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When splitting humbuckers you should keep in mind the 250k/500k pot thing and how it effects pickup loading and max tone pot treble. Split humbuckers typically tend to sound thin and trebly. This is usually because HBs are designed to be used with 500k pots. So when you split them, you are effectively running a single coil thru a 500k pot.

I remember reading somewhere that some humbuckers, like the Duncan JB, were more or less designed to be used in a Strat and therefore tended to work well with the 250k pots that were already in them. I am mainly looking at it from the perspective of splitting HBs in a Gibson so when I think that, when they factory load 300k pots, that it's specific whatever pickups come in it, which can vary from year to year and even in very similar models. I think most of the nuance gets lost in the 300k vs 500k factory pot debate.

I know that the physical design (slugs vs bar) accounts for some of the difference between SC and HB, but I think you could prob get a little closer to an acceptable single coil sound from a split HB if you design in some resistance switching as well. For instance use a 500k pot, and switch in an additional parallel 500k OR 1M resistor when you pull the pot to split.

BTW, I have a 2005 SG Standard that came with all 300k pots and pickups are:
490R (Alnico2) 7.8k
498T (Alnico5) 14.2k

With all the pedal tap dancing I have to deal with while playing I don't want to burden myself with additional guitar switch finger dancing as well. This is why I don't bother with all of this coil splitting parallel serial out of phase nonsense. Just pure humbucking tone. Just the way our Lord and Master Seth Lover intended it.

What about a single coil sized humbucker?

Full humbucker and single coil sized humbucker do not always deliver the same sound.

I've done that with for a neck pickup. I had no template but I used a jigsaw and some files, until I finally managed to fit that humbucker in. Funny thing is that a luthier had modified that same pickguard to fit a bridge humbucker. Don't know how he did it though, but the new hole he drilled for the humbucker's top screw sets about 1.5mm next to the old single coil screw hole.

One guy at work (the same guy who doesn't understand the stock market), needed several days of explaining to understand why you can't just have the country on lockdown for a year, and why the economy (and supply chain) will be totally f'ed.

Basic Economics should be a mandatory class requiring a pass in order to graduate.

I'm not even sure most economics professors understand economics. It's as much psychology as it is all that mathy stuff. People don't behave and act rationally. Unfortunately we live in an age where feelings and emotions trump logical thinking and I'm afraid. So if the politicians see that the social media sphere wants something stupid done, they will do it.

And we also live in an age where we are so far removed from how our food and non-foods are made. I loved watching those reality TV shows set in Alaska, and I couldn't help but notice there were no vegans in Alaska. Where even small kids knew that the meat on their plate was that lovely animal they used to play with or some karibou their dad shot. They know where their food comes from, it's not some package that just magically materializes in a supermarket. And that if they don't work their asses off in the summer they will go hungry in the winter. And their non-foods are not things that just materializes in your mail box because you clicked on something on the internet. They have to make it themselves, scrounge the parts, or make something else to trade for it. When you are that far removed from how your food is made, how things are made, when all you do all day for a living is hit keyboards and stare at screens, then yes, I am not surprised that you think that food will continue to materialize for a whole year in lockdown.

Ultimately the cure will be worse then the disease and its effects will be with us for far longer then the disease.

I decided (stupidly) to use some of my stimulus check to build myself a new computer. This rig is 5 years old, and I originally planned it to last "4 or 5 years" (to quote my own scribbled notes). So, yesterday, got the shopping lists together and pushed the button on the orders, new CPU, motherboard, and RAM (vid card and PSU will last me a while longer). Then I went to buy groceries.

Aaaaand my car crapped out on the drive home. Engine just cut out. In the middle of nowhere, at 9pm. And Uber charged me 20$ to get me home. Car is currently in the shop, and I'm waiting on the butchers bill. (Symptoms: turning key chugs a bit, but won't catch, and fills the cabin with strong sulfur smell. I'm guessing the distributor crapped out, wouldn't be the first time, but my car doesn't have a genome I can tinker with so it's all voodoo to me)

I think the universe just whapped me on the nose for being frivolous with money I should have been saving for more essential stuff. 

edit: Ignition coil shorted out and killed the Engine Control Unit (the computer brain). 850$ repair on a car I only paid 1200$ for. Ugh.

There's no point in saving money anyway. Interest rates were so low prior to corona it practically cost you money to park it into an account, and once this thing is over we should count ourselves very lucky not to have hit Zimbabwean or Venezuelan inflation rates, because governments all over the world are printing money like the world will end tomorrow. Which it will if hyperinflation starts rearing its ugly head. So holding it back would only have seen it lose value. I wouldn't call a good PC that will last you for a long time a frivolous buy. You just had bad luck to be hit with bad luck.

Looks painful

Don't knock it till you tried it? 

The price of vintage pedals is and has always been correlated to the number of units produced, the rarity of obsolete chips or trannies in the first (desired) production versions and the number of famous albums on which they have allegedly been used.

There is no such thing as a stupid pedal idea, as long as it works. Now, useful, that's something else entirely.

