mihcmac

When you get stuck with microphonic pickups you could try potting them, its not that hard.

All true bad pickups are more microphonic. But even with good pickups if you place your throat on your strings an crank up your amp you can hear yourself talk.

Beautiful simplicity in you mod design, very old school I think.

The string vibrates causing sympathetic resonation in the in the body which in turn which enhances the string vibration making it last longer. This is also enhanced by the amp sound waves re-activating the strings and creating a loop. A sympathetic feedback loop at high volume. A pickup, depending on how micro-phonic it is, picks up everything, but mostly the string. You can hold the pickups next to your throat or mouth and hear yourself talking over your amp. I apologize that my last few posts went off topic......

That is correct, I did not say he selected a good piece of wood for his experiment guitar, a more accurate description would be "he carefully selected a piece of crap to prove it would work". Even pine resonates, but I would not build a production guitar from it.

All electric guitars resonate. The types of wood that are selected resonate differently effected by the density, if they didn't you wouldn't get very much sustain and your notes would be dead sounding. When amplification started to evolve and stage DB increased 335 types had a big problem with too much sustain and the feedback was almost impossible to control. BB's Lucille was designed without "F holes" specifically to reduce harmonic or sympathetic feedback at high volume. Every material sustains differently and effects the tone like acrylic or aluminum guitars. Les Paul carefully selected the woods for his experiment guitar, that preceded his LP design, the body looked almost like a 2x4. Because of the density of the wood mahogany tends to produce thick warm tones where maple can produce thinner more distinct tones. If you don't believe the wood on your guitar resonates, unplug it strum it and place your hand on the body and feel it vibrate..

Unplugged it's about how well your guitar resonates, which is effected by everything connected to it. The better your guitar sounds unplugged, your pickups will have more to work with. When I got a brand new Faded LP Special DC, my first reaction was the high notes sound dead and the fingerboard almost feels sticky, very hard to push the strings around. This was with everything being adjusted for optimum performance. I took it apart and polished the fingerboard and frets with very fine steel wool, then taped off the fingerboard with the frets exposed and polished the frets cross grained to finger board. I applied a very small amount of linseed oil to fingerboard. Day 2 after receiving my LP it was playing great with incredible sustain above the 12th fret. As time went on gradually polishing out the faded finish it started sounding even better. My LP DC is about 12 years old now and I think its sound has improved due to the aging finish as it hardens and seals, the finger board was my first hurtle to get over. So if you can get good sustain unplugged it will be really excellent plugged in. In my opinion the Faded Finish is not bad just unfinished.......

Just to reiterate this post was originally about comparing Megafrog's beautiful RD's. The Lee Malia RD sparked some interest in his other Signature models. Both of these guitars use something other than rosewood. As long as there is a difficulty getting rosewood the search for better fingerboard material will go on..

The Lee Malia Signature Guitars are made of Mahogany with Maple top and Walnut finish. :) Similar tone on the finish, but a lot of other differences.. Hmmmm the binding may have thrown rev off. They're both kinda pretty..

Gibson introduced Torrefied Composite fingerboards in 2011, its only logical that Epiphone would eventually follow suite as legal rosewood sources get harder to find. Updated Info....... If the Epiphone Spec page states rosewood it probably is. The China factories have more resources for rosewood. On some of the recent Epiphone Spec pages the Fingerboard Material has been left blank. A few of Epiphone's newest models are stating Fingerboard Material is Torrefied Composite. This material use seems has been in development by Gibson for a while. See the Epiphone Products pages and check the Spec's.. Check the Gibson Products pages for Fingerboard material.. 2011 article..... "Gibson Auditions Torrefied Maple for Fretboards" 2015 Gibson article ..... "Building a Better Fingerboard" ...Richlite... 2016 Gibson article...."Know Your Fingerboards".... have not seen anyone complaining about the playability of these materials for fingerboards

I'm not really a fan, his guitars led me to watch a few clips on youtube. He, supposedly, directed Epiphone's build of his signature guitars that came out pretty tasteful. I am more of a progressive metal fan influenced by the Satriani, Vai and Beck generation, but have great respect for anyone that brings something new.

Interesting that the Lee Malia signature guitars seem to be only available from Epiphone..

I just purchased one of these, made in the same Korean factory as the "Del Rey" in the late 90's, DelRey look alike. A Hamer Stellar II. It has a 24 fret 25.5" scale set neck and Duncans like the Del Rey's 24 fret 25.5" scale bolt-ont neck. Very close cousins.

Did you purchase these new or from an authorized Gibson reseller? If you didn't there would be no Gibson warranty on them, usually first owner only. The last new Gibson I bought, was in 2006, it is a 2004 Faded Les Paul Special Double Cut, that felt like the fingerboard and frets were faded as well. After I smoothed them out every thing was perfect. In the last year I have I purchased on line a Gibson 97 BluesHawk, Gibson 04 Melody Maker Les Paul and a Gibson 06 SG Standard without any serious problems. Not to mention a few Epiphone purchases.

