Test Guitars - how good does it need to be ?

[Lyrebird Steve]

Hi Guys,

with regards to Test guitars, how good do they need to be ?

I picked up a couple of these guitars (straight from China) via the local discount supermarket (Aldi)

My plan is to
(1) route the pickup pockets straight through for easy access to install and swap over pickups (fashion some Aluminium covers for the back ??)
(2) change out the pots and caps
(3) switch to bridge tone control
(4) use sprung or micro screw terminals for connecting the pickups

Having 2 identical (?) guitars allows easier A/B testing

Specs:
Basswood body, Maple neck, Rosewood fretboard
Tuners appear solid enough
Saddles look OK
3-ply pickguard


Oh ... for the princely sum of $79 each

[kayakerca]

Replace the plastic nut on the guitar with a bone one you craft yourself. In my opinion it is a very inexpensive upgrade that makes a significant improvement to an inexpensive guitar's tonal quality. You can find VERY inexpensive bone on ebay from Pacific Rim countries.

[Lyrebird Steve]

Replace the plastic nut on the guitar with a bone one you craft yourself

I'm looking at getting some of these.
STEWMAC.COM : TUSQ Nuts

Strangely 6 cost less than 3


Actually ... just found this on eBay (thanks for the heads up)
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/5-Pieces-...item589d35f1be

[Steve Conner]

Well, how does it play? If it has bad action, bad intonation, won't sustain or whatever, then it won't make a very good test guitar IMO. If you end up having to replace the nut and do a fret job, you should really cost your labour and add it to the $79 purchase price.

[kayakerca]

I'm looking at getting some of these.
STEWMAC.COM : TUSQ Nuts

Strangely 6 cost less than 3

Not quite, but almost. $13.35 X 3 = 40.05 vs $6.99 X 6 = $41.94. If you are buying less than 6 with no volume discount, that's a lot of money for a nut for a $79 guitar.


Actually ... just found this on eBay (thanks for the heads up)
5 Pieces Unbleached Curved Slotted Bone Nut Flat Bottom For Fender Strat | eBay

Given the choice, I prefer doing my nuts from unshaped, unslotted blanks. Takes more time, but I get exactly what I want.

Ever thought of brass? I did one for a '57 Tele a couple years back. Rightly or wrongly, I left the slots deep because I was concerned the fall away area to the tuners where the string was contacting the wood. I am assuming it wasn't a problem as I haven't heard back from the customer about issues of string breakage or such.



The owner was very happy with it, but it was a real pain to do. Took forever.

[big_teee]

For test guitars some of the Discount models work great for this.
You want something that works well, but you don't have to go overboard for testing Pickups.
I am Left handed, and I have a whole room full of the Cheap Rondo Lefty guitars.
They have all grades, and all prices. Some great bang for the buck.
Rondo Music Electric Guitars | Page 1 of 9
The only thing, I'm not sure what all gets shipped internationally.
I know he doesn't ship SX brand to Ozz Land.
T

[mcgruff]

You could use a pickup like a microphone without mounting it in a guitar at all. You'd have to have some way to keep the pickup to string distance constant, either by hanging the guitar on some kind of stand, or clamping some kind of frame holding the pups to the guitar. The drawback is that you wouldn't be able to play the strings where you put the pickup. Not such a problem for the neck position but I often use the tones you get right on top of the bridge pickup and I like to hear how the latest humbucker sounds down there.

Also, you've got the string radius in reverse so not so good for a pup with staggered pole pieces.

So far I've been using mini-dins to make pickup swapping quick and easy - locking tuners would also help a great deal. I don't sell pickups though, just make them for myself. Nobody would want to buy a humbucker with just three inches of cable and a mini-din plug on the end...

[Lyrebird Steve]

Well, how does it play? If it has bad action, bad intonation, won't sustain or whatever, then it won't make a very good test guitar IMO.

Had a bit of a knock around on it last night.

It sustains pretty well in spite of it having a nut seemingly made from the same plastic as the tone/volume knobs.

The action was OK, and the tuners felt solid and it stayed in tune.

The frets were not finished (bevelled but not smoothed) and it felt like I was playing on a cheese grater ... seriously they were that rough.

The maple neck was fnicely finished in that it felt silky not sticky at all, so I really liked that.

The electronics were micro pots, steel-pole + fridge magnet pickups and an el-cheapo switch. it had green Poly-Mylar caps. I didn't get to plug it in, but un-amplified (even with horrid strings) it resonated nicely. So, I think they will scrub up really well with some minor changes.

As I have 2, I will do some before/after clips when my parts come in.

[David Schwab]

Replace the plastic nut on the guitar with a bone one you craft yourself. In my opinion it is a very inexpensive upgrade that makes a significant improvement to an inexpensive guitar's tonal quality.

