Kiwi Posted June 30 Posted June 30 Like countless others outside the UK, I've been drawn to and subsequently obsessing over the clean tones that were achieved by in demand US session guitarists in the eighties and early nineties. While Michael Thompson was perhaps best known for his clean tone, Dann Huff appeared on countless Top 10 recordings that featured his lush stereo swells including tracks by Peter Cetera, Amy Grant and others. Part of that sound was down to his rack of effects often involving a Mesa Studio preamp into a Songbird trichorus, then stereo with one side going through an Eventide Harmoniser and Roland SDE3000 or Lexicon delay, the other side going through a Lexicon reverb and then another delay. However another part of his sound involved a highly modified 64 strat c/- Jim Tyler which featured Seymour Duncan STK2 pickups in middle and neck plus a JB (SH4) humbucker in the bridge AND...a Tyler mid boost circult which also sparkled up the presence a bit as well. So I'm going to recreate his 64 strat, including making the midboost circuit. I've nearly assembled all the parts, however I had to trash the cheap neck that was going to be used after I discovered that it had warped into an S shape and whoever made it cut the fret slots at ninety degrees to one side of the fingerboard...DOH. Luckily it was only 30 quid but still...a replacement, fully painted, is on the way. Also, the pickup seller sent a TB5 custom instead of the TB4 (trem spaced version of the SH4) but the replacement has arrived. And finally, the series parallel pickup switches that arrived were on-off-on when I ordered on-on. So waiting for the replacements to arrive from a different seller. 1 Quote
Kiwi Posted 3 hours ago Author Posted 3 hours ago And it's done. Had to do a lot of routing to get the bridge located properly including plugging and redrilling one bridge post 1mm further way. The wiring was a challenge, I spent three days of eliminating possible causes to arrive at only one conclusion, the pickup selector switch was faulty. My midboost preamp didn't work and I wasn't going to spend a week trying to troubleshoot it, so I bought one only to discover that the guy who build it didn't include separate earth and -9v wires. So had to jury rig something up to provide the output socket with an earth connection, the boost is definitely warm but it lacks the glassiness I expected. So I have on order a genuine Demester Fat Boost (Tyler style) and at some point I will probably wire the switches so they are series, phase and parallel. Although they were fiddly to solder as well. However, after a fret levelling and proper set up, it plays very nicely and has more sustain than my other two strats. I have no idea why. It's quite a warm and loud sounding guitar as well acoustically. More aging is needed on the sides and back but I have other things to attend to in advance of being in the UK next month. 1 Quote
