OffsetGuitars.com

mbene085 wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 07, 2021 10:21 am

Yep, I'm the kind of person who gets physically uncomfortable when a picture is hanging off square

This is really such a great score though. I love vintage Mustangs, I love Firebird pickups, and ai love firebird pickups in shortscale Fenders (I've had two guitars with similar setups!).

I basically think all Fenders with humbuckers should come with Firebirds standard instead, or PAF-sized firebirds. They have all the advantages of humbuckers but with a more Fender-like string attack and top end. They're also just as cheap to produce as PAFs, since you just need bar magnets and not the much more expensive threaded magnetic poles like a WRHB. It would set Fender's humbucker guitars apart, too.

Oh, I'm quite the opposite. Well, if there's loads of pictures hanging perfectly and ONE not? I'll be fixing it. My house, however, has hundreds (literally hundreds and hundreds) of pictures on the walls and almost every single one of them is a little wonky. At that point it becomes a 'look' rather than a mistake.

Maybe don't ever visit my house hahaha

I've only had FB pickups in, well, Firebirds and always liked them. I'm definitely on my way to being a convert to slapping them in a Fender. They drive my little vibrochamp very nicely

Well, angles can be artistic. If everything is angled, it's obvious the intent was for them to be that way and I can enjoy it.

But since the guitar has a straight axis from neck to bridge, switches parallel to that axis, and one pickup perpendicular and square, the neck pickup becomes that one frame on the wall that's sagging. The stark black pickup ring is probably the only reason it stands out.

But in fairness, I also respect keeping even a modded vintage instrument the way it was found, since it's all part of its story. And you aren't looking at it when you're playing it, so I could easily forget about it if it was my guitar.

You make a good point about driving the vibro champ. One of the many admirable things about the Firebird pickup design is that it has an extremely high output relative to its inductance, because the magnetic circuit is extremely efficient. The coils are tight to the magnets (tighter than a PAF, much tighter than a JM or even Telecaster bridge pickup) so they produce more output per turn, and the baseplate couples the two bar magnets and boosts the strength of the field compared to a single bar (like a lipstick tube) or a pair of bars on a screw polepiece (like a PAF).

That means that they can be wound light (and vintage ones are), giving a high resonant frequency, high Q, and therefore Fender-like treble response, but with a much higher output than you normally get from such a bright pickup. It feels kinda like running a Fender pickup through a boost pedal. As a bonus, the high output with small coils raises the signal to noise ratio since you not only have a humbucking pickup, but have very small coils (less of an antenna for noise) with a high output, and they're fully-shielded by the closed covers to boot.

They're really just about the most electrically ideal passive high-impedance pickup you could design. Certainly the best-engineered pickup of the "classic" (late 40's-early 60's) designs.

mbene085 wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 07, 2021 10:51 am

..... It feels kinda like running a Fender pickup through a boost pedal...

This ---^

The best way I could describe it as it's like I've got a Super Hard On pedal in the chain.

Nice! Congrats on it arriving safely and everything.

That guitar is beyond cool, really glad somebody here scored it. Enjoy!

Damn that's the stuff my wet dreams are made of...

Pacafeliz wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 07, 2021 11:37 am

Damn that's the stuff my wet dreams are made of...

You've always been a fan of the 'crackhead'-modified look so I'm not surprised. Some of the guitars you've pulled out of the corners of places over the years have been very much in the same vein

Cough PICTURES Cough

HNB wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 07, 2021 12:06 pm

Cough PICTURES Cough

There's definitely some over on page 1 amigo

More..... Current.... More....

HOTT
NESS

Hi Johnny!

I'm working on a similar project and was wondering if you by chance have any recordings of your Firebird Mustang? Would love to hear it! Cheers!

I’d love to hear it too!

If someone offered me this or an original ‘64 Mustang for free, I’d actually take this.

That thing is SMOKIN'. Congrats.

FireStang Update!:

The madness under the pickguard of this has been causing issues electronically since I got it and I decided to, after close to a year of having it, finally try and rectify the issues to some extent.

The, I'm assuming screwdriver or beaver, routing hack-job meant wires were getting squashed, pickups couldn't be adjusted properly and other general issues as well as giving me nightmares. Not having a proper workshop and limited tools I took to just slightly improving the situation. It was never going to be pretty but more a polishing of the turd to make things run smoother.

The horrors underneath...



Mapped out no-fly zones...



The second the router bit started vibrating the body some of the wood started falling apart where it had been hacked at. There was an unfortunate chunk that dislodged before I'd even got close to it with the router. Fortunately for me, it definitely wasn't right on the edge of the pickguard boundary. Oh, sorry, yes...yes it was...







I've copper shielded it which makes the insides look a lot more presentable. I forgot to take a picture of that before I put the guard back on



If I can think of an easy and relatively invisible repair on that injury I'll sort it but, really, the guitar is such a wild ride from top to bottom that I might not bother.

Pickups have been sent off to be wax potted as they were more than a little squealy. Unfortunately my guy is off on tour until early June so that's this thing off the rack for a little while. Oh well.

When it returns I'll rewire just to use the 3-way toggle, volume and tone. The out-of-phase option was never something I cared for anyway and the switches just get in the way.

Maybe a little piece of scrap wood and some red nail polish that's close to the shade?