Miscellaneous
These are the rest of my experiments and a few modified factory pieces.
More: Miscellaneous Projects ...
This pretty little thing is a Harmony H617 Bobkat. The H-bodied series of guitars, originally known as the Silhouette, began in 1963 and ended in 1973. This one is from 1972 or 1973. Harmony built a number of guitars for Sears under the Silvertone name, at first as a step up from the Danelectros, and ultimately replacing them. See the Silvertone 1478.
More: Harmony H617 Bobkat ...
I was so pleased with the bass that I thought I'd try a guitar. This is a little more complicated, as there are six tuners rather than four, but it worked out well. The battery is for an Artec tone control that I wanted to try. More later ...
More: Kubicki Factor Guitar ...
I went into the electronics, and reversed the leads on the volume control for a nicer 'sweep'. Then I started troubleshooting a problem with the passive tone control that turned out to be an interaction with the EXP circuit. Long story short, the EXP disables any tone control that is downstream from it. I moved the tone control upstream, and now it works fine. I have a separate review for the EXP tone control, I'm not all that impressed, but I'd say try it yourself, it's not expensive or difficult to install.
More: Kubicki Factor Guitar Final ...
This one went through a long and torturous build process over almost two years. All I can say is don't believe the "advice" you find on talk_ass. However, in the end, it turned out to be a pretty nice instrument.
More: Mosrite Bass ...
This OLP Stingray was one of the first basses I ever modded heavily. I routed a battery and a second pickup cavity, and did all sorts of experiments on it, before returning it to it's original single-pickup configuration, but with upgraded active electronics and pickup, and a nice new pearl pickguard.
More: Musicman Stingray Bass (OLP) ...
This beautiful instrument was built from a teak cutting board that I got for free from Home Depot for review. 32" Eden neck, active electronics. Teak is hard enough for a simple oiled finish. This one was built with a minimum of tools, mostly by hand, to show that it can be done and how.
More: Osprey Bass (BC Rich Eagle) ...
This is a Harmony-made Sears Silvertone 1478. This body style was originally called the "Silhouette", and Harmony sold similar models under their own name. Later it became known as the "Bobkat". I can't find a serial number anywhere, and I'm not taking it apart to look for one, so I don't know the exact age of this guitar.
More: Silvertone 1478 Guitar ...
This is my attempt to recreate my very first bass, a "Montaya", as well as one of my first ventures into 'modding'. These SX's are great instruments. For 109 bucks you get an alder body with a beautiful 3-tone sunburst, a decent neck, functional bridge & tuners, and a flawless finish. What you don't get is any kind of useable pickups or strings. On this one, I installed a USA Fender pickup, my favorite d'Addario strings, and gave it a careful fret dressing and setup. I also added the tortoise pickguard, rosewood thumbrest, and ashtray for the looks only. At the time, I was going purely from memory, but I later found a picture of the original, and I got it dead right.
More: SX SPB-57 Ursa Bass ...
WordPress suffers from misguided ideology, bad programming, and arrogance, usually all at the same time. Case in point: image handling.
Image handling in WordPress is pure insanity. Left to its own devices, WordPress will create multiple copies of every image at many sizes. This creates a pile of garbage on the server, roughly doubling the disk space used, sometimes worse. And they are so sure they are right about this that there is no way to turn it off - not by settings, not by filters or hooks - no way.
More: WordPress Again and Again ...