A Familiar Tale of Bad GAS

The intonation procedure went just fine. I think I had one a few cents or tics off and two or three others < 1 cent or tic. The neck relief is measuring about .006 without adjustments, so I left it alone. It's within specs.

I lowered the string height to where I like it, which is a little bit above really low. Problem. The high-E was buzzing on the post on the bridge pickup. I lowered the post a bit, but didn't like the tone as much. I raised the saddle back up and then the post to where it was and liked to tone better. This did result in the string height being a tad higher than I like it.

The pick-up sits on a spacer. I considered a long term alternative of taking the spacer off, shaving it down somehow a little, tiny bit and putting it back on. I then got the bright idea of trying to tighten the screws down a little bit more than was done at factory, in effort to avoid going through the spacer shave thing. It worked. I was able to then lower the saddle back down again and it's now playing very nicely. I dodged a bullet on that one. For reference, some people like the strings to be really, super low. I like them just a tiny bit higher than that.

So then the final thing to mess with was the pickups. I talked about seeing others posting on various opinion boards and reviews a bit of a muddy sound. Some guy even has a page dedicated to it. In all fairness, I have seen & heard You Tube demos that did sound thick. As I reported earlier, I didn't think I had a problem with this. Not too muddy, anyhow. I decided to go to a patch on my GT-10 that exploits the low end. If it's going to be thick sounding, it's on that patch that it will come out. Sure enough, there was some thickness.

I got to thinking. Only once in a while in all of the reviews have I read does someone have the stones to dare such an intricate and delicate procedure of adjusting the posts on the pickups. :roll: I decided to give it a shot. I started fairly simple. I lowered the e, A and D strings a 1/2 turn each on the bridge pickup. It made a fairly noticable difference. I went down another 1/2 turn on the e and A string. Just these little adjustments made quite a difference. I went to the neck and went through a similar set of adjustments. I think I ended up one full turn lower on the e, A, D and G strings. Boy, what a difference that made. I did a similar set of turns on the middle, but stopped due to some serious tone burn-out. I think I've got a bit left to do there.

The point is, as with my Gretsch and PRS, the pole positions screws can make a difference when put to use. I know some are fake and for show, but the ones that are real do make differences when adjusted. In the case of this guitar, I was able to get rid of some thickness that so many complained about on theirs. I need to come up with a system of being able to measure volume by frequencies and the know-how of what to do with that information once I have it. It's all trial and error right now.

It's hard to believe, but I think it sounds much better now than it did before. I'm sold. I'll make some recordings next week. Getting ready for a short trip. My two ferocious dogs and my big, fully grown son will be here to protect my gear. :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
As far as the tuners go, the pic makes them look to be vintage style. Might explain any short comings there.
I think it was more a case of never using this type of tuner before, especially during a re-stringing. Instead of the normal, re-assuring big post we normally get to wrap our strings around, there was this shorter thing withough a nut to keep tight. I will say that these were all tight as can be and free of tight/loose spots while tuning. So far, so good.