The Telecaster Project
I have decided to do some modifications to my current axe of choice. Although this guitar is a loaner from a band-mate, I'm sure he wont mind me spicing up the Tele's life. Especially if it means much better tone.
After reading up on many different strategies for modifying a telecaster, I have decided to try something that no one else has tried. I am going to turn my Tele into a screaming monster. Here is a list of the parts required:
Pickups
To make the Tele massive I have decided to go with Rio Grande Pickups. Why? Because, dear reader, those are the pickups that my dear friend Matt Bellamy uses. Why should I copy something that's already been done? I'm not. What I want to build is a tonal monster that will range from Tom Morello to Muse, and these pickups will help me do just that. I want a unique sound, and I think combining a Rio Grande Fat Bastard P90 on the neck and a CrunchBox on the Bridge will give me the tonal diversity I want. The CruchBox is your basic humbucker. Throw it on the bridge and you get a nice smooth and thick rock sound. The Fat Bastard is a bit more wiley. It's industrial dirtiness and P90 Roar will make for an interesting blues tone with the selector switch on 3.
An alternative, in case I can't find the right hardware (see below), would be to use a CrunchBox or a Fat Bastard on the bridge position and go with a tamer Muy Grande on the neck. So it's a win-win if I buy both a CrunchBox and a FB, but right now I am not sure which I want on the bridge. Ideally, I would like to keep the Telecaster twang, but putting a humbucker or a P90 on the bridge will most likely kill it completely. An option that would retain the twang would be to use a Vintage Tallboy Twangbucker on the bridge, but that would require the installation of a push-pull pot for coil tapping. I don't really like coil tapping, so that is a last resort.
Potentiometers
My plan is to implement a double volume pot wiring scheme with one hooked up to the FB and another to the CrunchBox. That way I can simulate a Les Paul by turning on pickup all the way off and using the selector switch to go back and forth between the live and dead pickup. But that isn't the only use of the dual volume pot design. I should be able to use the pots to dial in any combination of the two pickups, and by using 500K pots to limit the tonal loss when the volume is rolled back there should be some interesting sounds coming from this guitar. The resulting configuration requires that the guitar is without a tone potentiometer. I don't have a problem with this because I always play with the tone knob jacked, but there might be some interesting wiring issues there I haven't thought about yet. I don't forsee any issues but we'll see.
Hardware
Here's where things get a little rough around the edges. I have found a tailpiece for a tele that allows for a humbucker on the bridge, but I have yet to find a pickguard for a non-deluxe style tele that supports a humbucker style pickup in the neck position. And, since the FB is a P-90, it will be in a humbucker casing unless I can get one custom made. So here lies my first roadblock. In the case that I cannot find a decent pickguard for this project, I will most likely have to fashion my own. Which is cool--I have been wanting to cut something with a sharp mechanical power tool for a while now.
Other Considerations:
In addition to everything mentioned above, I also would like to replace the Tele's strap buttons with a strap lock system, and rewire the electronics to get rid of the annoying noises I hear due to the connection jack being too loose. And, since I am replacing the tone pot with another volume pot, I might as well replace the gizmo bar (I have no idea what it's really called) where the switch and the pots are located with a brand new shiny chrome one. The neck could probably use a refile on all the frets, the nut is getting a little worn, and it would actually be useful if I replaced the stock tuners with lockers. The thing has some tuning issues with capos.
After spending a couple of hours researching the miscellaneous parts that I will need, I am looking about around 350 - 400 bucks to do the modifications that I want. That's not all that bad for a complete revamp of a 91 Tele. So if I am going to buy a Les Paul soon, why should I burn the 350 bucks to refurb the Tele? Simply because I am comfortable with it, and I want to experiment. If it turns out that this idea was horrible and it sounds really bad, then I get two really nice pickups out of the deal that I can reuse later, and the Tele gets a much needed cleanup. But there is a chance that this could turn out to be a tonal monster, and then I wouldn't need to buy a Les Paul now would I? =)
I will post pictures as this project gets underway.
New Site ETA Postponed
Since I have so much going on this week and next weekend, I am going to move the ETA of the new site until two weeks from now. That should give me enough time to experiment with the site and still be able to get some work done on Research or work on my raquetball backhand. Sweet.
Forthcoming Site Updates
I'm currently working on a new design for my home site, including syndicated RSS feeds from my blog on the front page, a dedicated BTB home, and some other nifty new things I want to play with. The blog will still be chugging even after I take the main site down for reconstruction, so no worries. You can still get your jduv fix here.
Human Attention Span Test
I finally finished implementing Minimax for my TicTacToe game (thanks Lawrence). You should never be able to beat this game, so I call it the Human Attention Span test. And, If you kinda suck at Tic Tac Toe, it WILL pwn you. It's actually pretty decent at setting traps. It's pretty fast on it's first move, and I could make it even faster by using Alpha Beta pruning. I might do that later for fun. Also, if you notice, if you set the players to CPU vs CPU, the computer will play the game the same way every time. There is no randomness in the moves. Later if I chose to make the game a little more realistic, I could make it randomly choose moves that are evaluated to the same importance.
I had alot of fun writing this project. This was the first time I have ever been exposed to Game Theory and the multitude of MiniMax variations out there. I have also posted the source code to the project for anyone that wants to take a look. I warn you, even after some cleanup parts of it are pretty ugly.
TicTacToe1_0_2.zip
TicTacToe1_0_3.src.zip
UPDATE: More source modifications have been uploaded. We are up to 1.0.3 now. I am working on a way to make the computer seem more like a human opponent. I want to implement some randomness in the moves that it chooses, but keep the game unbeatable. I will continue to update this post until I am completely finished with this project.
UPDATE: Links are broken =(
Stidy is teh sux
I started reading the IEEE 802.1AB Standard entitled Station and Media Access Control Connectivity Discovery. Simply reading that last sentence is enough to make one lapse into a coma. It's a very dry and boring document, but I guess for the sake of my research it must be done.
In addition to this 176 page monstrocity, I have two other RFC documents of 30 and 61 pages respectively to chew on. Pray, O reader, that I do not die of boredom during this knowledge expidition. I guess it's a good thing that I have enough time at work to read these things. It's either a sign that I have kicked some major IT booty or my company's going under...
I hope it's the former.