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Post by danny on Aug 21, 2019 14:15:00 GMT
i also got a sc550 with the disgusting light fretboard. iron acetate took care of that real good.
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Post by danny on Aug 21, 2019 14:15:58 GMT
sorry no option for photo attachment
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Post by prognosis on Aug 22, 2019 4:19:36 GMT
hi, mines was the same, used iron acetate. Wow, thats quite a transformation. Im planning to darken my fretboard too. Did you have to sand down your CST24 fretboard before applying iron acetate? Also, did you make your own iron acetate or bought it off the shelf? Thanks Danny.
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Post by hallon on Aug 22, 2019 7:57:28 GMT
I see lots of people try all kinds of chemicals/oils/liquids in order to make the fretboard darker.
It makes me wonder, what does it do to the fretboard in the long run?
I am sure there must be some fretboards out there that became damaged.
Anyone heard anything about this, some success storys or some disastser storys?
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Post by blindwilly3fingers on Aug 22, 2019 10:39:33 GMT
Dyes, mineral oils and waxs have been used on wood for 1000s of years. According to furniture manufactures it enhances and with some oils and waxs protects the wood.
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DefJef
THBC Moderator
Due to musical differences I've decided I can't work with myself any more.
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Post by DefJef on Aug 22, 2019 10:49:19 GMT
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Post by blindwilly3fingers on Aug 22, 2019 11:52:43 GMT
I have a lovely well built distortion pedal, I don't like the sounds it produces. DefJef you may be right I possibly could find a way to use it. But I would probably have to have the gain and distortion barely on! We all want aesthetically pleasing gear, tone etc but personal taste differs vastly. I like pretty/stylish guitars but playability and sound are more important to me personally. A flying v looks cool but I can only imagine its can be a bit unpractical? I suppose it is what's right and what's wrong? I personally mess about with stuff until I get it right to my ears and eyes. Your Epiphone LP you modded and refinished to what you wanted DefJef. It looks cool and sounds how you want. My Epiphone LP I fitted a treble bleed and it's still all standard black factory finish. Should we have left them as they were? I like the feel and they way it plays but I didn't like the sound. Should I have played a genre of music more suited to it's sound that I actually may not be that keen on? I'm not sure if I'd want to keep a guitar that I couldn't get to sound how I want?
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DefJef
THBC Moderator
Due to musical differences I've decided I can't work with myself any more.
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Post by DefJef on Aug 22, 2019 12:39:19 GMT
I think it depends on if you want something to stimulate you. I loathed the look of that Epiphone LP Jr - I nearly always dislike sunbursts - and only got it with the intention of using it as a project. I may well have been quite disappointed if it had sounded what I think of as great. That might have stopped me in my tracks. But it sounding 'great' would really mean that it wasn't surprising my ears. It was sounding exactly as I thought or dreamed a guitar would sound. Now it is loud enough and I have become used to its sound and the various settings it will do I can search for ways of playing it that I enjoy. The split humbucker is a quiet thin sound but I can find uses for it. Neither of the pickups chosen were selected for anything but price and magnet material and low output. A bit of electrical testing was needed to ensure they behaved with each other and then it was up to the the guitar to show me what voice it had. What's interesting is that, because it doesn't have the voice of any of my favourite guitars, I don't play it like them. It's shown me that it's one of the few guitars that doesn't make my Fender Champ sound as I like it but really goes well with my Bugera V22. It makes me come up with new stuff. In fact it makes me come up with stuff that I then wonder how it will sound on another guitar that I haven't particularly favoured, my SG or the Aria Les Paul, and they can handle it too, maybe even better, so then they get an outing from the cupboard. Meanwhile that Epiphone is getting a lot of playing and rests just next to me on the sofa, plugged in and ready to twang. The fact that it's not burnt sausage and mustard colour helps me want to pick it up. For sure some instruments can be more versatile than others and never let you down but it always seems that each instrument has at least one tune or style, if not more, that they are good at. I have a tune that has stuck with me that came from picking up a half sized nylon strung acoustic. It was so small I couldn't really play full chords on it so had to use just a couple of fingers. I'd never have come up with that tune if my hands hadn't been compromised. ALL instruments are a compromise really, the keys of a piano have to be the size they are to fit an average hand so the spread of a chord will only be a certain distance. Every wind instrument is limited in it's range by it's length. I reckon the best thing to do is to see what you can do with everything. Something magical might happen. Maybe I'll find a use yet for the overpowered, ceramic magnetted, humbucker that I took out of the Epiphone when I first got it? If you have a pedal that's not doing what you wished it would but instead is doing what you wished it wouldn't, it might be offering you a new direction to try out blindwilly3fingers . Not necessarily the direction that it has been used for by others before either. Have you tried combining it with other pedals, a looper, a delay, a reverb, some phasing or wah? You might find a nice new sound that you do like. Of course, if it's the only sound in the room there is a tendency for us to want a sound to fill all the sonic space happily, and if that's the sort of playing that you want to do then it is paramount that a solo guitar does something enjoyable to you. But if you can set up some bass or keyboards or drum sounds too then something really individual from the guitar could be just the tonic.
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Post by blindwilly3fingers on Aug 22, 2019 13:19:16 GMT
I bought the pedal thinking it might be useable being it had the mode selection. I really should have known better and tried another OD pedal. The reverse engineering thing you mentioned DefJef is that not really just personalisation? I remember the late 90's early 2000s Bosch and Phillips producing mobile phones that were possibly better spec than the Nokia one's that you could change the covers on. Nokia out sold the others because they could be personalised. I know that's a bit of a loose analogy but generally people like to make their guitar/car/phone a tad different from everyone else. Like you I'm not keen on sunburst finishes but on certain guitars they look the part. I hate the relic thingy look but others love it. It's something we can never totally agree on no matter how much we debate. My first 3 guitars purchased were all black the 4th was black paisley! Perhaps I should give that distortion pedal another go, I may even try to get a gig with a megadeth/metallica tribute band. ☢️ ☣️
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Post by blindwilly3fingers on Aug 22, 2019 14:25:19 GMT
The pedal looks OK I actually like the look of it. I was hoping for a sort of heavy crunch but it's more smashed to bits. I should have tried a non transparent OD pedal, but where do you start? Tbh I should try distortion with a single coil guitar it may work better with that. Back to fretboard colour I don't really mind if it's brown or black, if it was light brown and didn't fit well with the colour of the guitar I would dye it. I have seen some lovely looking fretboards with light streaks or figure in them. Well to me they look good. 😎
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Post by hallon on Aug 23, 2019 6:13:09 GMT
Come to think of it this ties in with something I've been musing about a lot recently; how we as guitarists seem to like to reverse engineer so much. To take what we have and try and get it to be more like something that went before. We seem to particularly do it with the sounds we make. We want our pickups and amps and pedals to sound more like old sounds that we've heard or that our other guitars do, rather than take the ones we have and see what we can do with them that's a bit new. I haven't done any modifications at all. I don't even use any pedals, but on the other hand, I usually plug it directly into my DAW. I Think it is interesting to see what kind of sounds is possible to get out of the stock pick ups etc.
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Post by hallon on Aug 23, 2019 6:15:51 GMT
With iron acetate there is an acid element. Is there a need to neutralise that? Or is it so mild that it's not a worry once it has dried? Exactly my thoughts as well.
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Post by blindwilly3fingers on Aug 23, 2019 9:17:12 GMT
Iron acetate has been used as a wood dye since the 1800s I believe. You can brew it your self, using pickling vinegar and wire wool. I'm not a chemist but I believe once the process is complete it's acidic effect on timber is negligible.
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