A Schecter Guitar Project

Megadebt

Megadebt

Experienced
This is a guitar project I am starting. This is a Schecter Diamond Series Guitar. This guitar will be used for D-tuned songs such as Motley Crue songs. So far it has been stripped of all its basic parts. Next I will clean it up the body, clean the fretboard, and polish the frets- etc.

This guitar's Floyd Rose will be blocked(dive only), big brass block, EB Not Even Slinky Strings (12 -56), silent springs, Grover Locking Tuners.

The pickups in this guitar are the Seymour Duncan Nazgul/Sentient

Thanks for looking!

Caveman

Schecter 1.JPG
Schecter 2.JPG
 
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I did the same thing to a Schecter S-3 (SG Clone) pretty much. I used Not Evens on it too. In drop C it was still too sloppy. I think it had a short scale though. Yours probably has the 25.5 scale so 12's would be fine in D. Might help you from wringing it's neck. The S-3 had HUGE frets. Easy to go sharp on it.
 
Here is a before picture of the dry and grimy ebony fretboard. Hard to see in the picture but the frets are not nicked, or scratched, and no flat spots - they are just dull & grimy. Next I'll clean the fretboard with some Dunlop Cleaner & Prep Solution. I'll clean the frets lightly with 0000 steel wool.



Schecter 3.JPG

The guitar's bridge has been disassembled for cleaning. I'll let these soak in WD40 overnight. Except for the shim plate/finger plate - those are probably not going back on.

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Rex said:
As a general rule, don't leave out parts of a bridge (or anything else) unless you have a specific reason for doing so. You'll usually discover the hard way that there's a reason those parts are there. :)
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I never intentionally leave anything out. Invariably there is a bolt or screw left that leaves me scratching my head.
 
That guitar is beautiful! It can only help so much, just because only a couple of companies publish their unit weight, but you could use D'Addario's tension calculator to approximate, at least in their brand, how different guages' tension would feel at different tunings:

http://web.daddario.com/StringTensionPro/

Maybe that would translate closely enough to Ernie Ball for your purpose. Many companies are using wire and wrap from that same company out of Tennessee, but maybe in different wire to wrap ratios; anyway, it's worth a look for a ballpark.

Also, since you've already disassembled the bridge I highly recommend checking the radius of your saddles against the radius of the fingerboard as you reassemble. I actually called Anderson Guitarworks a couple of weeks ago, and Tom Anderson answered the phone! He said one thing they always do is to take apart their locking bridges and reassemble them with the correct radius, because they're just never right off the bat. Whenever I used Floyds I found the radius to be wrong, but I had just figured it was just on the guitars I happened to use in the past. I would just shim until they were right.

Anyway, that looks like it's gonna be fun as hell to play. Best of luck, and Enjoy!
 
I never considered this guitar particularly good looking really - so thank you!

Any idea where I can buy these saddle shims? I may have to make some out of feeler gauges. A project for a later day.
 
I cleaned/conditioned the fretboard, have not polished the frets yet. This is how the bridge/trem/trem block/trem stopper wound up being installed. I have a collection of various tension springs to experiment with later.

I would have positioned the trem stopper flush with the edge but there were holes in the guitar from a previous install of a different device. The holes lined up well enough to work for this one, so instead of putting more holes in the guitar I just went with this. It is rock solid and it works, so...

Schecter 6.JPGSchecter 7.JPGSchecter 8.JPGSchecter 9.JPG
 
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EVH didn't have the spring plate on 5150 because it hadn't beed designed yet and he liked the bridge to sit flat on the body. This is a pretty hard to do set up though is then the only way to alter the action is neck shims.
 
Installed strap locks and a new "vintage" strap, installed pickup trim covers, locking nut, string tree, knobs, tightened every nut and bolt that could be tightened on the guitar, and did a quick overall polish of the guitar. Waiting on the new Grover Locking tuners before proceeding.

I'm having fun with all this.

Schecter 10.jpg
 
Cave Man said:
Installed strap locks and a new "vintage" strap, installed pickup trim covers, locking nut, string tree, knobs, tightened every nut and bolt that could be tightened on the guitar, and did a quick overall polish of the guitar. Waiting on the new Grover Locking tuners before proceeding.

I'm having fun with all this.

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I've got to say it again: great looking. I love the ebony fretboard; those are my favorite style of fret markers, and lower bout deep cutaway is supberb. Awesome.
 
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