Walter Broes
Enlightened Member
Hey all,
This is an observation more than anything else, but here goes :
I got the twin to my beloved, magical X175 last year, and it took me a while to take it to my tech and get it refretted, too broke, one of us too busy, etc... so it basically spent almost a year in the case until recently.
Long story short, I finally got it refretted, put a Bigsby on it, potted the pickups, and put a tune-a-matic on it.
Now I'm in the long, tedious process of tweaking the nut height, bridge height and saddle radius, pickup height, etc.., and that's what this post is about :
-the result is worth it, but setting these things up is a major PAIN!!! Done it a bunch of times, but somehow these guitars (my Franz equipped 175's as well as my DeArmond 200 equipped Starfire) seem extremely sensitive to even the smallest adjustment.
Adjusting Franz pickup heights is a pain from the get-go because they weren't really made for that, and it involves carefully bending the pickup baseplates until they balance out nicely with each other and sound their best.
I hate it when the neck pickup overpowers the lead one in a guitar, and getting that bridge pickup so it sounds just right and then balancing out the neck pickup height just takes forever, and even the slightest difference in height can make the difference between fantastic and horrible with these things.
Add to that I'm doing this in my apartment, and getting frustrated I can't turn the amp up and see how a pickup behaves under stage volume with the amp breaking up a little and the guitar almost on the verge of feedback - just rehearsed with the "new" 175 today, and while it played great, I'm going to have to pop the hood on the bridge pickup again and lower it some, and then get the neck pickup to balance out all over again. Ugh, slowly getting tired of it, just want to play the thing now!!!
Like I said, the reward is big enough to keep me tweaking until I'm 100% happy, but it's a lot more tedious than on any other electric guitar I've ever owned - including filtertron Gretsches, not the easiest to change pickup heights on either, and fairly sensitive to that too.
Anybody else have the same experience?
Sorry for the long rambling post.
This is an observation more than anything else, but here goes :
I got the twin to my beloved, magical X175 last year, and it took me a while to take it to my tech and get it refretted, too broke, one of us too busy, etc... so it basically spent almost a year in the case until recently.
Long story short, I finally got it refretted, put a Bigsby on it, potted the pickups, and put a tune-a-matic on it.
Now I'm in the long, tedious process of tweaking the nut height, bridge height and saddle radius, pickup height, etc.., and that's what this post is about :
-the result is worth it, but setting these things up is a major PAIN!!! Done it a bunch of times, but somehow these guitars (my Franz equipped 175's as well as my DeArmond 200 equipped Starfire) seem extremely sensitive to even the smallest adjustment.
Adjusting Franz pickup heights is a pain from the get-go because they weren't really made for that, and it involves carefully bending the pickup baseplates until they balance out nicely with each other and sound their best.
I hate it when the neck pickup overpowers the lead one in a guitar, and getting that bridge pickup so it sounds just right and then balancing out the neck pickup height just takes forever, and even the slightest difference in height can make the difference between fantastic and horrible with these things.
Add to that I'm doing this in my apartment, and getting frustrated I can't turn the amp up and see how a pickup behaves under stage volume with the amp breaking up a little and the guitar almost on the verge of feedback - just rehearsed with the "new" 175 today, and while it played great, I'm going to have to pop the hood on the bridge pickup again and lower it some, and then get the neck pickup to balance out all over again. Ugh, slowly getting tired of it, just want to play the thing now!!!
Like I said, the reward is big enough to keep me tweaking until I'm 100% happy, but it's a lot more tedious than on any other electric guitar I've ever owned - including filtertron Gretsches, not the easiest to change pickup heights on either, and fairly sensitive to that too.
Anybody else have the same experience?
Sorry for the long rambling post.