ThePearDream's Talman Projects
Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2017 8:33 pm
I have at least two different Talman projects to post about, so I'm going to put them into one thread.
I currently have three Talmans and have been a big fan since the original run in the 90s
Talman Project #1
When they announced the Talman reissues, I started brainstorming and looking for a good deal.
February of last year, I was able to snag a TM302 for $210. It had a few dings, but was otherwise in great shape.
There was some excitement on the day I got the guitar, that I have to share.
One of our furniture lines that we sell at work, had sent a pallet of upholstery fabric remnants to our warehouse for an industry event. I, along with the rest of our design department were oohing and aahing and being typical designers while looking at fabric . I was pulling out a particularly nice pattern to give it a closer look,when the thumb of my fretting hand got sliced open by a hidden metal pallet strap. If you've never dealt with pallet straps, just know that they can have razor sharp edges. After spending the rest of the morning getting stitches, I decided to call it a day and head home. On the way home, I stopped at the FedEx location near my house to pick up my new Talman. Once I got it home and out of the packaging, I couldn't resist playing a few minutes, even though I had fresh, throbbing stitches.
After cleaning the blood off the back of the neck, I put it away and took a six week break from guitar playing. This gave me lots of time to finalize my plans.
After my stitches were out, I did decide to give the guitar a few months of playing, to see if I would like it as it was. Overall I really liked the guitar, the neck was comfy and satiny, the body was nice and resonant and I preferred the newer style contoured heel. Tuning was solid and I enjoyed the bridge pickup. But, I've never been able to get on with tele neck pickups, they always seem so blah. In the end, I decided to do some heavy mods.
Plan V1 was as follows:
This would be a 70s era Ibanez copy from an alternate reality where the Talman was a Fender model.
Here is the mockup I made:
Since this was to be a 70s Japanese guitar, I was going to use a 70s Japanese car color. I decided to use the color of the car my mom had when I was little.
Datsun Metallic Leaf Green
I did my initial conceptualizing for this before I had this guitar in hand. I had planned for it to be short scale, using a Mustang neck.
Based off of the heel to bridge distance on my older Talman models, this would have worked fine, but while the older Talmans have 22 fret necks with an overhang, the reissues have 22 fret necks without an overhang, throwing off my calculations by 1/2". In order to locate the bridge correctly, I would have had to fill the bridge pickup route, which seemed like more trouble than it was worth. Meanwhile, I had already purchased a VM Mustang minus the body, for a good deal. Defeated, I set about coming up with a new plan.
Plan V2:
Install the mustang trem I already had and make a custom pickguard to fix the awful shape of the Tele variation pickguard. I also did a swimming pool route to maximize the future pickup options.
I've always wanted one of the TC630s with the red pearl pickugards, so decided to go that direction for this.
Because I'm intending this version to be temporary, I decided to do something experimental with the electronics. It has a 3-way mustang slide switch to select between the output of a 4-way blade switch (Neck & bridge pickups), or a center pickup (Buddha humbucker sized Jazzmaster with A3 magnets), or both. There is a push/pull on the volume to switch phasing on the center pickup. By adding 1 switch & the push/pull there are 13 different sounds. Also, I used a scrap of the pickguard material to make a custom top for the Buddha pickup, making it semi hidden and reinforcing the mustang-ish aesthetics.
My initial thought on using strat size pickups on the neck and bridge, was that it would give me lots of options. I have a couple of strats that I really like, so I don't see any sense in using the types of strat pickups I typically like. So I used some overwound pickups and I hate them. I also tried some GFS strat size gold foils, thinking they would be very mustang like, which they were (flush poles, low output), these sound a lot better than the overwoundones, but also, like a less interesting version of my favorite strats.
After a bit of fiddling, I did get the trem set up nicely, the tuning is very stable with 10-52 strings and I really enjoy the feel.
The intonation screws on the VM Mustang bridge are the absolute worst I've ever used though, they were impossible to adjust when the guitar is strung up.
I took one of the saddles to my local hardware store (the kind where you can buy just 1 washer), and found some stainless steel m3-50 x 18 button head hex machine screws which are a perfect replacement. Using a ball end hex wrench, intonation is a breeze (If you have a staytrem, you can use the same wrench). I think they were $0.35 a piece, so even after tax, it's a sub $2.50 upgrade, and worth every penny. I've since switched out the intonation screws on my Jazzmaster and Jaguar.
One little wrinkle I did find, was that these reissues have nickel hardware, while the mustang bridge was chrome (you can see the difference in the pictures above). Well, for some reason guitarpartsresource sells the talman jack plates in chrome, gold and black. So I bought a new one in chrome.
I currently have a Mustang neck in need of a body, as well as an extra nickel Talman plate.
