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The mothership.  Home.  The place where pickups happen. 


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Oh yikes. Wishing Rej the best.


Would someone mind a quick summary for those without Facebook?


Also, would anyone be interested in going in on some flowers or gift basket or something?

I'd be happy to donate to help him out or send him a get well soon gift.

Whoa, get better Rej!

https://www.facebook.com/rejean.bernier.988

Praying for your continued recovery, great to hear you are feeling better!  Take your time, and THANK YOU!    


Also, ABDLX is everything.  Thanks for getting a few more. 

I haven't shipped overseas in a number of years, last thing was a lawsuit Explorer copy, not terribly valuable, but cataclysmically heavy!  I do send and receive guitars domestically quite a bit though.  Best tips to get things there safely:
-Cruise you local guitar shops and ask if they have any guitar boxes, tell them what you are going to do and they'll usually be nice about saving some or give you what is going into the dumpster.  Or dumpster dive.  Wear gloves and a boiler suit.
-As mentioned above slack the strings completely.
Always double box.  Have the guitar in a snug fitting case or gigbag, nothing loose inside, pack around it with some wadded paper or soft cloth/tshirts to make it a snug fit if it isn't.  Have the case floating in at least an inch of cushioning materials inside the first box on all sides.  if you can have a little extra on the ends it is good.  When you tape up the first box nothing should shift or move inside of it.  Float that box inside a second larger box, also with a layer of cushioning.  I usually do wadded packing paper in the first box and packing peanuts in the second. 
-If you are sending bolt on neck guitars, take the neck off.  You can often just put the body n a gigbag and fold it over, box that up well and then send the neck separately or put them both in a larger master carton.  The weight is the same as having it all together but shorter boxes are less prone to damage than long ones from what I can tell.
-Insure all of them for the full replacement value.  It sucks and makes shipping just that much more expensive, but if it goes wrong you are covered.  Or only send things you are comfortable with losing if it goes badly.
-Look at the cost of shipping everything that you want to and compare it to the cost of buying something once you are there.  I'd probably be adventurous and go that route, you said you are going to Eastern Europe, maybe find yourself something really neat like a Musima, Hofner, Rostov, Orfeus, or something even more Soviet/obscure.

With it being a guitar related forum i read the title and thought ' can pickups die'

I do alot of vintage rewinds and repairs, and in this case I wish it was a pickup, I can fix those.

I'd strongly suspect the push/pull pot switch then.  Most likely it has quit switching and is stuck in the coil split position internally

We buried her together this morning.  Kids did well.  Everybody is blue, but it was good to do it together.  Thanks guys.

I had mentioned in the new doggo thread a few days ago that our good girl Maggie Lou had pups six weeks ago.  My favorite pup of the litter died in my hands tonight.  She choked on puppy food and though I cleared her throat quick she was just gone so fast.  I did puppy mouth to mouth, puppy CPR, but no, just gone for good.  Her name was Pinky, I loved her, was gonna keep her.  A good good girl.  I'm heartbroken.  Kids were all in bed already and don't know.  It's gonna be such a sad morning for them tomorrow, my heart is so heavy about it. 

I know there are a lot of bright and experienced people here so I'm hoping you can help me figure out why my pickups aren't acting right.

I have an Epi Les Paul Custom with the coil tap pickups.  In the "Treble" selector position, the pickup sounds nice and full as I expect. In the "Rhythm" position AND the middle position, I have a huge drop off in volume.  I've tried adjusting pickup height but they are SO different, that doesn't do much.  Also, I would think that I should at least hear my nice, full sounding bridge pickup in the middle position.  I'm willing to replace the selector switch or wiring or whatever but I'm not sure where I should start.  Has anyone had experience with something like this?

Is there any difference with the push pull pot up for the coil tap?  I'd suspect that you are only getting one coil of the humbucker, the coil tap will have a noticeable volume drop compared to the full HB.  It could be the pickup itself, but I'd guess more likely either the switch is wired backwards (if you pull it and the pickup gets louder and fuller this is the case) or the switch could be defective or wired wrong so one coil is always getting shunted to ground.  What I am saying is the pickup selector toggle is probably not the culprit.  It's going to be miswired, bad push/pull pot switch, or a defective pickup.

What a great looking pup, good boy material!!!  5 weeks ago our Basset hound delivered 8 lil girls and 1 boy, "Bassadors". Drake, the neighborhood mascot, is the proud papa, a really good boy black Lab.  We are gonna keep 2 and have homes for 3 more, gonna have to find another few.  Nothing better than pups.  We have baby #7 due in August, so it is a sort of nice warmup for the sleepless nights ahead!

Bassadors? That's excellent! Congrats on the new baby! Just around the corner, too. Older kids big enough to help out around the house?

They are like double long eared and 3/4 leg length Labs, 7 solid black girls with just a little white mark here and there, Bud Jr. the boy is all solid black, and Marshmallow is yellow with a big splash of white on her face between the eyes and a freckled chin.  I am hoping they are less stubborn to train than Magnolia Louise, their mama.  She is a hard headed hound, sweet and loving too.  Just wants to follow her nose, and that's what she's built for, but sometimes it isn't too handy when she gets on a critter trail and disappears in the underbrush for an hour!  Knows her way home and will lay on the back porch the rest of the day once she's had her adventure though.

My 10 year old and 8 year old sons are really pitching in, especially Hank, the oldest.  He turned 10 last month and it was like a switch flipped, eager to help, to try and learn how to do now stuff.  Really cool to see him mature a little, though he is very much still a boy more than a young man.

And yes, 3rd daughter is imminent.  About 5 weeks to go.

What a great looking pup, good boy material!!!  5 weeks ago our Basset hound delivered 8 lil girls and 1 boy, "Bassadors". Drake, the neighborhood mascot, is the proud papa, a really good boy black Lab.  We are gonna keep 2 and have homes for 3 more, gonna have to find another few.  Nothing better than pups.  We have baby #7 due in August, so it is a sort of nice warmup for the sleepless nights ahead!

if you turn it 90 degrees the BBD looks like really beautiful amp grillcloth!

Parts Jar section of the forum has saved me a couple of times.  BTW, I've got some 510ks I can drop in the mail for you.  Just PM me.

Yes, Parts Jar is just the ticket for this type of d'oh:
http://www.madbeanpedals.com/forum/index.php?board=22.0

I can't get thicc.  I have some.  Got onto the D'Andrea and Pyramid Strings ones for awhile, but like Cody, I am a Fender medium guy too.  I do use thick strings though, 11-50's on Tele's and Strats, 12-52 and 13-54's on the hollowbodies, archtops, and Jazzmasters. 

I get a pickup parts order or two a week from Philadelphia Luthier, they throw in some branded picks with every order that are the same size and feel as the Fender mediums, probably the most likely thing to find in my little jeans pocket.  My good buddy and guitar mentor Terry Fortune uses thin Fender Mandolin picks and 9's, thats teeny tiny stuff, but he makes it sound great, I can barely hold onto them.