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Custom Kramer Focus
Cheap project supposed to testbed my winding skills,
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This thing has ended up with a [rewound] neck pickup wound
to 4k,middle [stock,foil sheilded] 5.45K,and bridge {Yamaha] 6.0K....though I don't know the inductances. It also has a carved up headstock in the vein of an Ibinhad, an onboard preamp which is controlled by the volume pot that replaced the 2nd tone control,
7 way switching installed via a mini switch that selects the neck pickup to be on in any position of it's 5 way selector.Pots are good quality 250k,master vol and master tone - with a 0.022Uf cap.
Graphite nut,decent string tree,fret board polished up
and oiled with exotic oils.
Some would say this is all polishing a turd,but,they'd eat those words if they heard it. The preamp [basically it's the PeaNUTZ preamp circuit,from elsewhere on this site] gives it a nice boost and the guitar has "headroom", I will make some soundfiles ,if I don't sell it first :D
You want country?,Dick Dale?,Ritchie Blackmore?,Tony Iommi? - well,given subtle tweaks of the preamp vol you can approximate those decently on this thing,allowing for the fact that it has a plywood body.
1 glaringly bad point - the trem will send you out of tune after about half a Shadows song,don't use or replace.
For the versatility I'd say 7 to 8 out of 10,now do those mods to a Mex Strat or strat type with a niec resonant body and you'ld have a guitar with a potential 9+,although the pups may need to be wound "cooler",ie,underwound.
Here's the thing in the wood..
HC reviews of this guitar,as standard,including mine. I'd say 6 to 7 was a fair rating with a fret polish and new nut.
A small bit on smaller amplifiers
Small Park amplifier [9yrs old], which used to be my only amp,until i finished spending all my money on guitars. At the time I first wrote this I had a Squier 15 (better than you would think,except the taper on the pots is lousy - hence fine control adjustment is a lottery) Vox Cambridge 15 too [2 yrs old], excellent if a little bright - not really for dark blues or metal,but if you put the treble at 1/2 you can get some useful blues tones and it responds well to pick attack,ie, you can caress the the string with the amp on a somewhat overdriven setting and then "punch" them to go from cleanish to crunchy by your picking hand's force and dexterity alone..on a similar front I have an AXL 20R [a few months] with the chips replaced (lousy bloody JRC4558s as standard -replaced with TL072s) this is great on the clean channel with a lot of dynamics and not at all bad on the drive channel,needs chip and speaker replacement,really, though [which mine has]..an ok amp and where else are you going to get a 20w amp with reverb and fx loop for less than £70?
A guitar magazine did a test and gave this 7 out of 10 [by way of nebulous comparison they gave an Orange AD30 8/10,it can't be only "1 point better" than an AXLG20R -can it???], it's good for adding reverb and a little muscle to the Cambridge too,ie, I run the Cambridge's line out to the AXL's fx return or front end the clean channel with it and get about 35 cheap and tasty Watts RMS.
I have to say that the Laney LC15/R is brilliant for the price and is one of the few all tube amps you can get for around £200.
The only reason I bought the Vox instead of the Laney was the reputed reliability issues [tube sockets] with the Laney,but, they may have solved those by now.
Some Vox controls
HC Amplifier review for Park G10,including mine where I tell you some litle mods to make this puppy really toneful.
HC Amplifier review for Vox Cambridge 15,including mine.
Next weeks news..