Yeah, when it was released in the '80's it was one of the cheapest pedals because of its plastic casing but I've heard from a number of people that the SCH-1 is the best chorus pedal and completely worthy of its price. I got the SCH-Z which is a reissue and it lacks a couple of the mods you often find on the SCH-1's now which were added to make it more durable.

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/sSlUUB4u-dc/hqdefault.jpg

I'm still using this one I bought sometime in the late 80's/early 90's.

An absolute classic. Wish I still had mine. A new company now owns that brand and the pedals they're doing aren't as good as the original like what you have.

Hey Chula, when I posted that picture of me playing a guitar, you said you wanted pictures of my guitar, right? Well here ya' go, just for you:

Sweet. I'm come *this* close to buying a jazz box so many times through the years.

I'm fantasizing about owning an all-ebony Telecaster one day but I've never taken the time to sit down and really experience an ebony fretboard. My buddy insists they are closer in feel to maple than rosewood, which is encouraging because I really don't like the friction / grain of rosewood, but I've never really experienced playing one in the right way. I've noodled around on his Les Paul Custom in the past but was too distracted by the feel and weight of the body to pay attention to the neck.

Opinions on ebony? Especially in comparison to maple and rosewood?

http://i.imgur.com/dl64p3n.jpg?1

Ebony is closer in feel to maple. But you don't want an all ebony guitar. It's be heavier than a boat anchor and dead as nails from a resonance standpoint.

Interestingly enough that example Telecaster above was a luthier's custom project, says he heavily chambered the body and used a thinner neck to cut the weight down to 8.5 lbs, which is only half a pound heavier than my ash body American Standard. It's fitted with all Fender hardware, vintage style compensated bridge w/ modern pickups, says it sounds fantastic but of course that's up in the air until it passes through your own ears.

All that being said I'm sure there are other body woods that would look equally as striking with the right finish. I'm a huge sucker for matching neck / body color.

That reminds me of that George Harrison Let it be era Tele. I have only had ebony on acoustics but I do love the feel. And a few drops of bore oil rubbed in makes it so shiny and nice.

Ohhhhhhhh man, my eyes are throbbing, that's pretty much exactly what I would want it to look like.
Now throw an ebony neck on there instead of rosewood and we're in business.

http://i.imgur.com/Pr5U3uw.png

http://i.imgur.com/Bm9882j.jpg?1

My roommate just asked me if I wanted this Takamine Jasmine series guitar because he 'didn't need it anymore'. I obliged. The action's a little high for my liking but it has nice tone and it was free so I can't complain.

Nice. Good guitar to learn slide on. Although I'm sure the action could be lowered if the neck is ok.

I have a guy who does $30 setups who I'm going to talk to about just that.

Nah man, rosewood body sammich, and the one piece rosewood neck make it for me. The maple(?) meat in those rosewood teles make them really sexy feeling/sounding.

Looks like the Tele George Harrison played during the let it be sessions and during the rooftop show. I stared at that guitar for about 30 minutes at thr R&R Hall of fame.

You just have to sand down the saddle a little bit. Start by trying 1/16".

What DAW do you use?

He might not even have to do any sanding. There might be a shim (or two) under the saddle in the saddle slot or glued to the bottom of the saddle. Pull out the saddle and have a look.

Ya, good point.

Contacted the fella on Craigslist with the custom built B-bender Tele. Going into Vancouver tonight to check it out. Very small chance of me going home without it. Very excited to get working on it, what a beast. First step is replacing the Japanese Squier neck with a custom neck from Warmoth, or maybe something else if I can find a nice neck at the local parts shop. Really been itching to start messing around with a Partscaster and this seems like the perfect candidate to get a head start.

http://i.imgur.com/ogvo4KV.png

Never seen one with the Bender top loaded like that before. Wonder if it will interfere with your picking hand???

Yeah it's certainly a strange looking thing, and that was the first thing I thought too, doesn't look too raised off the body, I'm sure I'll be able to get used to it with practise. Thing is too unique to pass up (and cheap!), however impractical a top loaded B-bender may end up being. I can't even find one with a B-bender like this on Google images.

EDIT: There we go, tracked down a similar one, might be from the same company.
http://vanrosa.myshopify.com/product...r-system-ott-1

Sure looks like it. Biggest advantage obviously is you don't have to hack a bunch of wood out of the body and you could always remove it at a later date if needed.

Looking forward to your review if you end up scoring it.

Hi Guys,

My name is Scott. The bender on this guitar is my design. Found the thread through the referral links on my site. I also used to own the guitar in question. The bender installed is a standard over the top bender, just with vintage style saddles. I put the guitar together to test out vintage saddles and top loading with the bender.

The bender is primarily designed to be a back loader and can be set up as such with either the included modern saddles (graphtech string saver classics) or vintage saddles.

Besides replacing the bridge when I acquired it I also redid the wiring as it was a mess. The new configuration is: 5-way switch, 1 volume, 1 tone, neck-on switch with 500k ohm pots.

Cheers,
Scott

Wow, that was unexpected, nice to meet you Scott, it's great to hear from the designer, I was worried I wouldn't be able to find out a lot of things about this guitar. I'll probably be buying your old guitar this evening, I live in Surrey and gig in the Vancouver metal scene with Crown of Talons, we're playing a show at Funky Winkerbeans on the 22nd if you want to stop by and see your old guitar again, I'll probably be using it on stage if it's not in the shop. I love the look of having the bender over the top, especially with the vintage saddles, do you recommend I reinstall it as a back loader or will it function fine on top? Did you install the pickups as well? What are they? I'm having trouble tracking them down online.

