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New pickup in hand. Hope to install it today pending the completion of fatherly Christmas season obligations.

Half-ass installed the Injector in the pickguard last night and first impressions are: I'm gonna love this pickup.

I say "half-ass" because I never did get the pickup raised exactly where I wanted to. The UC-2 bridge sits rather tall on the body so pickups have to be raised almost as far as they'll go in order to get them as close to the strings as you'd like. To make this happen, I will need to cut the mounting springs down by about 50%. I did try to shim the neck pocket to reduce the neck's tilt angle and thereby get the strings closer to the body but then I couldn't get the bridge down low enough for proper action so, shim comes out - springs get cut - pickup gets raised.

As for the tone I got, really fat single coil sound with (of course) no hum. It's a pickup that behaves exactly like you would want it to. It starts off hot and grainy with the volume wide-open but warms up nicely with just the right character shift as you roll the pot back. Even moving the tone knob around produced useful and pleasant sounds with the gain up or down. This has beautifully resolved the issue of the too-thin sounding H60T that it replaced. Between this and my obsessive use of copper shielding, the guitar sounds top-shelf.

While I have the guitar disassembled (again - lol) I need to get out a rubber mallet and take some of the radius out of the saddles assembly. It doesn't match the curvature of the fretboard and is also throwing off the volume balance across the pickup poles. There is a lot of room for error in doing this - wish me luck.

So I decided to go ahead and order the neck mate to the Injector. I liked the Injector so much that dropping in the neck version seemed a safe bet. I really liked the H60 but I'm gonna give it up in the interest of having a matched set looks-wise.

I'm at the point where I know what needs to be done to finish off some of the details. I would like to pull it apart one final time and do all these tweaks in one shot: Flatten the bridge, swap the pickup, re-shim the neck pocket, and wire-in a diff capacitor to run with these pickups.

One thing leads to another...

Removed the saddle plate and pulled out each of the saddles. Then took two pine boards and a mallet and successfully matched the radius to that of the fretboard. Guitar plays much more fluidly now, particularly above the 12th. This, however, created a new problem.

By taking some of the curvature out of the plate which holds the saddles, the saddles are now closer to each other. Some are right at that magic point where they are contacting one another while vibrating which creates this dreadful buzzing noise. Low E played open is the worst. So, I have to either file down the sides of the saddles or insert something between them.

Decided to sneak this in while I was doing all the other little tweaks:

And now...unless I get some brilliant idea, here is the UC-2 in its completed state.



...in its home:

vr6pilot wrote:

Oh lord, Nowhere to Run. Love the axe.

The Teisco bridge as on ET 460s etc seems to be the same as what's incorporated into your bridge/trem (I have both so I've compared) I've wondered if what you've done would be possible for my Teisco but was a bit scared to try it out, so thanks for taking the chance and posting the results.

vr6pilot wrote:Decided to sneak this in while I was doing all the other little tweaks:

Much better! (was going to suggest ) I still think your guitar looks better with a 6-in-line headstock, but your tweak really helps tie the neck in.

Inspirational thread! Can some knowledgable soul tell me if the UC2 neck is the same dimensions as the one found on an Aria 1802 (Conrad/Lyle/Tempo/Epiphone ET270 etc)? If so then the 6-a-side neck may have a home...

sumlin wrote:Inspirational thread! Can some knowledgable soul tell me if the UC2 neck is the same dimensions as the one found on an Aria 1802 (Conrad/Lyle/Tempo/Epiphone ET270 etc)? If so then the 6-a-side neck may have a home...

16,000 views and no one can answer this?

Guitar still plays awesome. Tuning stability keeps improving as the string nut wears-in. Things sounds so perfect thru a vintage style amp.

Just put the original neck up for sale in the classifieds section, for those who may be interested.

Fast forward one year:
Do I still love this guitar? Hellz yes!

If there had been just one thing I could have done to make this guitar 'better' for me then it was most certainly the neck swap. Getting proper spacing at the nut has made the biggest difference in turning this into a guitar I play because I want to and not just because I should.

The second most significant mod is the pickup selector relocation. I do not miss inadvertantly slapping the selector into bridge position while trying to strum through the neck magnet. Good riddance!

Anyways...just thought I'd check in.

Another thread murdered by Photobucket.

That sucks, I enjoyed your build. Waiting for the same thing to happen to mine.