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Show Us Your Modded Cheapies


Brett Valentine

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Some may debate the value of buying a cheap guitar and spending as much or maybe more to tailor it to your imagination. To me, the experience of the "ride" is worth the price of admission if the basic guitar has good tone and playability.

Here's my current 2. Both guitars bought for under $400.00.

Brian Moore i21 ($345.00 used)____________Hamer SATQ ($325.00 new)

satqi21smallga3.jpg

 

They both play effortlessly and get stupid tones!:D

 

Both have Duncan Pickups, Master volume, master coil cut, individual phase reversal for each p/u, modded TBX, Torres Tone/Mid control, treble bleed, locking tuners, Orange drop caps (tone caps are Hovland-i21, V Cap SATQ), strap locks, oh yeah, and speed knobs (love those), 500K DPDT volume controls. I have more expensive, but either of these two get picked up first.

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Sam Ash gave me this Carlo Robelli Strat. As in free.

It originally had a white p/g and 3 single coil p/u's.

 

I had a Duncan Distortion and a push/pull pot..........I asked my luthier to make a single ply black guard; route the guitar for a single humbucker and set it up. Cost me $60.00..........I then bought a Roland Synth p/u and installed it myself.

Here's the Luigi Guitar........

 

LuigiGuitarwrolandpu.jpg

LuigiGuitarwrolandpubod.jpg

LuigiGuitarwrolandpubodcloseA.jpg

LuigiGuitarwrolandpuheadstockA.jpg

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Here's an Epiphone LP Studio I got for $270 shipped with hardcase:

 

DSC02104.jpg

 

I installed Gibson Burstbucker PRO pickups in it. And put a set of good Grover tuners on. The originals were cheapie vintage style 12:1 tuners.

 

DSC02256.jpg

 

My tuner installation was pretty much a hack job.... but it works great now, and this guitar plays and sounds GREAT!! It's a complete gem! :thu:

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PRS SE EG.

PRS_SE_EG2.jpg

 

PRS_SE_EG3.jpg

 

Replaced the pups & pots with an EMG SA set with an EMG expander control (middle knob). Goes from Stratty single coil sound to full humbucker sound with a turn of that knob. I cut the pickguard from a sheet of 3 ply black.

I also added Planet Waves locking tuners, Q-Parts knobs, a Tremol-No, and routed it for a battery box in the back.

 

It's a great playing and sounding guitar (incredibly good neck) but I'm thinking about possibly selling it.

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Squier Bullet

SlysGuitars06-03-07011.jpg

Originally had chrome hardware. Replaced the tuners(Gotoh), bridge, strap buttons,jackplate, knob, and added a killswitch.

 

Ibanez RG 120

SlysGuitars06-03-07007.jpg

Added black sealed tuners(Ping), green pickup rings, green knobs, green logo, lotsa stickers and cut the nut for 11-58 strings, tuned down to A standard.

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This one came to fruition out of need. I had a Roland VG-8 and needed that damn GK-2A pickup in order for it to work. Only guitar I had was a MIA Roland Ready strat for several years at that point. I wanted something with a TOM on it.

 

So I bought this UM-3 off of E-Bay and an external Roland pickup. It worked, but was just kind of cheezy looking with that big plastic thing on there. So I decided to make it an internal mount.

 

Before with the big old nasty looking thing on there.

 

Before1.jpg

 

Here's the board apart and modified with quick connects to get it in there. I actually made that 13 pin mount from an old Atari line connector, an XLR mount and some hot glue, epoxy, heat shrink and a lot of soldering. The short cables were a pain in the ass because they were so close together. It plugs into the jack on the GK-2A board. I was going to desolder it and try to use it, but I was worried about trashing the board and it wouldn't fit in a mount anyway.

 

Board-and-jack1.jpg

 

Here is the board mounted inside the cavity. It was a tight fit.

 

Installed1.jpg

 

Here is is today, I swtiched out the crappy pickups with some original Duncan Designs from another guitar that I had upgraded the pups on. They aren't the best pickups ever, but they are 10X better then what was in there.

 

finished.jpg

 

I also added some coil splitting switches. I couldn't go with push/pull pots because the first knob is actually 50 ohms for the GK pickup and the second is dual concentric for the regular ones. If you look at the rear humbucker mounting ring you see a set of switches to control the VG-8 as well. That was a lot of fun getting in there.

 

closeup-now.jpg

 

Hell I forgot, this was a factory second and the pickups were mounted all cockeyed and misaligned. If you look at the bridge pickup ring you can really see where I had to fill and remount the pickup.

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This one came to fruition out of need. I had a Roland VG-8 and needed that damn GK-2A pickup in order for it to work. Only guitar I had was a MIA Roland Ready strat for several years at that point. I wanted something with a TOM on it.


So I bought this UM-3 off of E-Bay and an external Roland pickup. It worked, but was just kind of cheezy looking with that big plastic thing on there. So I decided to make it an internal mount.


Before with the big old nasty looking thing on there.


Before1.jpg

Here's the board apart and modified with quick connects to get it in there.


Board-and-jack1.jpg

Here is the board mounted inside the cavity. It was a tight fit.


Installed1.jpg

Here is is today, I swtiched out the crappy pickups with some original Duncan Designs from another guitar that I had upgraded the pups on. They aren't the best pickups ever, but they are 10X better then what was in there.


finished.jpg

I also added some coil splitting switches. I couldn't go with push/pull pots because the first knob is actually 50 ohms for the GK pickup and the second is dual concentric for the regular ones. If you look at the rear humbucker mounting ring you see a set of switches to control the VG-8 as well. That was a lot of fun getting in there.


closeup-now.jpg

 

That is some truly excellent work!

Very nice job and very creative.

 

:thu::thu:

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crapcaster.png

 

This is my most modded one. Replaced the tele bridge pickup with a DiMarzio DP-110 single-coil to which I glued the baseplate from the old pickup, added a middle position Wilkinson single-coil (new route) & neck pickup (widened route), 5-way switch.

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