Re: NBGD - Surprise and Dismay
Okay - I had some space yesterday between doing refrets and touch-ups and grabbed that crazy thing to see what it really needed. I popped the neck, and headed to the drill press. Cut some maple plugs with a 5/8" plug cutter (8 screw holes in the neck, remember?). Glued them in. Was going to pull the weird locking nut, and found out it was epoxied to the end of the neck. Grabbed my little travel iron, and heated it up until the epoxy softened. Cleaned that off the neck and the locknut, then test fitted it.... The shelf was too long, so I filed about a 16th off, keeping it square. Fit much better after screwing it back down. Drilled the new neck screw holes, and remounted the neck solidly on the body.
Strung it up with 10's instead of those 8's that were on it (spare set of strings in the plastic bag of wrenches, etc.). The locking nut has individual set screws for clamping, and then 3 Floyd style screws with clamps to keep the strings in the slots. Remember - it has a zero fret! Had a high fret around the 10th, and a low one around the 17th. Did a quickie spot level and polished out all the frets. They look and feel like Dunlop 6100 ultra high jumbos. These are tall.... Got it tuned up to pitch - remind me to make a tool to tune it with. Those knobs are too close together, but an allen wrench turns them easily.
Plugged it into the TU-3 to check the intonation..... Moved all the saddles back, and they are still sharp except for the treble E. Several ways to rectify that problem, will think on it. Okay - strap it on and plug into the Marshall. Clean channel - YE GODS, this thing is trebly. The humbuckers are on the spicy side and sound like hot single coils. Not much bottom end at all. In the middle position it's out of phase - great for chicken pickin or funk. OK, add some dirt.... Very crunchy tone, but still way trebly - just icepick sharp. Rolling off the tone just muddies it up, not cool. The sound is pleasing with distortion, but it's not fat at all - djent is out of the question.
Well, it's almost time for lunch, and I'll come back to this subject at a later time. Conclusion: Not bad for a free guitar, but I don't know if I'll keep it. That zero fret really throws me off when I slide down to first position chords.... Had no trouble at all with the fanned frets, barely even noticed.
