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September 03, 2017, 05:47:17 pm
Been a while since I updated my Roadcase but after a rainy day in Normandy I finally started some initial work on upgrading my 21 year old Squier Affinity. So here’s some pics. Soldering to be done later this year when I’m more confident.
Project Affinity & Beyond
Nervously took a hand drill to the scratch plate for mounting the coil splitting mini toggles :
Mini Toggles in place :
Pots and 5 way added next :
Then finally the HSH Pups - Iron Gear Hammerhead HBs & Smoke Stack II single
Next step - dismantle the Affinity and offer up the new plate to check clearances, before soldering. Going to use the old wiring rig for experimenting and testing. Once that’s been de-solder and re-solder to a good standard, I’ll wire this all up.
Forgot to add, the bottom Tone knob will be a dummy and used as a blend pot, so both HBs can be used at the same time.
Big thanks to TB and Dan, for advice and answers to all the dumb questions I was asking a couple of months back. Without their input I don’t think I’d would have the confidence to take this on. Cheers guys
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Sometime later
January 26, 2018, 07:22:55
Thought I’d let folks know that I’m finally making some progress on the ancient Squier upgrade. Its been a few months now but every time I reach for the soldering kit, I start bricking it (quaint English colloquialism) and decide to put it to one side for a bit. Mind you I’ve been busy with other things but the French Monsoon season has kinda forced my hand, so I’ve made a start on a few connections and am typing while the iron heats up for round two !!
If there’s an award for neatest wiring and soldering, I’d be asked “are you kidding?” but hopefuly function over form will win the day. Biggest ball ache was soldering the micro switch to split all 3 pups but now that’s done I’m hoping its plain sailing from here.
If this guitar picks up a signal when I’m done, I’ll be friggin amazed but you live in hope. As I seem to be on a roll, I’ll keep you posted.
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January 27, 2018, 02:07:26 pm
Thanks guys. Looking more like Spaghetti Junction now !
Just need to solder new jack to vol pot and add grounds for it. Then its strip and shield the “strat” solder the grounds and test. All being well if I get sounds it will just be a case of reassembly, restring, adjust and play. Or if it goes to rat’s pooh, back to the beginning.
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Well another step nearer to completing this project. Body needs a good clean before shielding and I may need to trim a small section - neck pup to 2way etc a bit tight.
Pic below is just temporary to see everything went in.
Good news is I have sound after plugging in and taping the pups with a screwdriver blade, even the 2 way coil spliters seem to be working ! Bad news I attached the jack before realising the wires needed threading through the body first. Doh, first boob so far.
Anyway more testing tomorrow and I’ll take my time on the last few stages. How the pro’s knock this work out in a few hours I’ll never know. But can’t wait to play the damn thing now.
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January 30, 2018, 08:47:58 pm
Finally the last few steps.
Shielding completed though maybe unnecessary.
After replacing the jack plug leads again and lacing them through, then putting the scratch plate rig back in position, I found the height adjusters for the HB pups were too long.
Some tentative hand drilling for the HB pup screws …
And everything slotted nicely into place … although back plate and scratch holes where slightly off, so the bradl came out.
So just a case of resoldering the jack plug leads.
And then restringing.
And a well earned beer
So after nearly 22 years of ownership there’s life in the old dog. HB sound great and the split coils and may just need some height adjustments. Middle pup sounding a bit weak but maybe just over awed but as my first wiring project I’m pretty made up - surprised it plays - but made up all the same.
So after messing around for what seems an eternity but likely two weeks, its time to get back to playing.
Big thanks to TB-AV and Dan Graves. Without their input and advice this project would probably never got off the ground. Cheers guys!
Toby
Well everything is now cooking on gas !!
The Hammerhead HBs are hammering and the Smoke Stack II is now smoking hot.
After much thinking about the lack of SSII volume, I sacrificed the new strings to check connections again and found the ground had disconnected. Re-soldered to the volume pot, put everything back together and checked out with a spare Super Slinky 42 - and the mid pup was screaming like a stuck pigs. Relaced a full set of strings and set all three pups to about 4mm.
Sounding good and ready for Justin’s latest ACDC lessons. Cushty
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December 28, 2018, 12:20:58 am
Well Santa has come, so I must have been good and admittedly this has been sitting in the loft for 5/6 weeks but … my sweet little Gibson Les Paul Studio Custom is out of the case and ready to rock.