Only on open strings.. but yes, bone nuts are nice. I prefer to use Tusq nuts, because I don't want to use animal products on my guitars. I also like aluminum nuts.

[David Schwab]

with regards to Test guitars, how good do they need to be ?

Think of it this way. Even cheap guitars sound pretty damn god these days. I have a cheap FirstAct Garagemaster, which was a free guitar they gave away when you bought a Volkswagon. You can find them cheap, and a friend gave me one.

The guitar and hardware are fine, but the pickups and electronics were crap. It has a maple neck, rosewood fingerboard and basswood body. I made new pickups and it sounds great.

So put good pickups in a cheap guitar and they sound good. You can start with a known pickup that you have heard in another guitar to compare to the test guitar, since all guitars sound different.

[SonnyW]

My test guitar is a cheap lone star style strat with floyd kind of body that I got on ebay for $35, not even half decent looking at all, really crappy actually but it was the right configuration. No pickguard - all pickups mounted directly in the body. I put a neck on it off a squier strat I had around, and a cheap mighty mite floyd on it. In the back I put terminal strips and alligator clips and one slide switch to install pickups and test. It works really good for what I need it to do. All I am looking for is the approximate tone of the pickup. I can dive the floyd and slip in a single in minutes, or a humbucker in not a lot more time, but sometimes it is necessary to take off the strings at the floyd to install a bucker. That is a piece of cake too with the floyd. I feel that it is not that important to get the full tone of the guitar it will be installed in, hardly any rig will be able to do that accurately, so I simply take my chances and don't try to go there. But I can infer a lot from what I learn with the test guitar.

[Lyrebird Steve]

OK ... finally got it all together

Did the following:

Replaced 500k pots with 250k pots (cheap ones $5.70)
Replaced Poly Mylar caps with Russian PiO caps ( $2.60)
Replaced plastic nut with bone ($1.20)
Added treble bleed to Volume

Dropped in a set of my early 60's replica Single Coils

I'm really surprised how good it sounds. In particular when rolling off the tone controls slightly ... I don't want to start up the whole Cap debate again, but I really like these Russian PiO caps.

Still have a new set of strings and a setup to do.

Crackalacka

[kayakerca]

My test guitar is a cheap lone star style strat with floyd kind of body that I got on ebay for $35, not even half decent looking at all, really crappy actually but it was the right configuration. No pickguard - all pickups mounted directly in the body. I put a neck on it off a squier strat I had around, and a cheap mighty mite floyd on it. In the back I put terminal strips and alligator clips and one slide switch to install pickups and test. It works really good for what I need it to do. All I am looking for is the approximate tone of the pickup. I can dive the floyd and slip in a single in minutes, or a humbucker in not a lot more time, but sometimes it is necessary to take off the strings at the floyd to install a bucker. That is a piece of cake too with the floyd. I feel that it is not that important to get the full tone of the guitar it will be installed in, hardly any rig will be able to do that accurately, so I simply take my chances and don't try to go there. But I can infer a lot from what I learn with the test guitar.

I'm very new to winding, but what I've done is pick up a "few" Fender Squier Stratocaster, Affinity Series over the past couple of years. People like to see the "Fender" name on stuff, so I give it to them. I never pay more than $70 for one. I have them as test bodies for different configurations of Strat style single coils to allow prospective customers to have a good(ish) feeling guitar to test them in. I want that the guitar physically plays such that it does not detract from the tester focusing on the pickups. That said, no Affinity Series Squier physically plays good(ish) when you get it, not even if it has never been played. Here's how I prep them.

1. clean up the trem and block it out.
2. level the frets and put a fair bit of fallaway on the frets in the upper registers
3. dress the frets including the fret ends and oil up the fretboard
4. Shield and ground the body cavity (paint) and pickguard (copper tape) if not already done.
5. replace all the wiring harness/pots/caps with top quality components (Oak Grigsby/CTS)
6. build a new bone nut
7. ensure the tuners will hold the guitar in tune, if not, replace them.
8. new strings (10/46's, not too light, not too heavy) and setup the radius at the bridge to match the radius of the fretboard
9. set the action low (say ~ 65 thou on the 6E) with minimal relief (say 2 thou area)
10. intonate the guitar
11. polish and buff up the neck and body so they feel clean and fast

All in, probably takes 5 or 6 hours to get it ready for pickups.

At that point, you actually have an inexpensive "Fender" branded guitar that physically plays as nicely in the hand as a high end Fender coming straight out of the box. And if your pickup build is good, it will sound as nice as well. Obviously, the high end Fender contains infinitely superior materials and craftsmanship.

As I was saying in the beginning, at this point the physical feel of how the guitar plays does not detract at all from the tester/customer evaluating the pickups.

And as I have recently learned, it is way easier to get someone to evaluate you pickups if you bring them to them in a loaded guitar body rather than a pretty sandwich box.