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The Lunar Module if I want to kick in a fuzz, it also plays nice with buffers by the way so none of that it has to be in front bullshit. P19 if I want a Muffy lead tone and the Mayonaise III if I want a Muffy rhythm tone. And make absofuckin'lutely certain to include the Skreddy mids switch on ALL your Muff builds. That thing will save your guitar tone when you disappear into the mix.

If you now reside in the US then kit wise the sky is your limit. It's slim pickings getting kits in Europe from local suppliers that aren't called MusicDing. In contrast the US seems to have a plethora of kit suppliers.

++! It isn't difficult, it's just tedious. Go for it.

Which is probably exactly why the OP won't find many who will sell him their tedious work. As for the OP, just do it. Yeah, it's scary, but until you do it yourself it will always be scary. And buying presoldered SMD J201's is probably just as expensive as buying the old through holes somewhere online. Although chances are you will most likely get ripped off with fakes. And if you don't you need a LOT to sort them out to get matching pairs. If you need to buy like a 100+ lot of through hole J201's to build a DIY JFET overdrive you've reached the pricepoint where you can almost buy the real overdrive you're trying to clone.

The way I did my soldering was to apply some solder to one of the three pads on the board, then take the SMD transistor with a tweezer, apply the solder iron to the blob of solder tin on the board, heated it up until it was liquid again and shove the transistor in it. Which sounds a whole lot more brute force and stupid then it actually was. The thing being that if the transistor was fixed to the board with one tiny blob to one pad it was much easier to add solder to the other pads and solder it in place. And afterwards I would check every conversion board with a multimeter to make sure there was continuity where it was supposed to be and no continuity where it shouldn't. Tedious work, it would probably take me a whole evening to solder 25 SMD transistors in place. Which is exactly why I won't sell you my hard work to begin with.   But it is a skill set you need to develop if you want to continue with this hobby as more and more through hole transistors and IC's go out of production.

What on Earth?

I saw the odd-looking sarcophagus-style pedals and decided to dig a bit deeper into what this brand is/was doing..apparently making space-helmet and monster face-shaped TS-clones, and guitars out of magnesium for reasons unknown.

I'm not too savvy with chemistry- have any of you wizards out there got any idea why magnesium might be a desirable tonewood?

Tonewood is bunk anyway. Anyone who tries to sell you an electric guitar based on tonewood qualities is selling you snake oil. I reckon they went for magnesium as I suspect its as light weight as aluminium, but maybe it doesn't detune as easily as aluminium depending on temperature. A friend of mine has a Kramer guitar with aluminium neck and that thing detunes just by looking at it.

Whomever invented the idea of the "group text message" needs to be locked in a room for 24 hours with about 100 cellphones all dinging and vibrating non-stop for the entire time.
Why can't anybody figure out the concept of "reply to sender" only? We don't need 30 texts in a 10 second period of everybody just replying to everybody in the group text..."sounds good"..."ok"..."yeah". DING DING DING VIBRATE VIBRATE VIBRATE.
Is the world ending?! Something must be terribly wrong! No, it was just everybody "replying to all" in a group text. I can't use my phone right now...I'm receiving 40 texts that all say, "got it".

Ah well, this is why my phone is always on silent mode. Occasionally I might miss a call, but I'm never the one who has to leave a meeting in embaressment as his phone goes off mid meeting. Even though it does have the coolest ringtone. The intro of Hostage to Heaven by Grip Inc. 

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Nor engage in massive tax evasion while asking others to accept shitloads of 3rd world migrants and other costly things, *cough* Bono *cough*.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/07/tax-bono-harming-world-poorest-glastonbury-avoidance-paradise-papers

U2 have always sounded preachy to me. It's only in the last decade that they started to sound decidedly holier-than-thou.

You try listening to hundreds of U2 bootlegs and hear Bono preach about Africa. God, I love the music, but there were times that if you had given me a button to nuke Africa I would have pressed it. I wonder how the rest of the band cope with him. I reckon they must agree politically or the band would have broken up decades ago, but still, maybe they've managed to master the art of zen to tune Bono out until he gives the signal to proceed again. Or maybe they're like the Ramones. Where I think the singer was a bleading heart liberal and the guitar player a die hard Republican.

Granted I'm not going, but I can respect these guys getting a cash grab. They've more or less earned one.

You do realize that this band's whole identity has been anti-establishment, ant-Capitalism... right?

You respect them for doing something that goes against everything they have been preaching for 25+ years?

it's hard to be considered anti-establishment and anti-Capitalism when your net worth is north of 20 million dollars ... each.

I think that is the trap of any successful progressive. You start out full of anger and piss and vinegar, and then gradually over time you become successful and gather wealth, how do you combine your new found wealth with your activism and not come across as a hypocrite? For starters I reckon it would help not to charge $300 per ticket, or at least not allow ticketmaster to charge $300 per ticket on your behalf. Nor engage in massive tax evasion while asking others to accept shitloads of 3rd world migrants and other costly things, *cough* Bono *cough*.

I'm going to start calling it Pangolin Flu.  It's more media friendly and marketable. 

Probably not politically correct but, we've been calling it the "Kung-Flu" at my place. 

F*** politically correctness and f*** it hard in all its orifices! We NEED to laugh, especially in times like this.