Lighting doesn’t do it justice so maybe more pics to follow.
Just a Tele and Bass missing perhaps, a difficult sell to the missus me thinks !
Just in time for the solo for the project I’m working on … and on and on and on. Soon peeps.
Finally unfudged the grey matter and managed to post the image below, which is a bit better quality than the first.
And the original photo …
Hoping to plug it in this evening, as its been a crazy few days prepping for the family who arrive tomorrow morning.
Cheers
Toby
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So I’d forgot I had replaced all the old photobucket pics with IMGUR links, just spent 30 minutes adding the old pics in for the Community update…could have gone straight here!
August 19, 2020, 02:59:42 pm
Hiya Folks
With all the recent NGD activity and new Roadcases, I realised that I had not added my Gibson SG to mine and looking back also my Fender T-Bucket 300. So time to rectify that. Then going back over this thread I noticed that all my previous pictures are no longer visible as they were hosted by money grabbing photobucket. So here’s a quick recap of those earlier posts and the recent acquisitions.
My original Affinity, my first guitar in 1996 then hardly used for the next 15 years !!
Pimped Affinity after HSH make over - story in thread
My old Encore W265 acquired about 20 years ago
Washburn HB30 - retirement present from HSBC when I jacked it all in in 2011
Washburn HB32 that my lovely wife bought around 2015 not knowing its a clone of the HB30 but looks cool all the same.
This cheap old RSA was bought as a stop gap when everything was in storage while we were house hunting in France. POS but kept me sane and ultimately led me to Justin while trying to relearn from Guitars and Blues Guitars for Dummies.
RSA has its rightful place in the loft, when it was nudge off the rack by my Fender T=Bucket 100CE
But before the T-Bucket my MiM Fender Roadhouse Strat arrived for my 60th
Back in 2018 my wife did not know what to get me for Xmas, I suggested a Gibson LP…she said ok !!!
Picture does not capture the depth of that dark cherry red.
Latest acquisition is my Gibson SG, that went up as an NGD post. A thank you from the missus for caring for her after this years 2 MIs. Funny though I recall paying for both Gibsons…and all the others for that matter.
And that’s the current stable. I won’t include pics of all the other gear but its listed at the start of the thread but hey that’s where we are in 2020…simples
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Get out the tissues for this one peeps. There was a separate thread that led to this but for all newbies reading this, get STRAPLOCKS and get them now !!
April 26, 2021, 10:41:30 pm
Well as promised the much needed update to this Roadcase.
So some of you may recall back in January, after a wonderful 2 years together, my beloved Wine Red LP Studio aka Cherry had what I thought to be a fatal accident and with all the restrictions and limitations arising from the Covid pandemic, was pretty much consigned to history.
As the Red Queen said “Off with their heads”
On that day the world fell out of my bottom, or so it felt. But every cloud has at least one silver lining.
As it was my 65th this year, my good lady had been constantly asking what I wanted, for what was once a milestone UK birthday (but my state pension now starts next year). So browsing on the Thomann website and loitering on the image of a complete Cherry in all her splendour, such was the disappointment 
when a few clicks later revealed a gorgeous Smokehouse Burst Studio LP and my heart melted. It did not take much persuading from my wife, for me to agree it would make a fine birthday present. So although the brown box arrived long before the big day, I waited patiently until the 30th of March before fully welcoming Smokey into my life.
Now in the midst of all the chaos and joy Stitch had said Cherry could be repaired if I found a good luthier. I’d had a look around and made some enquiries but my shop in Rennes was in the middle of a covid hotspot zone and Thomann’s repair centre seemed to have gone awol since mid January.
So the day after my birthday, with lockdown 3 quickly approaching I decided to look again for a local luthier and blow me down found a Geordie 7 minutes up the road !! https://www.srb-guitars.com/
Having gone round to SRB on April 1st (!!) the day before lockdown kicked off again, the fix was discussed, prices and timescales confirmed and Cherry was left with Doctor Steve.