Image file uploads to this forum are limited to 500K total. But if you use the insert image function that uses a URL there is no size limit.

I feel your pain.... I live on an Island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The people here are very musical and it seems everyone owns guitars. The music stores that are here lean towards Fender style guitars.. There are few Gibson's here, I only use P-90.s, so this severely limits my selection.. 99% of my guitar purchases are online. Most of the time the Gibson's I acquire need very little setup, while Epiphone's neck adjustments are about 50-50 requiring more tweaking over a longer period of time. I prefer to buy higher end Epi's that have been on display in a store and already had the bugs worked out. Epi's polyurethane finish is not effected by the humidity, where Gibson's nitrocellulose finish reaction is pretty severe when it starts checking. Note that Gibson's "faded finishes" seem to hold up much better in the high humidity. The bottom line, that I am saying here, is that I feel buying Gibson's online is pretty safe because the quality level of the instrument is very high compared to other brands.

I have been really enjoying my Gibson BluesHawk for the last few days, its a wonderful guitar. Similar in design to a LP, but way lighter and easier to play than my LP Standard. Too bad the 20 year old dried out finish couldn't handle the humidity here on the Island. The Nitrocellulose finish started cracking and flaking following the grain. I was able to get the finish checking stabilized using a little bit of linseed oil. My Epiphone Blueshawk with its Polyurethane finish still looks beautiful. I love playing both of my BluesHawk/Blueshawk's, but I must mention the noise reduction on the Epi seems to work better. Too bad Gibson stopped making them, I would have loved to have a new one. But at least Epiphone is still making them and once they are setup correctly, they are wonderful... :) Wild Bill 212, would love to see your NightHawk... With the high quality image upload you are trying to do, you have to use an Image hosting WEB site to share your images here.. Something like https://imgur.com/ or https://www.flickr.com/ or http://www.freeimagehosting.net/

Very nice set of RD's Replacing the P-94 neck pickup could be a mistake considering its a signature model. With the "Dummy Coil" wired in for noise reduction under the back plate and coil tapping on the Humbucker bridge pickup, the wiring may not be as straight forward as you may be accustomed. All 3 Lee Malia signature guitars are setup this way with a P-94 for the extreme tone variation, not to mention the super hot Humbucker...... Lee Malia RD review... https://www.youtube....h?v=_F3ll1QRJuE

The Del Rey was an unusual guitar with its long 24 fret bolt-on neck. I think they may have been made for Epiphone by the company that built the Asian PRS, maybe.... I played one in the late 90's, as I remember the Del Rey is was pretty incredible.... I tried to buy one from the Guitar Center not too long ago but missed the opportunity, they are very hard to find... :( Images from the web showing finish variations.. Google Del Rey image search link... https://www.google.c...f=1526949121704 Plastic dobs or toggle switch caps you might find a hardware store or an electronics warehouse.. Google search for toggle switch caps. https://www.google.c...iw=1200&bih=601

Threads on static have been showing up in here since at least 2012. Gibson is one of the few that still uses Nitrocellulose to get a thin hard finish, many other manufacturers use Polyurethane, Fender currently uses Polyester. Any guitar no matter the finish can, under the right conditions, be effected by static charge. The charge comes from your environment, your guitar is just very sensitive to it.

Older posts in this forum about static 2012 http://forum.gibson.com/index.php?/topic/91114-static-electricity-on-the-guitar-neck-help/ 2014 http://forum.gibson....static-problem/ 2016 http://forum.gibson....tatic-and-pops/

It looks like they use a finish washer on the switch.. Del Rey's were very cool a unique Epiphone design.. See more Del Rey's Google image search

p-90's or humbucker's . Les Paul Classic's came with one or the other.

It sounds like you are describing 60 cycle hum that you get from a poor AC ground. Does your LP Classic have P-90's? P-90's can be inherently noisy (60 cycle hum), under the wrong conditions, turning your guitar into a powered antenna. You can also get noiseless P-90's. Do you use a lot of overdrive? Back it off a bit. Have you tried an AC hum eliminator? see hum eliminator search I use a Ebtech Hum X. You may need to check your cables that they are all in good condition high quality and patch cables as short as possible.

If you have a Gibson or Epiphone SG with the 61 slim taper neck you may have a little neck dive. The Epiphone G400's use the 61 slim taper neck (not including the Epiphone SG's with bolt on's). The Gibson 61 slim taper neck was replaced by the newer longer neck joint that changes the strap button geometry moving it farther forward providing better balance. The 61 slim taper neck SG's are effected by the hardware you have installed, Humbuckers weigh more than P-90's and how many you have installed, Grover style cast weigh more than Kluson style and tremolo's also add a lot of weight. So basically what I am saying here is if you like the 61 neck joint, versus the bulkier new neck joint, the "Neck Dive" will be effected by the weight distribution of your hardware. A lot depends on how often or easy you need to reach for fret 22 and stretch it to the elusive 5th E or beyond..... there has been a bit of variation on the neck joint and button placement over the years. If you have a 61 neck joint with 3 Humbuckers and a tremolo you won't have neck dive.