I've been off the internet due to moving house recently, but I finally found some time to sit down and set this lovely thing up.
I bought it off a Jemsite member recently, but he had not played the guitar, as far as I know it had remained sat in it's case for the duration of his ownership. In my opinion the guitar was not
setup very well at all, I'd be surprised if someone had used it and actually got any enjoyment out of it in that state!
The guitar needed a bit of work... to say the least
I appreciate that one man's setup it not going to suit everyone but I really think this guitar was in dire need of attention, and it got it. About 10 hours worth in total.
Volume / Tone controls were worn inside the caps and pulled off when you attempted to use them. Not being able to up the volume made the guitar hard to hear (
) so I bought a couple of new knobs and fitted them.
The actual pots for the controls were then found to spin slightly under the face plate / inside the body so these need tightening up.
I removed the strings and took the front plate off, found out the bridge pickup was a Dimarzio DP152 which is a "Super 3". Was going to change this but then I looked up the specs on the Dimarzio site and decided that seeing as it was such a high output pickup, I'd keep it in and see how it goes.
The neck pickup was a complete unknown, I couldnt find any markings on it at all, so I purchased a Seymour Duncan Full Shred neck pickup (SH-10n) and fitted that. On opening the back up to check the electrics, whoever soldered the thing in the first place needs a slap.
Crossed wires, bare wires, wires under too much tension, the grounding had been done by creating a massive solid solder ball then just wiring that to the pot and connecting all the required grounding to the massive blob of solder. So I redid all the electronics inside when fitting the new pickup.
Strung the intrument back up and the action was over half an inch high. Adjusted the trem, which seems to have had issues with springs randomly popping out, to a lower level. Reset the bridge too as it was hideously high creating an even worse action. I found that even when I reset both the bridge and lowered the trem I still couldn't get a good action. I played around a bit but hit the limits of the trem's pivot pegs so I decided to adjust the truss.
The truss was too slack, it was bending far too much so I tightened it which sorted out the neck bow and the action at the same time. Turned it about half a whole turn, so quite a big step, so from this you can see the neck was bowing quite badly.
The neck if anyone is wondering is actually from a Jap 570 guitar, which suits me fine because it's actually quite thin and I've got a 1570 myself.
The trem is an original edge, I'd probably prefer a lo-pro for 2 reasons, firstly the "flutter" or lack of on the lo-pro doesn't concern me at all and secondly the lo-pro has a retainer bar fitted across the bottom of the trem springs holding them into the block. I've had the springs pop out more than once on this trem now when trying to string the instrument. Nevermind, seems to stay in tune fine.
So this is my new
custom jem as it were, or fake custom jem
Now it's setup it feels lovely and I might just use it as a main stage guitar once I've let the neck settle down a little and find it's feet.
Pictures here:
http://www.dimebag.me.uk/Swirl
Work done:
Electrics, soldering mostly
Pickup change
Trem bridge setting
Trem height setting
Volume / Tone pot tighten and new knobs
Trussrod adjustment
New strings
