NZGuitars.com

Just broke a double ball ender trying to intonate and stretch, argh.
5 sets on their way but there is an adapter ... hmm.
Cbf tonight.

After the big day spa away up north with randombob, the bat is back.
The neck is loads better than it was, but I still think there’s a bit of dodginess going on with it.

Here is some of the aftermath of what’s been going on:







Made one good bridge out of two, pulled the shitty pickups out (me and my obsession for originality sometimes ), and of course plonked in the emgs.
Now.
The original steinies had actives, and literally anything will be better than the “hign gain super distortion PICKUP” that were in there, so here we are with 2x 85s running at 18 volts:







Yeah nah not anymore



Though, having such a tiny guitar and two batteries ... it isn’t the greatest solution but ya know. It’s not a dumb idea if it works



Needs a couple little things ironed out - proper intonation, shit like that, and of course a buzz that goes away when I touch the bridge
There’s always one!!

Will post whanau photo with the bat bass when I’m home... Aaaaaa!!

Can’t for the life of me get this thing to work
Somehow on the drive home, the 18v circuit and its vol vol tone setup decided it didn’t want to play ball anymore.
Gone back to master controls and a 3 way switch, now I have lots of grounding issues and no sound. Oh, and 9 volt cuz no way am I getting two batteries in there now.

What on earth have I done wrong now??

After all that pissing around why did I not just look at the bass ...

Poor bat has gone off for major surgery by a qualified professional
And I mean ... major, like, “no going back now” kinda major.
It will also have a proper setup; not that ol’ Vern (randombob) did a bad job, but neither of us thought to lock the saddles so they all fell out when I pulled the strings off it

In hindsight I should’ve given it a damn good polish up while it was in bits - ahh well.

In other news, I’ll have a post about the goldtop in the near future.

I am quite excited.

Right.

The bat is back.
The bat is alive.
The bat is running correctly at 18 volts with minimal modification.
My doctor shimmed the bridge to raise it up; saddles can now sit lower. These particular double ball enders are just a smidge short so this was necessary. Gone back to vol vol tone on it too.







Got this old infamous beastie back too. Looking great. Feeling tops. Ugh yes. Aaaaand pampered in its new case.







Some workshop dust on it still but nothing to write home about. Stainless frets courtesy of bg
Popped the back off to see what wiring id done to it and holy shit what a mess!! My wiring has got a hundred times tidier in the last couple months so all this can be done properly.

Aaaaaaand this is here too:



Sporting wilkinson hot alnico 5s, countersunk bridge posts, and a new bone nut, the wiring on this one is also yick, so I’ll deal to this too.



Ugh fucking fizzing!!

Looking good bro! The Epiphone turned out really nice, who did the headstock?

The headstock on the Epi is handsome.

Is that a blond Ibanez from the mid-70s? The double cutaway with neck through body was the shiz back in about 1977. Santana etc. Then Van Halen invented the superstrat and the world moved on.

Nice, that headstock must have cost more than the epi itself Good job you got a good deal on fretting

Gspot out west did everything.

The neck thru is branded arirang, and that’s it. No other markings, indents or numbers. Could be Korean (arirang is a Korean folk song) or Indian - because the only other ones my luthier has seen have been brought in by Indians who’ve brought them over.
The thing is a mystery, but it’s well built.

Trying to remember back to 2010 is ... difficult. The goldtop cost me low $600s to my door, but the buy now was somewhere in the $500s.

want me to sort the Arirang, looks like a couple of the buggers have lifted there.

I always say my first electric was a 70s Ibanez Les Paul, but no it was a Cort I bought in 1986 along with a Jansen Little Brute, and a few Boss pedals (HM-2 is the only one I remember for sure). A music shop up the top of Symonds St that is not there now. The Cort was black, had something like a Kahler and SD Invader-a-like pups. I am not sure what happened to it. Perhaps sold it cheap so i could buy a tinnie or two.

After the Ibby I got an Aria Pro. Kind of like a Strat, but not. it was its own shape. it was very nice but got stolen when we were jamming at a party.

p.s. your video. Talking from my USA experience, lots of peeps from over there if they stumble across your vid will have no idea what a cricket bat is. I had to explain to a few in Michigan what cricket is. I do think they were just playing dumb. I think it is that not knowing about anything outside their border thing. I see that here in NZ sometimes too.

“Gentlemen’s baseball”

Bg wrote:want me to sort the Arirang, looks like a couple of the buggers have lifted there.

It... plays pretty well. I haven’t found any fretting issues.
Pretty sure the poor old bat has a twist in the neck but we’ll see how we go for now.

Holy shit the filing on the 22nd fret is off the scale....I have had to do that a few times

Single coil wrote: