon Fierce Fuschia Glitter Blast paint. I like the look of it, so I may go that route.

[HNB]

Yessssssss

[Ursa Minor]

Oh, this is gonna be cool!

Love that carve! Can't wait to see more pics!

[ThePearDream]

I now have my pair of pickup covers and have made progress on the control plate. I still need to get some scratches out of the steel and polish it up. There's plenty of time to get that done though.


I haven't started on the body yet. I've been waiting until I settled on a neck. I went back and forth on what to do with that. There aren't a whole lot of options for blank paddle headstock necks. It seems like you either have to gamble on a $30-40 Chinese neck, or go for a full $200+ custom build. I ended up finding a pretty good deal on a VM Mascis neck with some real interesting figured Pau Ferro. I'll put that on my VMJM and use the VMJM neck for this build. So once I have the Masics neck set up with fretwork and a new nut, I can swap it over and begin on the body. I'm in no rush though, I have plenty of house projects to work on. I promised my wife I wouldn't build any more guitars until I got some more guitar storage, so I'm cleaning up an unused bedroom to turn it into a guitar and reading room.

[epizootics]

I really like how this is taking shape! The combination of shape & color look perfect and the wiring scheme makes complete sense.

I am really curious to hear your faux-WRHB, do you have any samples of how they sound? What kind of DCR are the individual pickups?
A cool experiment would be to use shorter, JM-lenght magnets for the rods that don't stick out of the cover, or removing them altogether. It obviously wouldn't work with the wiring in this case, but it should give interesting results overall as a HB. Those double-strat pu's really are the best idea I've heard for a while, they make modding super easy and you could definitely market them as guitarist-friendly modular pickups.

[ThePearDream]

Thanks for the feedback everybody.

I really like how this is taking shape! The combination of shape & color look perfect and the wiring scheme makes complete sense.

I am really curious to hear your faux-WRHB, do you have any samples of how they sound? What kind of DCR are the individual pickups?
A cool experiment would be to use shorter, JM-lenght magnets for the rods that don't stick out of the cover, or removing them altogether. It obviously wouldn't work with the wiring in this case, but it should give interesting results overall as a HB. Those double-strat pu's really are the best idea I've heard for a while, they make modding super easy and you could definitely market them as guitarist-friendly modular pickups.

I don't have any sound clips right now, I will do some when this is all finished up though.
According to the Fender website, the DCRs are Neck: 6.5K, Middle: 6.4K, Bridge: 7.4K. So the neck and middle are in the vintage range and the bridge is just a tiny bit hotter.

I do plan to put shorter magnets into the covered half of each coil (and taller magnets in the other half). I hope this will de-emphasize that portion of the pickup and keep things from getting too muddy.

[Rgand]

I like this project. Your scaling the Talman up is a good one.

That control plate is fine work. Are you going to get it chromed?

[ThePearDream]

Thanks.
I am going to forego chroming for now. Since so much of this build is experimental for me, I set a $300 budget for everything (not including shipping costs). If this turns out well, I will probably get a new plate laser cut and chromed though.

[Rgand]

As a thought for the future, you may want to have the next one cut from stainless. I made the one for my Telerauder out of it and $20 got it polished at a local polishing shop.

[ThePearDream]

That's good to know. I'll keep that in mind.