Guitars

Cirrus

After listening to Deep Purple's "Machine Head", I decided to see what gear Ritchie Blackmore uses. I noticed that his strat was apparently one of Clapton's, and also that one of his ended up with Iron Maiden's Dave Murray. According to various websites, he used Lace Sensor Gold pickups - fairly cheap from the USA when bought in large enough amounts to reduce the P&P contribution (3x Gold and 1x Blue for USD 200 inc. P&P).

After a holiday in Spain, I took quite a liking to the bright sound of maple electric guitars, and decided to use maple for the neck, fretboard and body of this one. I like Wilkinson locking tuners - if the second hole on a tuner is used, it lives up to its name and locks the string nicely in tune, even with plenty of "tremolo" bridge abuse. When not so suitable, just one hole can be used and it behaves exactly as a non-locking tuner. They also have a decent weight too, which seems to improve the sound and sustain a little. I put "tremolo" in quotes, as the bridge actually provides a vibrato effect, not tremolo.

My main priority on this guitar was appearance and simplicity, so it looks like a (very nice) normal strat, and the controls behave very normally... until you notice that the tone controls are push-pots. Lifting the neck tone control engages the neck pickup, allowing neck-bridge and neck-mid-bridge combinations not normally accessible on a stratocaster. Lifting the mid-pickup's tone control reverses the phase ("polarity") of that pickup, allowing thin, trebly sounds when used in combination with another pickup (2nd and 4th positions on the selector switch on most strats). This light, wispy sound is why I decided to designate this guitar "Cirrus" - although like the others, it doesn't yet have any logo or name on its head.

TODO: Images and samples

Teleclone

TODO: Tele, insanely low cost to make, bass-guitar emulation mode and some twangy sound samples.

Cumulus

TODO: Original, Learnt how to build guitars and how they should work from constantly having to dismantle this one to repair it.

Axe

TODO: The thing that should not be, defective and rejected parts left over from other guitars plus some cheap Gibson pickups.

Ibanez EW50-CBT

TODO: Acoustic, not home-made, but worth posting some samples anyway!

Digitech RP80

TODO: Digi

Crybaby

TODO: Crybaby + mods used + other handy mod ideas

Danelectro boxes

TODO: Dist & Metal pedals - samples & how they work

Boss GT-10

If only I could afford this...

Vox AD15VT

TODO: Vox

Marshall MG15DFX

TODO: MG

Battlesnake Therion

TODO: Therion, maybe put a bit of MOSFET and amplifier theory here and a schematic... show the signal path and how the signal gets "bigger" along the path