Yorgle

I think connectors in general are a good idea. It's nice to be able to completely remove the pickups for polishing or cleaning the instrument, rather than have them dangling around and potentially scratching the finish. Just be sure the connectors are good quality because they have to stay snug in an environment that's designed to vibrate at lots of frequencies.

You first need to ascertain the condition of the neck and frets before you adjust anything, e.g., is the fingerboard bowed or twisted; are the frets (or some of them) excessively worn; are the saddles worn? If you have a true straight edge and an hour or so, you can probably figure out what the issue is. If you can't find what's causing the problem, take the instrument to a luthier. If you can't afford that, you can raise the bridge on the treble side until the buzz goes away (and live with the higher action). But whatever you do, don't give into the temptation to simply hammer or file the 18th fret lower because you'll find that now the 19th fret buzzes, then the 20th, and so on. Been there, done that...

I'd try changing out the tone capacitor before spending $$$ on pickups. For whatever reason, 99% of guitars have either .22 or .47 uF tone caps regardless of pickups. I've found that you can use much lower value caps to really brighten things up and give your tone pot more effect. I've got a 6800 pF in my Wildkat and I love it.

You don't turn the rod, itself. There's a metal washer deep in the hole that the nut rides up against to pull the neck straight. If the nut is coming off the rod, that means it's as loose as it gets, and normally in that situation, string tension will pull the neck into a high relief (up-bow) state. If not, then your neck may have developed the dreaded back-bow. Usually this means pulling out the frets and sanding the fingerboard flat, but here are some things you can try: First, adjust the truss rod nut so that it's completely loose (which you apparently already have done), then turn it clockwise (tighten) back in to the point where it just so touches the washer that's buried up against the back of the neck. Don't tighten it, just get it so it's touching--you dont want to actually put any force on the neck. Then string your guitar with some heavier gauge strings and tune it up to pitch. Check the truss rod nut and see if it's tight now. If it is, loosen it an 1/8 to 1/4 turn and see if you gained some relief (measuring from the bottom of the E strings to the top of the 6th fret). If not, don't give up. Do the same thing, but this time tune the guitar (with the heavier strings) a half or whole step higher to increase string tension on the neck. If that works, leave it that way and play for a month or two, loosening the truss rod nut an 1/8 turn every week or so until the neck maintains at least some relief with the nut all the way loose. At that point, you can probably go back to regular tuning and lighter strings.

Sounds like you need a Gibson-style wrench or a thin-walled 5/16" socket deep enough to reach the hex part of the adjustment nut.

Just curious, did you take off your three hole cover and verify that the two hole version will work?

If your Casino is built like most epiphones, the cavity below the truss rod cover likely extends all the way to the back of the nut so there's no wood to screw the lower cover screw into. Also, a two-hole cover won't completely cover up the cavity. I suppose it would be easy enough to glue in some wood to make it work but your truss rod adjustment would be buried in the process.

It may be be mahogany, but don't expect it to be one piece. The body blanks are usually made from 3 or 4 (or more) boards glued together.

So it is. My bad.

Thanks for bringing it back. Sorry to see no reference to the Alleykat or Wildkat, though. :(

This is the one I'm talking about:

Did Epiphone ever use Gibson's "flower pot" logo on a guitar? I know I've seen it on an Epi mandolin, but never on a guitar. Just curious, that's all.

All back together:

I accidentally reclic'd my Wildkat this weekend- tipped over my guitar stand and a quarter-size chunk of the polyester finish cracked off by the cutout. My attempts to sand the area flat and re-coat with some clear failed because I ended up sanding through the colored layer all the way to the veneer. (Did you hear that, Rev6? It's got veneer!) Anyway, after trying several times to match Epiphone's mysterious yellow grain filler, I gave up and decided to do something drastic. Stay tuned for pics after I do some final wetsand/polishing. Reborn as a goldtop:

Added a home-made zero fret: I can't say it really sounds that much different, but I like the concept of both fretted and open strings being treated the same. I also replaced the chrome phillips head screws on the headstock badge with more vintage looking brass slotted head screws. It's a subtle change, but I think it looks better. I'm going to do the same with the truss cover screws.

Indeed a beauty! That 6-way switch is a great idea- I might explore using one now that I've added some piezo's to my Wildkat.

My reason is primarily to see what, if any, affect the plastic covers have on the sound of the pickups, and figured that cream would match the switch tip on my Wildkat, but now I'm leaning toward ordering both cream and black, just in case the cream doesn't match.

Thanks. That's simpler than I thought it would be, but now looking at your pictures, I'm having second thoughts about cream. Black sure looks sharp against the maple.

I would like to change out the chrome covers on my Wildkat p90s for cream plastic covers, but it appears to me that the chrome covers are attached by soldering them to the mounting tabs on the pickup. Un-soldering them is no big deal, but how do I attach the new plastic covers? If anyone has done this and can give me some advice, I'd appreciate it.

This piezo phase of my project has me thinking about a total re-wire of my Wildkat. There must be at least a 1/4 mile of wiring in this thing! Last night I played around with different wiring schemes and finally settled on using the master volume pot as a balance control between the piezo and the P90s (at 10, it's all P90, closer to 0, the piezo has priority. Balance between the P90s themselves is still controlled by the 3-way switch and individual volume pots. The Tone pot rules all three. It might be nice to have a separate tone control for the piezo so an onboard preamp is probably needed.

The modding continues... this weekend I added a piezo pickup to pull out even more of the acoustic sounds. The cool thing about the piezos is that they're practically free (I pulled mine out of a smoke alarm buzzer) and you can stick them anywhere in (or even on) the guitar to take advantage of the different tonal qualities of different areas. At first, I stuck it in the slot I had cut under the bridge, but that was way too bright. Sticking it to the underside of the top, itself, sounded great, but picked up too much noise (hand movement, bumps, etc). Eventually I found a sweet underneath the neck pickup, sticking it to the end of the neck. The piezo is wired directly into the jack (no pre-amp) so it's always on, but eventually I'll add a switch- maybe I can replace the master volume pot with a push/pull style like the Epiphone pros.

Thanks. I'm not 100% sure I like the stick-on "E" either. Someday, I'd like to try my hand at making a pearl inlay for the tailpiece.

I can't stop messing with this thing. Over Thanksgiving, I focused on tweaking the Vibrola. First, I took off the spring and flattened it in a vice a wee bit to get a better break angle over the bridge. I also figured out a cheap, easy solution to prevent the string eyes from sitting cockeyed in the slots- just run a bit of thick wire through them: Finally, here's my version of the teaspoon style Vibrola arm- it's literally the handle of a large serving spoon. I call it a mash potato style arm. I think it fits the Wildkat look better than the plastic on the regular arm and it has a more substantial feel. Oh, you'll notice I ditched the roller saddles. They didn't really add that much by way of tuning stability and the knife-edge style just sound better to my ear. I think my next mod is going to be either a brass nut or zero fret to further brighten the tone.

Here's the finished product:

Here's the view of the cut from deep inside... Looking through the pickup opening from the top, you can't see it at all.