A year later I got another guitar (which is still my number 1, her name is Victoria) so suddenly I had a guitar that I could play around with. My first Idea was do do some kind of Brian May like wiring, with on-off and phase switches for each pickup. That didn't work so well. It almost scared me, having to wire six switches. Something didn't work, and no matter what I did something still wouldn't work. I think by the time it was all said and done, only two of three pickups actually turned on, and the phase switches were more like kill switches. I blame the whole thing on my poor soldering skills.
So I went onto eBay and bought a Telecaster neck pickup and a Danelectro lipstick pickup to throw in the bridge. I also bought a three way switch. Threw it all together and it worked. I was happy, for a while at least.
At some point, lets call it five years ago, I became obsessed with the idea of a Floyd Rose tremolo. So I returned to eBay and bought one. I some how managed to successfully route out the body of the guitar to fit it in too. I also decided it would be cool to paint silver stuff on the guitar as well, so I did that too.
Then I started reading about guitar building and got me some inspiration. I decided to repaint the guitar. This involved completely dismantling it, sanding off the old paint (oh what fun that was), priming, painting, then the clear coat. A lot of work. It turned out OK. Next (about a year ago) I wanted to make it sparkly, so i did some stuff to it and that did not turn out OK, so I striped that off and now it looks kind of cool, beaten and blue. Threw a humbucker in the middle position, and I think the thing sounds pretty sweet. The humbucker is really fat and thick.
This brings me to the now. I was browsing through schematics one day when I came across one for a distortion that I have never seen before. Did some youtubing and was impressed. Looked up how much the parts would cost, and $30 and one Small Bear Electronics order later I had a bunch of electronic bits. Solder them onto a Radio Shack project board and I had me a Red Llama circuit.
I'm currently working on finishing this thing. I put a five way switch back in it. The Red Llama circuit will have a DPDT bypass switch. Three knobs on the guitar; Master Volume, Red Llama volume and Red Llama OD.
Some Pictures:
You can see some of the old holes from past experimenting in that last picture.
I hope to finally finish this thing soon.
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