Overpriced and unreliable, since some people are obviously tone deaf. Care to argue against "overpriced and unreliable" with some weightier arguements than 'snob', 'cork-sniffer', or personal attacks?
...and there's still not a body in here, for all the bashing, to suggest anything more productive than my "solder the pup straight to the input jack & test that" move. And, if you haven't tried it, YES THAT WILL WORK. Pots and switches just add options, a guitar will work fine (and with perhaps 10-15% more bite) without any of em.
Strange how a guy calling himself "GuitarDoc" ain't coming up with useful advice like that, only sneers at the source thereof due to difference of *PERSONAL* preference, but yours truly the 4-decades-younger amateur dabbler is, despite only getting flak & more flak for suggesting that big-money pickup upgrades will fare better in good-deal-used guitars that only cost as much as a fretjob & never need one than black holes that vacuum out your wallet, for whatever reason... and are several hundred bucks overpriced due to being licensed copies by a big name brand & having a massive advertising campaign that's been going strong for more years than many owners have been *alive*. I hope THAT at least is no secret and no point that you Epi Fanbois wish to contest?
Lol, we have a bigger amateur than I. Struggled with a 30-watter pencil for years before I learned this lil secret. Forget poking around for minutes, push the burst button and stuff melts clean and silvery. And NO, YOUR POTS WON'T BURN OUT - unless your hands are a dozen times clumsier and technically disinclined than even mine (don't push burst right on top of a cap and then come crying though, cuz even a good poke in the middle with a 30w pencil can kill those things). Did 4 guitars with em recently (like within last week recently), ZERO NOISE, ZERO DEFECTS TO ELECTRONICS, MINUTES TO COMPLETION *AND* NOT A SINGLE IMPERFECT SOLDER CONNECTION THE FIRST TIME AROUND. Also, one Korean LTD w/EMGs suddenly got like a good 30% cleaner and edgier and lost all noise - as compared to how it was done by the factory, that is. Also, unlike the painful, confused, frustrated process with the pencils, this was a breeze and the satisfaction of a job done right & yet another guitar that sounded way better than it ever did before - this from a guy who's soldered 8 or so guitars in all his entire life, and previously spent many hours to days agonizing over each, and redoing every contact several times over trying to find what went wrong.
If you wanna spend hours (instead of 5-10 minutes) per full control cavity rewire, be unable to aim properly, burn fingers or wood on a regular basis, take 15 minutes to heat up to working temp and poop out if you leave it on for an hour or two, poke around with a multimeter and "ring out" every contact looking for your cold solder joint or bad connection, or worse yet have a halfway bad cold joint giving you stray noise or sapping signal with you none the wiser - be my guest. BUT THE FACTORY - EVERY FACTORY - USES POWERFUL "GUN HANDLE" SOLDERING DEVICES, AS DO ALL TECHS. Cuz it gets the job done, unlike a 30watt pencil that can't even melt through a decent puddle on your common ground spot. Like, duh.
WHAT'S NEXT, YOU'RE GONNA GIVE ME THE WEIRD LOOK FOR USING A SURGICAL HEMOSTAT MORE THAN ANY OTHER TOOL IN SOLDERING, W/ SURGICAL THUMB FORCEPS COMING IN SECOND? Most useful stuff ever. Free tip: Try jacking that (preferably ones used on you or a family member, not that hep alphabet soup and HIV positive person in the next room) on your way out next time you're in an emergency room. It ain't stealing cause it's trash, your trash to be exact. The moment they open the sterile pack they're tossing em anyway, these things are disposable and classed "BioHazard Waste" by rich country hospitals the instant even one of the set touches a patient. Nobody bothers boiling these things in antiseptic and reusing them, off to the wastebin they go. Just $10 of the reason why American medicine is so dang expensive, and probably a buck or two more per set of disposal fees for the biohazard thing.
NEXT EPISODE - Lesson 3: USING BLOODY THIN STRANDED (YES STRANDED!) WIRE.
