New addition to the collection!

[ichbinmuede]

And not the pipe one! Sorry I haven't been around much lately but with school coming up and my brother being in town I've been a little busy. I just had to show this thing though!
I picked this up for an absolute steal at a flea market here on the weekend because all those switches made me want to know just what's going on inside it and I developed a crush on that pick-up in the bridge.

13 switches on this thing including the pick-up selector!

It turned out that my suspicion on the bridge pup was correct! It's a Bill Lawrence rail and from '86 no less! It also turned out that the neck pup is a Gibson PAF of the "T-bucker" variety. Those are both pretty damn awesome and you'll know why if you're a bit of a guitar geek like me. :lol:
And if you too are curious about what the control cavity looks like here it is! Hah there's some work to do rewiring this thing to bring it up to proper playing condition.

 

[crpntr1]

Holy wow ...

 

[vespertillio]

That looks quite impressive. I've never seen the inside wiring before. Thanks for sharing that and congratulations.

 

[hobie1dog]

Wicked axe.

 

[spartan]

C3PO and Jimmy Hendrix had a baby... And the Legendary Ichbinmuede Axe was born.
Killer photos. Let us know how she sounds with a YouTube video sometime in the future eh?

 

[ichbinmuede]

Vespertillio, you are quite welcome. On your basic layout of three potentiometers, and a pickup switch the wiring is a whole lot more simple. It's when you get in to things like switching the phase of each coil (which is what I think five of those switches do) and other crazy bits of electronic tinkering that these things get complicated.
Hobie, it is a hell of a thing isn't it? Haha it even looks axe like. Though with the asymmetry I'm thinking it's orcish. :lol:
Spartan, since you asked I'll make it a point to. Now though I'll have to make a decision of whether to patch it straight in to my mixer or to mic my Daystrom (I'm pretty sure that was a sort of Heathkit thing) tube amp for the recording. Choices! 8O

 

[kabong30]

Where do you load it and how do you light it?

 

[gwtwdbss]

Nice!

 

[crk69]

Wow, looks like a blind electrician wired that thing... hope it plays okay after a little rewiring... But nice grab....

 

[topd]

The very reason I've always liked an acoustic....

 

[jah76]

If you zoom in, you'll see each dial goes to 11....

 

[ichbinmuede]

crk69:

Wow, looks like a blind electrician wired that thing

Haha exactly what I thought! Such a mess and there's not even any active electronics in it!
TopD, I can definitely see where you're coming from. It's quite a bit of work to clean these things up but it's also one of the reasons that I love the electric! Hah not to say that I don't love the acoustic as well.
Jah76, now you've given me an idea. Turn some nice wood replacement knobs on my lathe that do in fact turn up to eleven!

 

[ichbinmuede]

I do hate to double post but I thought that I'd enlighten anybody interested in just what is going on in that control cavity.

We can see here that the five switches on the bottom control the phase and state (on/off) of each coil. So you can have just about every pickup combination that you like. I'm thinking that S11 and S12 do series/parallel. Those five top switches are some kind of tone control (I messed up a little there C3 ought to be connected to C6) which is pretty nifty. And from there it's your standard guitar! Hah well aside from the ability to plug in to two different amps.