6down1togo

The guy had been dead for 9 years so it really doesn't matter what anyone thinks about the man. Like any colorful character in our social media obsessed society, everyone thinks they "know" a person by what they read posted on the internet by someone who regurgitated something they read online, and on and on I would give credence to someone's story if they had business dealings with Ed Roman but would certainly not take it as gospel without hearing the other side of the story.

That may get you in the ballpark but you need a tuner (or a very good ear) to check the intonation to assure you are in the correct spot. The bridge should be positioned at 24-3/4" (if Gibson scale) as measured from near edge of the nut to centerline of the bridge saddle for each string. The adjustable bridge polepieces allow fine tuning to compensate for differences of string length in lieu of angling the bridge (and compromising the intonation of adjacent strings) to compensate for string gauge, depth and radius of the string slots in the nut and the slight curvature of the neck due to neck relief necessary to eliminate fret buzz and fretting out (string contacts the fret ahead of the fretted note) or unlevel frets. Even a cheap $10.00 clamp-on tuner works fine for this. On a guitar with low action, I tune the fretted octave note to the open string via the bridge adjustment. On a guitar with high action, I use the harmonic at the 12th fret and the fretted 12th fret note. Either way is a compromise of sorts.

You can also get a tune-o-matic style bridge that drops right on the wood base. They brighten/focus the tone a bit. They sell for less than $20 on eBay and include both the bridge and the base. Throw the base out and use yours since it fits the contour of your top. They come with small bushings that slip over the tuner posts so the bridge doesn't rock on the smaller posts. I've bought this one Tune-o-matic style jazz bridge and installed on vintage Japanese hollowbodies. The difference was like and night and day on those.

Good move passing on that LP Copy. I am a big fan of Ibanez guitars, they build some really nice guitars that last. When you do a string change, just replace one string at a time and you'll never have the mess with the bridge. If you want to clean/treat the fretboard and have to remove all the strings, run a piece of blue painter's tape on the body along the backside of the bridge and at both ends to positively locate the bridge. You can tape the bridge down but if you bump it, it will move. With location outlined on the body by the tape, you can't miss.

Your current wiring has coil split capability via a push pull. Just wire the conductors to same spots on the switch and snip off off the coil split wiring at the switch (red+white on the diagram). If you solder a jumper at the switch from each humbucker's connector to it's red+white conductor lug, your pickups will work whether the push/pull is up or down, otherwise, you will have a built in "kill" switch in the coil split position.

This thing just won't give me a break since I decided to sell it. I put strings on it, did a setup, strummed a couple chords and found the first fret action sky high and all the "cowboy" chords going sharp over the first 3 frets. I didn't remember it playing that badly when I first got the guitar but really didn't spend any time playing it with the wiring and pickup fubar and put it aside (for about 10 years!). I tapped out the plastic nut, cleaned up the slot and installed a pre-slotted bone nut, scribed and sanded to height . Holy crap! It out-plays my Gibson ES 335 now (which also has a high nut and needs the same attention). Plays and sounds just great and tuning stability is rock solid now. Just needs a buyer now. Next!

I have been catching up on guitar projects and selling a few un-played guitars that turned into unfinished projects. I bought this one from R.M. Olson Guitars as non-working guitar. The bridge pickup was not working and was either dead or miss-wired. The price was right and I bought it. The electronics were typical import style mini-pots and box switch and the pickups were MIC. When I pulled the electronics out, it turned out the pickup was dead and the wiring was wrong. I looked at it a while and put it away for the better part of 10 years. LOL. Do you see a pattern here? I finally decided to set it right and grabbed the harness and Korean Washburn 621/623 pickup set I had pulled from a headstock damaged Washburn HB-35 and psyched myself up for the install. Tested the combo and then installed only to find just the bridge pickup working. I pulled the switch back out through the F Hole and everything worked fine. I put the switch back in place … no neck pickup output. I pulled the neck pots and switchout of the body to check connections and all looked good. I reinstalled and again, no neck pickup output. Pulled the switch out through the F Hole and both pickups worked again. Now I am pissed. I pull everything out and start over … same result. Both pickups work when the harness is outside the body. No neck pickup out when installed. I pulled the switch back out of the F Hole and both pickups work fine, reinstall the switch. neck pickup goes dark. At this point a light goes off and I check the 4 pin connector (pickup outputs and output to jack) and bingo … intermittent. I cut out the connecter, shortened the lead (HB-35 had the switch on the upper body horn), soldered all connections and reinstalled. All is good now. (Tip: Always use long enough ground wires from the bridge posts or tremolo bridge to the neck tone pot and between the neck and bridge tone pots to allow you to install (or pull to troubleshoot) the controls for one pickup at a time to make the install (or removal and reinstall) easier and less cluttered. Pics:

Sold

10 year old post. The mystery still lives on.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2499334.m570.l1313.TR12.TRC2.A0.H0.Xbentley.TRS0&_nkw=bentley&_sacat=33034 Overpriced junkers. Take a look at the tuners on the Tele from the link and that should tell you what you need to know. A $225 guitar with $4.00 tuners on it? The used LP pictured is a bolt neck and has no strings on it because in all likelihood it is impossible to play. If you like to collect junkers, fine, but these were the bottom of the food chain and lacked the quality of the Japanese made guitars. They were made so cheaply that even with considerable markup, they could still be sold cheaply. You can pretty much lump Bentley, Barclay, Arbor, Lotus, Hondo, Austin, Memphis and Encore all together in the same category. These brands found their way into mom and pop music stores that didn't have the sales volume to qualify for major US brands or the cash for inventory and were also sold through general merchandise and gift catalogs. A lot of people think these guitars are some kind of hidden gems but in reality the lowest priced Squier Bullets will play circles around them and sound good while doing it. Nostalgia is a strong thing and I used to collect Japanese hollowbody electrics from the 60's and 70's and enjoyed the quirkiness of their styling. As a kid, I would pour over the catalogs and always one. A few years back, I sought out and bought absolutely mint examples and found them actually decent playrs after shimming the necks and trading out the roller bridges for tune-o-matics. The single coil pickups sounded really raw but would feed back/howl even at moderate volumes and gain. The tuners were horrible (gritty and lots of backlash) and I didn't want to make irreversible changes (drilling the headstock) to them. They couldn't hold a candle to the guitars coming out of China these days as far as playability and sound and I eventually sold them. They sat in their cases and got played only occasionally as all the newer guitars I had just played and sounded better and had better tuning stability.

Did you read the website and description? It very clearly states what you are buying. The middle position pickup in normal or reverse wound is the only one available at this time.. I don't see how you could miss it. Cut and pasted from their website ordering form: Please note, if you do not see the set or position that you are looking for, then it is out of stock at this time.

Try this site, It will cost you $10.00 for a month subscription. They have some catalog cuts that you can download. It's hit or miss whether the catalogs they have archived will have the exact year and model but they do show some El Degas catalogs for download.