tobereeno

final pic...the Chap 5 heading out to Tom, and the Chap 12ver that has taken her place. Would have loved to keep the pair of Chap basses, but only one can stay That Chap 5 is a powerful instrument, and one that you can really do anything on.

SOLD - and staying within the HFC family!

ok! sorted the wiring and it's no longer bleeding highs like crazy. I had a ground wire soldered to the center lug of the tone pot. Don't ask... with grounding all cleaned up, the guitar is sounding right, and with a .01mf cap I'm happy with the tone pot, although 500K is really the way to go. Quarter Pound pickups sound pretty interesting - single coil clarity but high output and some humbucking meat to the tone. The two series wiring positions sound great now as well.

I'm not too liquid either...my Chap 12-string bass on its way and my Jimmie Vaughan TLE: cruel abuse of my credit card!!

no takers? guess it's time to eBay it...

I had a Hamer bass with a Kahler! had amazing mojo, but I did have to let that one go.

what's coming in is exactly the same thing - body, neck carve and joint, rosewood fingerboard, same EMG pickups and EQ pots, 34" scale, everything. Just with, uh, 7 more strings

yep, not one I really want to let go, but I'm a student now, suddenly with zero income for two years after being healthily employed for quite some time. If I don't meter my savings, I could be eating ramen right when I'm trying to graduate

well, since I'm running a one-in one-out policy, I need to move my sole remaining bass to make room for an incoming one. I've had this one since 2004 (?), sold to me by JeffR, and it has been every bit as good as he said it was. I can't remember what I paid him for it, but I'm guessing it was about $700? So I'm putting up for sale here for that much, before moving it to eBay. Very little wear and tear is from me; any blemishes are all Jeff's fault This is a killer bass that's best for rock, but with the active onboard EQ, I've gotten usable tones for just about everything else. Just strung it with DR Black Beauties. pics:

I think it's really, really cool that: 1) Hamer built a guitar for Prince, and for better or worse, played and evaluated it. 2) that Prince returned the instrument, instead of throwing it into a storage room, or letting one of his techs sell it on. 3) that we, as a club, now have a communal guitar with a cool history. Love or hate his music (or his taste in fashion), Prince is a seriously talented player and composer.

btw, how do we know that Prince narrowed it down to between the Studio and the Strat, before going with the Fender for the halftime show?

ok! after reading zillions of pages and some very baffling posts, I now understand about The Guitar Formerly Played By The Artist Formerly Known As Prince. and Hamer's effort lost out to...this??

I'd guess it was a colossal misfire by Jol. Hey, if one Vaughan brother likes it that way, the other one must like it that way too! A misfire not unlike his presenting Prince with a purple guitar with EMGs. I can picture The Artist Formerly Known As An Unpronounceable Symbol muttering "too obvious" under his breath as he cast it aside onto the reject pile. whoa, stop the presses: Hamer built a guitar for Prince??

no dis taken at all Bill I'm very undecided about the bridge. Might do a Blade Runner. Might reinstall the old vintage Fender saddles - I'm not a fan of breaking strings and they need a lot of work to get the screws from cutting your hand open, but they do have a sound you can't get any other way, and it's a pretty good sound. I do want to narrow the string spacing. It's too wide, which means I'm falling off the fretboard sometimes with the high E string.

dang, forgot that about 500K, or even 1Meg. I've got a Dimarzio audio taper; any recommendations for top-notch audio taper push-pull pots? and what would be the effect if I just grounded the middle lug to the case, leaving out the capacitor?

I've got a .022 on the middle lug of a 250K pot...dunno how more mellow I can get than that

whoo!! finished the wiring and it was good to go straight away; I usually have to fix a couple things. I have nine available settings, from a two-pole five-way switch and a push-pull pot. 1) bridge and middle in series (28Kohm!!) 2) bridge only 3) middle only 4) neck only 5) neck and middle in series push-pull pot reduces output on all settings except the middle pickup. The half-power setting is brighter and more of what you'd expect from a single coil. The Dimarzios were too bright. The Quarter Pounders are darker than I expected. The neck and middle in series is too muddy, but it was worth trying anyways. Maybe I'll switch it to a parallel wiring. Middle three are normal, and the bridge/middle series wiring is also a bit muddy, but with the distortion cranked, it's instant woman tone for soloing. My tone pot, like all tone circuits I've wired, roll way too much off. What if I just left off the capacitor? I'd really like a tone control that, say, only worked from 7~10.

