3,968 posts
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Post by salteedog on May 17, 2018 21:02:15 GMT
It's not unusual for Mahogany necks (not headstock) to be constructed from three long pieces glued together. Schecter and Ibanez do this. Gibson have done it in the past. Mahogany being a short grain wood isn't as tough as maple and unless you have top quality blanks its better to construct it from several pieces. Also re. the headstock - the traditional Gibson headstock was constructed from two 'ears' attached to a center piece. They still do this on some models.
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Post by Vincent on May 17, 2018 21:12:43 GMT
Gibson and PRS use multi pieces of wood to keep their prices low Staying with the topic. The Vietnamese have produced detailed wood carvings for centuries just like the Chinese. A simple guitar should not pose a problem really. Sure its cheaper but also more sustainable than having one piece LP neck! Imagine how much wood would go to waste just to carve out the depth difference between the LP head stock and the neck, and the heal of course! Thats why I love Strat/Tele necks as they can be one piece and yet not much wood gets wasted. p.s. its normal on this forum to go off topic. Off topic is our signature More sustainable and environmentally appropriate I think so. But how much cheaper can it be really? Cutting and laminating costs money too.
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Post by Deleted on May 17, 2018 21:40:31 GMT
Seriously now! Behave you, its almost after midnight here no more such hair raising, blood curdling, spine chilling photos!
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700 posts
YouTube Channel: ToroK Channel
Disclosures: See Signature
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Post by taurash on May 18, 2018 6:00:36 GMT
BOOOO! This could be a piece of art ! Just a title missing, something like : "Gibson, by Strandberg"
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Post by spacelord77 on May 18, 2018 13:20:06 GMT
BOOOO! This could be a piece of art ! Just a title missing, something like : "Gibson, by Strandberg" "Gibson, where price & quality meets"
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Post by spacelord77 on May 18, 2018 21:31:03 GMT
"Just like Blackstar, this is a 'feature'" Hahaha, yeah! in my case: "oh, such a sweet sound i got, lets raise the volume.. Blackstar says no,you have to use presets"
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Post by mrgiggly on May 20, 2018 11:15:13 GMT
I recently purchased a Vietnamese 550. Mine had a couple of issues that I sorted myself.
First one was the frets hadn't been polished. There were tool marks all the way down and basically unplayable out of the box. Easy enough to fix with some micro mesh and elbow grease.
Nut was sticky on a couple of strings but cut well to the right depth. Another simple fix. Followed someones top tip of slightly detuning then cutting a small piece of wet and dry paper and feeding it under the string then sliding through the nut slot with the string guiding it. Works a treat!
I found the tone pots to be basically useless and whilst the Rosswell pickups are functional I found them muddy and pretty uninspiring.
Wanting something with a little more bite and dynamics, I replaced the pups with Irongear Tesla Sharks and also ripped out all the electronics and added cst push pull pots, which meant new knobs too as cst's are 24 spline. New caps and switchcraft jack and toggle switch. Everything was wired up using a jimmy page wiring diagram. I also foil shielded whilst everything was out. The 550 is already paint shielded so its a bit belt and braces but an extra hour of tinkering to be sure its fully shielded was worth it imo.
Finally I replaced the wilkinson bridge with a gotoh as I wasn't keen on the deep cut saddles. The bridges look almost identical and you could get away with just changing the saddles but the gotoh isnt that expensive.
Result is its almost always my go to guitar now. It sustains forever, feels great to play and the tonal range and character of the pickups with all the extra options available is fantastic. One caveat would be that Irongear claim the tesla's are good for virtually any genre including metal. My experience is that they cover plenty of genres well, and for rock they are ideal but for metal you'd be better off with higher ouput (eg neodynium) or active pickups if its your main tonal focus.
It's come in under the price of an epi plustop pro and from the couple I've tried in store I think it wins in looks, feel and sound.
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3,968 posts
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Post by salteedog on May 20, 2018 12:07:29 GMT
I'm impressed with the shielding on my CST24T - it's already belt and braces. Shielding paint everywhere including pickup cavities (overkill for humbuckers). That said I prefer tidy foil shielding to paint in general as it's difficult to ascertain the quality of the paint.
They absolutely need better pots and especially the push-pull pots are bottom of the barrel. Wiring and soldering was competently done though. I've seen worse on HB Chinese sourced guitars. Nut is better cut than any I've seen on the Chinese guitars.
I have to say the pickups on my CST are not muddy at all...although I've long since learned that 'muddiness/clarity' is a matter of taste and can be dependent on how much gain one likes to play with. I tend to stay clean to moderate crunch and like warm pickups. Those can often turn to mush at high gain.
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Post by spacelord77 on May 20, 2018 16:28:42 GMT
"I found the tone pots to be basically useless and whilst the Rosswell pickups are functional I found them muddy and pretty uninspiring."
Thats the thing that's keeping me from ordering one more HB, i have 3, all with Wilkinson pups, and all the rave reviews i'v seen about the SC-Customs, CST-24's, SC-450+/SC-550 have been of guitats with wilkinson pickups. I know that the pups can be updated, but i am not one of those who likes to mod things + new pups raise the price of the instrument.. hopefully there will be more yourube reviews of the "classic" HB's with the roswell pups..
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153 posts
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Post by r3v3nt0n on Sept 21, 2018 11:21:35 GMT
''Finally I replaced the wilkinson bridge with a gotoh as I wasn't keen on the deep cut saddles. The bridges look almost identical and you could get away with just changing the saddles but the gotoh isnt that expensive.''
Was there a Wilkinson logo on the bridge, or how do you know it was a Wilkinson part? On Thomann site it only says DLX Tune-o-matic bridge, nothing else.
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Post by roagger on Feb 28, 2020 1:50:40 GMT
Just got my Vietnam black cherry sc-550 b stock...Great guitar, only issue was bass side of neck binging was all marrred up, looks like scratched up with a tool, nothing else wrong, considered sending back, bit for now it's only cosmetic, absolutely gorgeous outside of that, frets polished and none were sharp, plays great, sounds nice. I would buy again, but not a b stock, just bought a Gibson Tribute(which I had to upgrade humbuckers). Pots are junky dime sized, but plays great, I would say the Roswell sound better than my Gibson buckets but not as good as duncans
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