Operation: Make My Sparrow Rat Rod Gooder.

[Greg_L]

Complete.

I'm calling it here. It is largely a much much better playing and sounding guitar. Also better looking with the new reflector knobs on it. I love reflector knobs on LP's. I don't really care what the rules are for what knobs go on what species of LP to "be authentic" this is my project so my rules. It looks way way better IMHO in addition to playing and sounding better.

I'll get some tone samples of my monkeying around this weekend sometime.



It is sadly the littlest bit sharp on the E, A, D, and e still no matter how much i try and make adjustments to it. It's not enough that you'd notice in a mix as i have tested in some demo songs of mine and it sounds bazillion times better.

But, I have done all i can do and feel comfortable doing. Mutt may have to confirm for me but i suspect it could still be a problem at the nut as i didn't realize until AFTER all this work was done and i was doing the final set up i discovered the very first fret is a higher then all the rest. I only caught it while sliding a metal rule up the frets while thinking i might make one final truss rod adjustment (i didn't) / set up and the rule slid petty nicely until it hit the first fret right by the nut and it came to a stop. I went back and did the fret rocking thing but having nothing to rock against at the first fret i double checked by sliding the rule again and sure enough it come to a complete stop at the first fret.

So that tells me and my limited knowledge on this subject that where i set the height of the nut slots off the height of the first fret, now discovered to be higher than all the other frets, i probably could address that issue and fine tune the nut again. But i'll worry about that next string chnage. As of now it is more than usable and i am just being really really picky.

I could also set it up so it is perfectly set up off the first fret. I have lately been playing and writing some cool riffs capo'd at F. Just something about overdriven full chords capo'd on the first fret sound friggin amazing to me.

All that -OR- the neck angle is wrong and i am not tackling that at all. It's is plausible. If that is the case, This will be come a parts guitar and i'll stick the Kent Armstrong Pickups in my Epiphone and call it a day. or sell it as is. Who knows.

Tones to come dudes.

Awesome! I like it.

As for the knobs.....no one cares about that stuff except vintage collectors that probably don't even play. I put speed knobs on all my Gibsons. They're not good looking but I just like em better. They're way easier to deal with when standing and playing fast.

As for the tuning...one thing to keep in mind....a fucking guitar is never truly in tune. Ever. I don't think it's possible unless you have one of those weird compensated fret guitars. There's always a slight compromise somewhere with the types of guitars we play. Close enough is good enough.

[muttley]

Firstly mate, you have done a fine job and I know you have enjoyed learning on the way, thats how I got where I am today and I'm pretty sure gerg would say the same with regard to his journey on all this stuff. Its all about how you get there not that you did got there.

On the intonation thing dont worry about it. The biggest piece of knowledge I could instill in you is that there is NO SUCH THING AS PERFECT INTONATION... What you have now is a decent functional instrument that you know every inch of.. thats good. You can make minor adjustments now and reverse them to your hearts content full of the knowledge that you know how to return it to default.

When you say you have small issues with intonation on some strings, what strings? Is it the open strings only? If the open strings are tuned correctly how do the fretted notes intonate? Man, You are so close to being able to do a full shop setup you just dont realise it. The only thing you need now is to be able to identify the root of the issue. You have proved you can do the fix...Well done, get your speed up and I would employ you..

[muttley]

..................

As for the tuning...one thing to keep in mind....a fucking guitar is never truly in tune. Ever. I don't think it's possible unless you have one of those weird compensated fret guitars. There's always a slight compromise somewhere with the types of guitars we play. Close enough is good enough.

Even then with compensated frets or whatever it will only play in pure intonation in one key. Its the nature of the beast. Perfect musical intervals are described in fractions and as a result when you come round to the octave adding fractions you always have a little bit over or a little bit short. Nature and physics made it that way...

Like you say, dont sweat it, just play it...