Thinking of a "Micawber" build/conversion

I've heard that some of the players who have old or iconic guitars are having them cloned-made by builders like Nash and putting the originals away to a safe place. Fear of theft and really wearing them out to the point of no return !

 

I wish i had all the close-up pics on my phone concerning the woodgrain. Not the wear, we all know that can be duplicated.
I'm not trying to make any difinitive statement, just stating my observations about the grain of the wood.

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This is a bit of a diversion of the thread, but after reading this and that and blah blah blah about Keith's tone and his lap steel pickup and his brass bridge and his (maybe) blender wiring, it's funny how so few people address this:

To what extent is this...THIS!...the secret to his tone? This is where he strums, and he strums like heck up there. Left to my own natural tendencies I strum just aft of the neck pickup and then wonder why I don't sound right. I often have to refresh myself on how he plays the guitar, and how I must too if I want to play his songs well.

From 2013:
"Keith Richards is said to have a collection of more than 3,000 guitars of every imaginable model, but he jokes 'Give me five minutes and I’ll make ‘em all sound the same.'”

I wonder how much this Strat sounds like Micawber (I reckon I mean, sounds like Keith) right now? He appears to be trying to gouge out the 17th fret marker on this one too!


We now return you to this thread...

,
Rex

 

At this point Keith's gotta wear out before any of his guitars

 

Excellent observation! I love how the fret marker is just completely gone.

 

My Tele started out being modded to be kind of Micawber/kind of Brent Mason's Tele. Then I found an ebay dealer(Triple Voodoo) who did pretty much exactly the mod I thought I wanted.

The blend never really did what I wanted. And it was way too 'ice pick-y' when turned up. So I backed up and tried again.

So now I have all Seymour Duncans: a Vintage Hot Stack in the bridge, Cool Rails for Strat in the middle, and a Mini-Humbucker in the neck. The control plate was flipped backwards on it from the factory. But I swapped it for a Taipantone plate that has a slanted slot for the switch. The side edges of the bridge plate are cut down. The saddles are Callahan compensated brass. It has locking tuners. And it now has a four way switch set up like a Jaguar (B, B+N series, N, B+N parallel) with a stacked volume knob that has the bridge and neck pickups to the bottom pot with a no load tone pot, and the middle pickup goes to the top pot and skips the tone pot. All this on a butterscotch blonde with a black guard, the way Tele's SHOULD look.

 

Yeah, it’s too bad Keef can’t afford to have that fret marker replaced. Maybe we should start a fundraiser to help him out

I’ve considered removing frets 16-21, or grinding them down to nothing. They are just there for show and pose a fretting out risk once you’ve worn down 12-15 (which I’m doing at an alarming rate). If there’s a riff where Keef plays above 15, I haven’t found it.

 

That's a cool idea. I've always liked this Otis Taylor acoustic model. The missing frets create a nice look.

 

A brief re-diversion... I was lucky enough to see Keef & the boys at their two final shows in Paris last October. This video has several shots of his neck strumming routine, most of it more easily seen on the big screen behind Jagger.


Untitled by , on Flickr

 

Cool vid; we’ve hijacked this thing all to h#ll haven’t we?

He does little variations on his normal chord shapes right at the end of your vid. Now I’ve got to try to figure those out.

 

Hi Meteorman, I'm just starting a Micawber tribute myself. Couldn't face spending the big bucks on an armadillo bridge so i'm gonna deplate a chromed Gotoh one. Any advice? I was just gonna use emery cloth. Don't wanna get into any chemical tank stuff really.
Cheers, Mike