I'm getting the crazy project for Stelios wrapped up. The quad coil bridge pickup is setting up in some epoxy right now. I recorded this little sound clip of the 2 coil neck pickup last night. It sounds good, very clean and clear. I had to really pump the gain to the little Valve Jr to get it to break up well. Stelios is a much better player than I am and I'm excited to hear him put it through its paces!
By working out a trade of sorts I finally got my hands on an original EllieCaster guitar from Ellie Erickson! Ellie is truly one of the most interesting people you could ever hope to meet. Her creations, from guitars and mandolins to music and Salsa, are always something different, cool and funky.
The guitar I have is crazy! It's a red ceder body that weighs almost nothing with a killer Birdseye maple top with double binding. The pickups are her own famous home rolled singles. Check out the video clip I did of this guitar to promote the Musical Instrument Makers Forum that Ellie and I both work for. If you're looking to get into instrument building or just to learn more about instruments the MIMF is the place to start.
Ok, I got the neck pickup for Stelios done. I'm gonna try to mount it in a test guitar and record a demo of it tomorrow. I plan to finish the bridge pickup in the next week. I got a cool Wolfgang humbucker and a Schecter tele pickup in for rewinds. I have some Music Man pickups coming in this week too. Seems with the econnamy scares these days people are more interested in tweeking their old pickups than buying new ones.
Ok, so you're saying to your self "...Man... why isn't Clint making any crazy pickups these days?" Well my fine, festering freakbone of a friend, who says I'm not? Here is the latest psychotic offering. It is from the mind of a mad Greek names Stelios who found about Searcy String Works by listing to the longest running guitar podcast on the web... Six String Bliss! Stelios is a fantastic player who wants a guitar that will play in stereo. So we have split the output into two channels with the bass string going to one and the treble strings going to the other. This has required us to split all the coils down the middle and use Mu-Metal shielding to try to lessen bleed over between the D and G strings. Keep an eye out for more on this insane project.
Ok, so you guys know that I make and repair pickups and occasionally build a guitar or bass. I bet you didn't know that I'm a total stomp box junkie though. Like most kids that started out in the 80's I was impressed by the pedal boards of guys like Eddie and Randy . I had a small collection of about 5 Arion and MXR effects back then. Then in the early 90's I traded all those in for a Digitech rack mount system at Ed's Guitars in Miami. In the late 90's I got into the multi effects pedal boards like #11 in this picture. That's only part of the collection by the way. Eventually I ended up back where I started when my wife bought me a nice MXR 2000 Series Phaser just like the one I had when I was 14. Suddenly it all came back to me. The endividual personalities of small stomp boxes are what make them so great. An MXR Phase 90 is different than an Electro Harmonix Small Stone. Moving them around in the signal chain can make a huge difference. I have even started doing some mods on a few pedals. In the feature I want to do some demos of some of the stranger pedals I have. Keep an eye out for those.
The new year is going well so far. I'm really enjoying all this global warming this winter. How about you? Here's a bunch of new pickups that just went out to Steve Gammon down in Florida at GSpot Basses. Steve is actually a guy I went to high school with back in the day. Now he is building basses in his Hollywood Florida shop. How crazy is that? I hadn't heard from him in 15 years and out of the blue I get an order for some bass pickups for his new line. I think you will be seeing a lot of Steves work here this year.
