Ernie Ball Musicman and Sterling guitars/bass appreciation thread!

[Ripper]

Know where I can get the silent circuit? Pickups upgraded but not exactly to ebmm spec, Suhr FL in neck, SSH+ in bridge. Stan Hinesley karma in the middle. Excellent position 2 tone. very nice for funky stuff, chords but works well for single not stuff too!

Yup I have 3 springs in the back. Setup for .10s. Idk, there's just too much tension in the springs! can't even do subtle vibrato stuff how? Asking Brendon to send it to Malcolm for a setup, wanna try the Carl Verheyen setup for the bridge.

Any pickup will do, noiseless circuit lookout at ebay or at the ebmm forum sale thread. Sometimes they appear. Change to .09s for better trem play. must must unscrew and release spring tension of the trem claw using a philip head screw.

Word of advice - dont need to send to the tech. I only send to tech for soldering job. Why? Cos I baby my ebmm so muc, I would rather ruin them under my own hand. I have set up all my ebmm myself, and even adjusting truss rod relief. And till this date, my balls are all in pristine condition, and all very low action. Learnt so much doing setup myself, to the extent I can even set up my Warwick 6 string neck through bass, now even helping colleagues to setup their guitar so they save money to buy milk powder for their kids.

You will not regret doing things yourself, dude. You learn more about your gear everyday, really.

p.s. - note that I have no piezo equipped balls? bcos I dont buy things I cant remedy myself if they go faulty.

 

[J.custom]

I see, alright I'll look out for them on ebay. I've done some reading up and it's a dummy coil, with a blender trim pot to decide how much of the dummy coil you want to blend it. Of course that would mean that if you have more of the dummy coil blended in, you lose more brightness and bite from the single coil. If it's not too difficult I may attempt to DIY this.

Actually I'm kind of the opposite of you. Any soldering jobs I'll do myself, and I'll try to set up as much as I can by myself. But sometimes for setups, I'm just not very sure what to adjust after a while. I know how to sight necks, adjust intonation, neck relief and action. Is there anything else I'm missing?

The main reason why I want to send my guitar back to BGW/Malcolm for a (free) setup is because the tuning seems to be rather unstable. It's not crap, or VERY good, but just enough to annoy me. The tuners are Schaller locking tuners, nut's well lubricated(no ping sound when I tune), so I can only suspect that the issue lies with the saddles? not too sure.

haha your words have inspired me to attempt to do the Carl Verheyen setup on my own, hopefully all goes well.

 

[Ripper]

yUP, dummy coil thats it. You may have to also provide a 9V battery compartment to activate the dummy coil. Maybe u have enuff clearance inside the electronic cavity..

Good to know you a diy person too. Thats is some procedure you gotto follow while doing a setup. Personally, I always check sight check the relief/bow of neck, then for intonation (you know, the 12th fret harmonic vs the open string tuning thing), next I will adjust the saddle height for playing action. If I get slight buzz from low action, I will play with the truss rod for fine adjustment. This process, particularly the saddle height and truss rod, will repeat at least 2-3, 4 times before i'm satisfy with total playability of the guitar. Yup i dont think you miss out anything

The trem issue, could weel be the trem post, thats the last area of possible problem i can think of. Next time u solder for me, i setup for u.

 

[J.custom]

hehe ok you say one ah? set! I was trying (still am as we speak) the carl verheyen setup for my sterling. It's something like this:

But I'm just worried that the tremolo screw isn't long enough. I've only managed to raise the pitch of the G and B strings by half a step. E string's barely half a step. But on the other hand, I read on the EBMM forums that some guys managed to do it on their Lukes, which have an almost identical bridge to the sterling. here's the thread for those of you who might be interested:
http://www.ernieball.com/forums/music-man-guitars/46427-tremolo-setup-2.html