Chistopher
malapterurus electricus tonewood instigator
I have near finalized by Squier Bullet Mustang, excuse the dirty finish, I have since cleaned it.
This started out as a way for me to get rid of a few spare parts, but it has since evolved to one of my favorite guitars. It has 250k volume and tone with a 10 nF tone cap. The tone cap responds considerably different than it does with a traditional pickup, but that's par for the course with Lace Sensors newer current driven designs. It sounds closer to the way the tone control would work on an amplifier, but still not perfect. The licensed Bigsby and Jag bridge combo work a lot better than you would think, I have never had to touch up tuning even after excessive use, which is odd, because if you track the strings from bridge to nut, they start narrow, flare out at the bridge, and then narrow out again. Black body with mint pickguard and nickel hardware looks phenomenal in person.
But what you guys probably care the most about is the pickups. I've had them in only full humbucker mode only for about a year now. Lace Sensor Sabertooth neck and Deathbucker bridge. They do not compare to anything in the Duncan catalog, especially considering I am using 8-38 strings in short scale, but even tiny strings these things sound huge, yet defined. I would describe the bridge as having a fairly flat EQ, but the low end extends well past what you would expect from a bridge pickup. There's a lot lower bass than you would expect, but it remains balanced volumewise with the rest of the spectrum if that makes sense. The neck is the same way, there is a lot of bass (even for a neck hb) but it's not overbearing the way it usually can be. The treble balances out very well, and with use of the tone control it can go from high gain solo cleans all the way to the type of stuff you'd play on a hollowbody. They cover a lot of ground for sure, even though they have scary sounding names, they are really great for mellower genres as well. Both pickups are champs at any amount of gain, but I tend to use the bridge for high gain rhythm playing, the neck for dark solos, and the middle for clean fingerpicking.
But just this last week I finally committed to routing out behind the pickguard to add coil split switches. If you've read one of my recent threads about LS pickups, the split on these is kinda odd electrically, but it's worth it. I'm still in the honeymoon phase obviously, but I cannot exaggerate how there is NO volume loss whatsoever when splitting these, and they sound near as make no difference to the real deal. The neck gives me big Jazzmaster vibes, the bridge sounds like a Tele. I definitely prefer the split tone out of the neck pickup to the full hb sound. All 4 middle position combinations sound cool, all though I prefer the SS and SH sounds the best. While it was already a versatile instrument, this is now a chicken pickin' and surf monster. The one downside I have is that I don't particularly like the feel of slide switches, but that doesn't bother me much.
And if you guys know me, I don't write long posts fairly often, so that's just a testament to how much I like this thing. Probably going to add block inlays soon.