ha!! aha!!! I have found the solution to wiring this thing! muhahahahahahahahaha!! it literally came to me during my sleep...woke up, stumbled to the guitar, and did some test connections. I am wondering though...two of these Quarter Pound pickups in series is humcanceling, but 28Kohms...

the value, or lack of it, is exactly due to lack of providence. Jimmie Vaughan could have never played it more than ten minutes; he could have played it only in the studio. It was extensively modified; it could have been done by one of his techs; it could have been another former owner. I'm mildly interested in its history, but I've decided to simply take the guitar for what it is, and make it mine. Murkat can attest; the guitar just has this phenomenal resonance. I'm undecided with the bridge; as much as the vintage Fender bridge annoys me, it does have a particular sound that I like. The Sperzels also have changed the vibe of the guitar. I like it, but all my guitars have Sperzels and so it adds a particular flavor to my collection.

that is true, but Murkat and I took a good look at the routing. The guitar was originally routed for a left-handed trem; there is no question about that.

just installed flushmount Dunlop straplocks. Now, for my first swing at the wiring cavity....

she came to me like this: parts came in last week. custom order Sperzels (all short post, and I have another set for the Virtuoso), SD Quarter Pound pickups (I really like the fat pole pieces!), black knobs, graphtech saddles, and I changed the switch cover to black...simple by flipping it over to stock position (the screws were not countersunk, and once I took the switch out, I found that the plastic had been flipped over to the white side. New SD Liberator 500K volume pot and Dimarzio push-pull 250K tone pot, and an Oak single-wafer two-pole five-way switch. Need a black switch knob. Dunlop strap locks in black were also added. I do have to say - the Liberator pot may be meant for easy pickup swaps, but I love it because it makes soldering grounds to the pot a piece of cake. Choosing 500K for the volume pot was intentional, as I was afraid the pickups might need a bit more high end. Final wiring awaits me figuring out how the hell to wire the center position on the switch. So, thoughts on how it looks now?

my Samsung is a 120hz version; it's good enough but not always that smooth. I hadn't realized that plasma technology had moved forward. I had issues (with my low-end plasma) with screen burn-in (it was used most often as a computer monitor for my students) and losing brightness. Is the "warmth" of a plasma image versus the "crispness" of an LCD/LED screen purely a setup issue? My Better Half felt it was one of resolution, and liked the quasi-3D effect of LCD due to what I'm guessing is some sort of crispness on the edges of images...? (or is that due to color contrast?)

I bought a Samsung LCD 46". I think it has one of the more recent screens, and it was on the top end of LCD models. LED backlighting will last longer, but as far as I know, LCD backlights can be replaced. I had a budget of $1000, and it was the best looking TV in that range. However, maybe it's just me, but I see a kind of choppiness on ALL LCD/LED televisions with fast action movies. I had a 55" Samsung plasma in Korea, but it was a low-end model, and since the damned menus were in Korean only, I couldn't really calibrate it. It was used as a monitor in my main classroom, 8 hours a day. After two years, the power supply died and I had to get a new board and screen for $250. I do love the clarity of 1080HD TV on LCDs though. And on a sidenote, Samsungs cost more than double in Seoul than they do here. I found my same $850 LCD (from Walmart) on sale in Korea for $2700.

still in Ann Arbor...hoping to drop in again when I get back but finals are looming; I got new pickups (SD Quarter Pound), push pull pots, and 2-pole five-way switches for the JLV TLE - have an idea of running 3 out of 5 settings in humbucking serial wiring. Also have SD Liberator pots to install, and am thinking of pulling the trigger on a Sustainiac, but want to play with the Soloist first, see how it all works... I'll be in Korea for Christmas; I think I'll leave my collection over with you; doubleneck could use a fret dressing, Virt may need a Plek job, Sperzels have arrived, the top finish work on the JLV we talked about, and lots of wiring to be done...