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RATP....

Thats Rage Against Ticket Prices!

Always been a HUGE fan of Rage Against The Machine. That has changed in the last week or so. Now that they are touring with Zach and it is a nostalgia tour, apparently the "anti-Capitalistic" band is OK with charging outrageous prices for their concerts. Those who waited endlessly for initial relaease tickets got the priviledge of paying $125/ea. for nosebleed seats  If you try to get tickets NOW... you are looking at anywhere from $300/ea. for nosebleed to around $800/ea. for floor seats.

Floor seats at a RATM concert?  All the Rage shows I have been to had the floor being one seething steaming sweaty mass of moshing and circle pitting crazyness. That's probably why their shows only last 1,5 hours. Any longer and their fans would drop dead from exhaustion. To have the floor be seated would be like having a mosh pit at a classical concert.

I guess they are Killing in The Name of... Money 

And please don't say "Well.. its the companies, production, etc. that is charging and why prices are so high." We all know the band can have a say.

I would have more respect for them if they refused to do the shows unless prices were respectable.

I think they could have done it. Not get TM to sell tickets at $50 a pop, but at least at your average concert ticket prices for a major band?

Granted I'm not going, but I can respect these guys getting a cash grab. They've more or less earned one.

You do realize that this band's whole identity has been anti-establishment, ant-Capitalism... right?

You respect them for doing something that goes against everything they have been preaching for 25+ years?

They've always been about grabbing cash for themselves. That's why they signed on a major label, played major shows, sold expensive merchs and did major tours in general with expensive tickets. As opposed to your average anti-capitalist punk bands, which have basically created their own alternative music scene which charges their fans basically peanuts.

There's always been that strange dissonance between Rage pursuing activist policies on the one hand and on the other effectively milking their fans for every cent that they are worth, just like any normal band does.

And if thousands of people want to see them everywhere the tour stops, their options are?

Just because you're anti-establishment doesn't mean you don't have bills to pay.

dave

I think the punk scene pretty much shows you can be anti-establishment and be a touring band that lives off their music while not forcing your fans to take a 2nd mortgage to go to your concerts. Rage very early on chose to take part in the commercial caroussel of major band economics. And its not like they have that big a bills to pay. They're not living expensive lifestyles, they don't have ex-wives to pay off, they don't own expensive yachts. Even after decades of basically doing nothing I've read that Zach de la Rocha is still estimated to be worth 25m and Tom and the others even more because they've partaken in other successful bands like Audioslave and Prophets of Rage.

You forgot to mention much respect for the band and their music.

From what I have seen and read... there is a HUGE backlash going on regarding this tour. Oh well.. the wheels will still turn and multi-millions will still get made.

It does make me wonder what the audience will be comprised of. Yuppie lawyers? Corporate entities?

A lot of the Gen X'ers that were Rage fans in the 90's are doing well enough so they can afford to take a trip down memory lane and pretend that they are still not doing what the man is telling them. Doesn't make them yuppie lawyers though. Corporations will probably buy a significant portion of the tickets though so they can treat their best customers and relations to a nice concert. But they don't give a shit if its RATM or Celine Dion, just that their clients have a nice night out and think more highly of them afterwards. A practice which has been going on for decades though. 

They're just to trying to earn at their job as much as the guy that scooped up all the tickets at face value and is reselling them at a king's ransom.

As long as there's fools willing to shell out stupid amounts  money so they can say they saw such and such a concert tickets will only go up. There's a sucker born every minute no longer applies, they multiply much more quickly now and there're are far more ways to capitalize on the brain dead.
dave

That is so true though. The Ticketmasters of the world see that people are willing to pay scalpers for tickets at scalper prices. So they have deduced that scalper prices are the prices that the market is willing to pay. So they have adjusted their prices accordingly. Don't want to pay scalper prices for tickets, then refuse to go see bands that charge those kinds of prices. It's for that reason that I have not seen U2 since 2005.

Shouldn't the anti-establishment be commended for getting the establishment to fork over ridiculous sums of money so they can take out token memberships in the anti-establishment tribe for an hour or two?
dave

Since when are their fans the 'establishment'? Because its not the establishment that's forking over ridiculous sums of money. It's the establishment, as in Ticketmaster, which is laughing all the way to the bank.

Personally I am of the opinion that I couldn't care less of this tour, even before it was announced. I saw them do the reunion nostalgia tour thing in 2008/2009. Been there, done that, didn't cost as much back then either. Unless they first release a new album I'm not interested in them rehashing the same old tired material. They didn't want to do a new album back then, because the strain and infighting of creating an album was what lead to their first breakup. I doubt that things have changed in this regard so I figured when I first heard about this 2nd reunion it was about doing an Orange Man Bad tour. With the same old tired material. And while I like their music, and I can pretty much tune out their politics, I'd much rather would have had a 2nd Prophets of Rage album instead, because then at least I would have gotten some new material as well. Not everything was good on the 1st Prophets of Rage album, but songs like Unfuck the World are at least as good as any RATM classic

Too much fakes on eBay for my taste. I'd rather order stuff from a reliable vendor that actually works.