Today she came home and I am blown way by the job he has done and I am sure if you had not known what had happened, you would be none the wiser, despite some very very minor hairline markers, that were to be expected due to the vagaries of nitro and the nature of the break. So here she is
The damaged headstock veneer is as good as new, it was sheared off right on the top truss rod cover screw
The paint work has been blended in and could be the original finish
With the headstock repaired and a new set up done, she now plays like butter and the action is silky smooth.
I am really impressed with the overall work and the set up on Cherry, so will return soon. A set up on its own actually works out cheaper, when I add the fuel and parking costs for visiting Rennes. Plus to be honest Steve’s work and care seems to be a few hundred percent better, so at 50 euros a pop, I will slowly introduce him the other six electrics, cos I am pretty ok with the two acoustics. He also runs a couple of guitar maintenance courses each year (he’s been building for 40 years and a tech in various UK and French shops), so I might check that out as well, when the corona dust settles, as the man is a mind of information and genuinely good geezer !!
So all is well with the world once more. 
So after a nightmare start to my guitar year and the apparent existence of a second silver lining, I can now present my new
Gibson Double Album …
because of course with a double album you always got 2 LPs !!
And now one family photo for the album, before I manage to break anything else.
So that’s it folks apart from this years Open Mic performance and the continued saga of the Madman’s Diaries
Now what was I saying about Schecters …oh and some one mentioned pedal boards…
Cheers
Toby
07, 2021, 09:59:55 am
Hi peeps
Time for an update as I just got some new kit - you can’t beat a bit of GAS.
For some time now I was perplexed as to why I could not split my Audio Interface output into separate tracks in my DAW of choice Reaper. Over the last few years I have owned a Behringer Xenyx Q802USB and recently upgraded to a Q1202USB. The track splitting was never an issue, as I was normally just recording one track at a time but my forage into singing and playing brought the issue up again. The Q1202 was fine for recording “live” video performances and for our online Open Mics but with only one, apparent, merged output (ie vocals and guitar) meant I was limited on what I could do FX wise to enhance the tracks !
This came up again recently in a conversation I was having with Mr Preece (DavidP) when we were looking into combing DAW, OBS and Zoom connectivity for an enhanced “audio experience” - more on that later this week as I am knocking up a video to support a guide David and I have tailored and tested.
So going back over the Xenyx specs, I confirmed that although it was multi track in, it was only stereo out. I guess the numbering of the Xenyx range could have given that away - 502, 802, 1202 etc etc with the first number being the inputs and the 2 being the outputs.
And further investigation revealed there were two types of Audio Interfaces (news to me !!!).
Those for multi track recording, (which I thought I was getting) and those for mixing multiple input and passing the “mixed” result to the main output.
So with the way projects have been developing over the last year, it was time to get the correct type of AI. So I opted for a rack style Behringer UMC 1820 and with the single “strip” rack/cabinet needed, paid out less than £200 and that’s a lot of bang for your bucks ! If you paid attention to the numbers up top, you may figure it’s 18 in 20 out !!
Now there’s a few inputs I’ll never use but the 8 x TLS/XLRs are perfect for my needs (and their lineouts). As I am lucky enough not to have to put my toys away everyday, that means I can have all my inputs hooked up ready to go.
So my Mustang III v2 stereo line outs are plugged into inputs 7 & 8, my old Behringer GX110 FX Amp into input 6 and my Mackie condenser mic that I will use as a studio mic (no one could hear me at the last OM) into input 5. Inputs 1 and 2 on the front panel will be used for Dynamic mic input and Guitar DI or my Zoom GFX707 multi FX pedal when the mood takes and inputs 3 and 4 used to support the TC Helicon PlayAcoustic (which could also be plugged into 1 and 2).
Just need to hook up the main out (TLS/RCA cables needed) to the speaker bar that sits over the PC monitor and job done. Had a wee dabble with Reaper yesterday evening setting things up and all is good. It will take a few days to get used to optimum levels but each project needs its fine tuning anyway.
So all sorted and a nice tidy environment to play in.
Xenyx Q1202 still plumbed in but moved to the side desk, so available for back up and other uses, such as direct Zoom input if needed.
And the moral of this tale ? Buyer beware, do your research before hitting the checkout.
Cheers
Toby
And that just about brings things up to date but one last entry to follow for now. But I am not sure how it will transpose to the new environments, so I’ll stop here just in case.