It works well enough as a top loader in standard tuning. The string breakover is about as shallow as it could be and still function, so if you are going for any down tunings there could be some issues. Someone attempted to drill out the holes for back loading before the guitar got to me and did a pretty sloppy job of it (alignment is off). With a drill press and some patience it could be corrected but I opted to leave it as is.

The neck and middle pickups are old Tiesco single coils. Can't post links due to low post count here.

Bridge pickup is a mystery. Its a proper tele bridge pickup but no identifying marks.

Well here it is, in all of its strange, b-bending, 5-way switching, interbreeding junkyard glory. Perhaps the strangest guitar I've ever played and I'm very excited to see what it becomes.

http://i.imgur.com/o48bLuQ.jpg?1

The thing has been sitting in the previous owner's home studio mostly untouched for quite a while and it's really begging for a proper setup. First thing I'll say is it definitely feels like playing an "experiment". The neck appears to be from a Japanese Squier Strat and I imagine it was thrown on only because it was available at the time, not by preference. There's a lot of friction left with this finish and paired with the rosewood fretboard on the other side I'm finding it quite difficult to move around the neck with ease. The action is significantly higher than I'd like and over time the strings have really carved into the 3 brass barrels at the bridge, unfortunately in the wrong positions, so the last 2 strings are further spaced than the rest. Saddle heights seem very oblong, a few strings are raised awkwardly higher than their neighbors. The intonation is probably pretty nasty but I haven't checked. It does stay in tune better than I expected but could still really benefit from a new set of tuners on a new neck, in this condition I'm tuning after every song.

But all of that being said, I drove straight to the guitar store after buying it, walked straight to the amp room, and cranked it through a '65 Deluxe Reverb for almost 45 minutes. I absolutely love this combination of pickups, very clear sound and the Teiscos have such a unique voice, a punchy sort of chirp that really compliments the classic twangy Tele bridge pickup. So fortunately the unique qualities of this beast go far beyond its absurd hardware, it definitely has a voice that is entirely its own, I won't be swapping out these pickups any time soon.

Using the B-bender is going to take some getting used to but I'm already having a hell of a lot of fun with it. It adds a ton of personality to open chords, kind of like the swooning bends in Zeppelin's Rain Song but subtler and more integrated into the root sound of each chord, very excited to start incorporating it into our music. Going to have to track down some lessons on using it with leads, steel guitar style solos on my horizon.

So overall I'm very happy with the purchase and entirely expected it to require some restoration / upgrades, that's primarily the reason I wanted it, it's a fantastic template for building something quite remarkable. I love the B-bender system, I adore the pickup combination and having a 5-way selector, I'll be talking to the local guitar tech this weekend about getting the bridge re-filed for proper string positioning, I'll see if he has any decent necks laying around, if not I'll order a premium custom neck from Warmoth, and I'm replacing the ugly epoxied plastic knobs with standard chrome Telecaster knobs at lunch break today.

The **** you find on Craigslist.

Congrats man! Kudos for stepping out on a limb.

Granted this is Jimmy at his worst, and the sound sucks, but still some nice B-Bender work.

Didn't realize he used a bender on Ten years gone live. I always think of Hot Dog or All of my love for the B bender sound.

First picture of the Tele brothers together, beauty & the beast.

http://i.imgur.com/exo7MlS.jpg

I did a bit of remodeling.

http://i539.photobucket.com/albums/f...psvebm8op9.jpg

I didn't think you were here for rockguitar101, unless you were him all along?

The poster. :laughing:

Sweet set-up though.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...on_dollars.jpg

:D

I needed to fill the space. A 50" LED TV is being mounted in that corner, and will be connected to the system, along with a wireless keyboard and mouse, so I can switch from PC mode to cable TV mode. Those JBL's (bottom left/right) are phenomenal. When the volume is only at half on the Marantz, it's like you're sitting in front of a wall of speakers at a live event. The Bose desk monitors are good for while I'm adjusting things up close at the PC, but when I move back about a foot, it's a wall of sound. Perfect for recording/playing while standing. I'm pretty stoked.

Nice.

My new amp rig is this plugged into a 1 x 10" Marshall cab.

https://www.blackstaramps.com/products/ht-1rh/

Sustain baby.

http://regmedia.co.uk/2011/11/11/nig...ty-caption.jpg

Pictures and an explanation do not do it justice. It's orgasmic.

The HD500 comes with a couple "Blackface" models that were modeled after the Blackstar series, but there's absolutely nothing like the real thing. drool

I've scrolled up from the quick reply box at least 4 times now to get just one last look at that masterpiece of a guitar before I hit reply.
It's not often I double-take on the internet, let alone double-double-take.

Ron Kirn talked me into the neck. It's 1" thick from the first fret all the way down. Thickest neck I've ever played by far. It felt weird for about 10 minutes after I first got it. Now I couldn't live without it. The combo of that neck with the light pine body makes for killer tone and sustain.

Fun read:

Ron Kirn - opinions on his guitars | The Gear Page