Day By Day

Saturday, February 13, 2010

As promised

I put a warmouth neck I had sitting about on the fender powerhouse:


The original owner had the neck reshaped from a boat neck to a sharp vee and then refinished by Dana Bourgeios of Pantheon Guitars in Lewiston, Maine. He didn't care for the shape so I picked it up fairly cheap and had it on a Fender Lead 1 for years. I'd recently decided to put the original neck back on the Lead 1 so this was spare. The shape is different and takes a bit of getting used to but it plays like a dream with a nice low action that allows for some serious string bending without buzz. If you're not familiar with Dana's guitars and work he makes some really outstanding high end acoustic guitars.

I think it looks better with the dark neck and I know it plays better. When I had it apart I learned something about these I did not know. This guitar has a "dummy coil" installed to help combat the hum that plagues single coil pickups. When I removed the pickguard to look underneath I was stunned when I saw it.


That's the dummy coil, looking like a 4th pickup, wedged in between the 5 way switch and the volume and tone pots. I had never heard of this before. You know what? It works. This guitar also has a Fender mid boost preamp that boosts the mids 12db. It almost makes these single coils sound like humbuckers, almost. Overall it's a very useful thing to have as it adds tonality that regular strats lack.

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