Grateful Dead Music Forum

Im thinking of building a tiger in a strat. I'm not particularly interested in it looking like a 'dead' guitar... Mostly thinking about a fairly low cost MIM level guitar to try it out (since I don't really know you guys to mooch a trial off of ; ).

I have pickups and the buffer. Not sure about the OBEL. I'm fond of rosewood necks. Any thoughts or advice? Mistakes to easily avoid?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0RT8Xseo-o


take your time make sure you have all your parts before you start.... and if you get confused listen to the music they play..... and i would go for the OBEL

If you get good at using the search function here and use Waldo's site http://www.wald-electronics.com/ you will find all the info you need.

Other than that, if you find you need help, just ask. I would also go for the OBEL. It's just wiring!

Lots of great info here too: forum/viewtopic.php?f=419&t=10893&hilit=jerry+caster

Thanks guys. I'll do a bit more studying on the OBEL... it just seems overly complicated, but then I haven't experienced the benefits.

I guess maybe I should have posted this in "guitar building and mods"... oh well.

Smolder wrote:Thanks guys. I'll do a bit more studying on the OBEL... it just seems overly complicated, but then I haven't experienced the benefits.

It's really not very complicated from a wiring perspective. The part I was most concerned about was drilling the holes in my PRS for the stereo jack and the toggle switch. I didn't want to screw that up. Start with a small bit and increment up to the finished size.

If you use an envelope filter, you'll want OBEL so it has full output voltage at all times. I think all effects benefit from this, but the envelope filters are very sensitive.

Thanks and an update.

I found a nice HHS body and a tele neck on eBay. Both unfinished. I'm going to use this to learn as much as possible and finishing with nitro will be part of that. I have pretty much all of the electronic and plan on picking up a callaham strat kit for the hardware. It looks like warmoth makes a nice strat HHS pick guard. I found a set of Dimarzio dual sounds here in the garage sale (thanks man).

In the meantime, I read some one mention that maple necks on Les Paul's and the added brightness work well. I have a very nice Agile from the early 2000's with a maple neck. I don't play it much because I haven't found the right pickups. So the light bulb went on. I installed the dual sounds with coil splitting. I almost always put the neck pick up in 180 degrees... In this case it puts the active coil closer to the middle for a specific purpose. I know it wont be just like a middle, but it will be interesting to play with. It's nearly midnight so I wasnt able to crank it, but I think I'll take it to band practice with the twin tommorrow night and try it out.