5150 build.

When I finally get to it I will go in to why the EVH set up is THE most difficult to do correctly and has the least room for adjustment to achieve it's aims of a very low action, almost dead flat relief and full contact of the underside of the Floyd on the guitar top. This last part was compromised on the later Wolfgangs all achtop versions EVH and PV even for Ed. Also it's worth mentioning that no production Ed guitar for sale EVER had a EVH setup done the way Ed had his own. Even the super limited super expensive custom shop versions . Fender will deny this of course saying they are "just like Ed's" the action will be but the way it is achieved isn't.
 
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One other point that almost ALL replicas get wrong APART from Musikraft is the deep set neck with a small angle to accommodate the Floyds minimum hight requirements .IMG_1676.jpg
You can also see I did the first part of the fret dress, I won't continue with that until I can string it and play to evaluate under tension. (I'm not a Plek.)
 
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The one that makes me laugh the most is this neck.
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They go to all the trouble of the strat head conversion with birch wood and then get the 12th fret marker dot spacing wrong.WTF.
 
As a big fan of Ed in the day I have most if not all of his appearances in the popular Guitar magazines of the period that I bought when they where published (and still have.)
Most of the photographs on the web of 5150 are very poor resolution or simply not suitable to learn anything from so I went through the magazine back catalogue for possibly better images. And found some good ones.
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These confirm the MusiKraft neck pocket nicely .
Look at Frankie with the Tom Anderson neck err Kramer. Tom made some Kramer prototypes including the Ripley stereo and this neck.
Kramer never actually made anything.
 
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I can't wait to see how it turns out. Even if the CC pickup doesn't sound right, I think you'll be able to hone in on what will sound right fairly quickly after you hear the CC with the body. I'm sure you've seen Pete Thorn's EVH pick up shoot out on YouTube. There definitely was not a clear consensus of which sounded the best in the user comments. I jotted down what I thought was best or actually which ones I'd consider buying. I'd say 20 out of the 23 pickups would work and we'd never be the wiser. To me, it's how the pickup cleans up without a treble bleed. And if you're using a Fractal you can go with a lower output pickup because you have so much flexibility to add the proper gain in the preset.

Is the Custom Custom you're putting in the same as the SH-11?
 
I can't wait to see how it turns out. Even if the CC pickup doesn't sound right, I think you'll be able to hone in on what will sound right fairly quickly after you hear the CC with the body. I'm sure you've seen Pete Thorn's EVH pick up shoot out on YouTube. There definitely was not a clear consensus of which sounded the best in the user comments. I jotted down what I thought was best or actually which ones I'd consider buying. I'd say 20 out of the 23 pickups would work and we'd never be the wiser. To me, it's how the pickup cleans up without a treble bleed. And if you're using a Fractal you can go with a lower output pickup because you have so much flexibility to add the proper gain in the preset.

Is the Custom Custom you're putting in the same as the SH-11?
Ish the same, like the EVH Frankie and the hand wound version, Hand wound pickups tend to sound a little more open and dynamic than the super even production versions, even with the same parts and amount of wire.
 
Sanding sealer done and sanded ready for primmer.
This poses two questions;
1 Did Ed paint in the neck pocket?
2 Do I try and copy the over radiused lower bout body in to the neck pocket? Because; the Musikraft body is done as it should have been and the original just goes off the radius. This is strange when you look at the sanding details (or lack of them). 5150 was hardly sanded at all, the roundover in to the heel has no transition sanding at all and the square edges are sharp but somebody hand sanded the lower transition.
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Even if I flatten the radius in to the neck pocket it will still be shorter than 5150 so I'm probably going to leave it even. This detail is the best way of telling even the best 54 strat replica is not original so my day job says sand it. Damn I have too.IMG_1680.jpg
 
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That splits the difference and look similar. The body transition is slightly shorter on the Musikraft body than the original so identical is not possible anyway. The transition is about at the nineteenth fret dot on 5150 and this one is 8/10mm feather back.
 
Back to question 1;
Who painted it? Paul made the neck out of an ESP strat replacement but he didn't do the paint. I can only assume Ed did it. If you were a repair tech at Kramer and EVH asked you to paint a body would you do it that badly? Zeck didn't do it, His ones are slightly better . Would Ed mask the neck pocket ? No would be my guess. From a tone point of view with thin paint you can't tell anyway. All pre CBS Fenders are painted in there ,entirely in the 50's and they don't have a tone issue. As I'm using nitro and painting thin I will go with painted.
 
Really cool, here's a few shots of my 1983 Pacer Special, which have a perfect flat flat on the body setup too. Spring plate removed.
Poor guy needs a good cleanup :oops:
oTEHhydl.jpg

vaQkjiPl.jpg

HqF5RROl.jpg
 
What does it weigh? and is it poplar? Also did the Floyd get put on afterward as in 83 they shipped with a Rockinger and that Floyd only started production in 84.
Edit; My bad here, the 82 came with the Rockinger and part way through 83 they had the APM FRT5 Floyd exactly the same as 5150 in fact this is the only place that trem came. This is why it would have been in the Kramer Hq and available for Ed.
 
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All but the very first ones are IME, they are maple and weigh a ton. No chance of mistaking one of these.
 
Really cool, here's a few shots of my 1983 Pacer Special, which have a perfect flat flat on the body setup too. Spring plate removed.
Poor guy needs a good cleanup :oops:
oTEHhydl.jpg

vaQkjiPl.jpg

HqF5RROl.jpg
That basically is what 5150 was made out of. Rare these days. Did you take the spring plate off? if your trem block has a little gold "made in west Germany" sticker on it is the very first run of Schaller made Floyds.
 
That basically is what 5150 was made out of. Rare these days. Did you take the spring plate off? if your trem block has a little gold "made in west Germany" sticker on it is the very first run of Schaller made Floyds.
Yeah I took the spring plate off. I'll have to find the original tem block, changed it for a fat brass block years ago, should turn it to original.
 
I would put the original back on if it were mine. I only ever swap blocks if there is a problem with dead or over loud notes as the change in mass can help (not always but worth a try.) The only reason I made the steel block for this is I am unlikely to find an APM FRT5 for less than £1k and I'm not going there. I think it's funny that FU (snake oil rip off company) doesn't make the one block all their BS is wrongly predicated from. :tearsofjoy:
 
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Paint:
Wimbledon Errr Olympic white over primer.
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Quite pleased with the shade, it's within the variance of the actual colour that I have found. I will really have to think through the paint because I can't make it look too perfect and I am going to lightly relic it. If I just painted it in my usual way it wouldn't look right. It has to be a bit crap to look like the real 5150.
 
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