Plan V3 (future):
This will be getting an Inca Silver refinish (maybe in the spring), white pearl pickguard and since I think these guitars really need to have oddball pickups, I'm thinking goldfoils (maybe firebird sized goldfoils from mojopickups.co.uk).
Plan V4 (future & final):
Also, I'm looking for a similarly good deal on one of the strat variant reissues in the same color. Those only have maple necks, I plan to switch the necks. The strat type will get a new red pearl pickguard and a set of lipsticks, creating a reissue version of the TC630, but with a wood body, instead of MDF. This one would then get the maple neck, creating a silver Talman with a maple neck, mustang trem & goldfoils.
I currently have three Talmans and have been a big fan since the original run in the 90s
Talman Project #1
When they announced the Talman reissues, I started brainstorming and looking for a good deal.
February of last year, I was able to snag a TM302 for $210. It had a few dings, but was otherwise in great shape.
There was some excitement on the day I got the guitar, that I have to share.
One of our furniture lines that we sell at work, had sent a pallet of upholstery fabric remnants to our warehouse for an industry event. I, along with the rest of our design department were oohing and aahing and being typical designers while looking at fabric . I was pulling out a particularly nice pattern to give it a closer look,when the thumb of my fretting hand got sliced open by a hidden metal pallet strap. If you've never dealt with pallet straps, just know that they can have razor sharp edges. After spending the rest of the morning getting stitches, I decided to call it a day and head home. On the way home, I stopped at the FedEx location near my house to pick up my new Talman. Once I got it home and out of the packaging, I couldn't resist playing a few minutes, even though I had fresh, throbbing stitches.
After cleaning the blood off the back of the neck, I put it away and took a six week break from guitar playing. This gave me lots of time to finalize my plans.
After my stitches were out, I did decide to give the guitar a few months of playing, to see if I would like it as it was. Overall I really liked the guitar, the neck was comfy and satiny, the body was nice and resonant and I preferred the newer style contoured heel. Tuning was solid and I enjoyed the bridge pickup. But, I've never been able to get on with tele neck pickups, they always seem so blah. In the end, I decided to do some heavy mods.
Plan V1 was as follows:
This would be a 70s era Ibanez copy from an alternate reality where the Talman was a Fender model.
Here is the mockup I made:
Since this was to be a 70s Japanese guitar, I was going to use a 70s Japanese car color. I decided to use the color of the car my mom had when I was little.
Datsun Metallic Leaf Green
I did my initial conceptualizing for this before I had this guitar in hand. I had planned for it to be short scale, using a Mustang neck.
Based off of the heel to bridge distance on my older Talman models, this would have worked fine, but while the older Talmans have 22 fret necks with an overhang, the reissues have 22 fret necks without an overhang, throwing off my calculations by 1/2". In order to locate the bridge correctly, I would have had to fill the bridge pickup route, which seemed like more trouble than it was worth. Meanwhile, I had already purchased a VM Mustang minus the body, for a good deal. Defeated, I set about coming up with a new plan.
Plan V2:
Install the mustang trem I already had and make a custom pickguard to fix the awful shape of the Tele variation pickguard. I also did a swimming pool route to maximize the future pickup options.
I've always wanted one of the TC630s with the red pearl pickugards, so decided to go that direction for this.
Because I'm intending this version to be temporary, I decided to do something experimental with the electronics. It has a 3-way mustang slide switch to select between the output of a 4-way blade switch (Neck & bridge pickups), or a center pickup (Buddha humbucker sized Jazzmaster with A3 magnets), or both. There is a push/pull on the volume to switch phasing on the center pickup. By adding 1 switch & the push/pull there are 13 different sounds. Also, I used a scrap of the pickguard material to make a custom top for the Buddha pickup, making it semi hidden and reinforcing the mustang-ish aesthetics.
My initial thought on using strat size pickups on the neck and bridge, was that it would give me lots of options. I have a couple of strats that I really like, so I don't see any sense in using the types of strat pickups I typically like. So I used some overwound pickups and I hate them. I also tried some GFS strat size gold foils, thinking they would be very mustang like, which they were (flush poles, low output), these sound a lot better than the overwoundones, but also, like a less interesting version of my favorite strats.
After a bit of fiddling, I did get the trem set up nicely, the tuning is very stable with 10-52 strings and I really enjoy the feel.
The intonation screws on the VM Mustang bridge are the absolute worst I've ever used though, they were impossible to adjust when the guitar is strung up.
I took one of the saddles to my local hardware store (the kind where you can buy just 1 washer), and found some stainless steel m3-50 x 18 button head hex machine screws which are a perfect replacement. Using a ball end hex wrench, intonation is a breeze (If you have a staytrem, you can use the same wrench). I think they were $0.35 a piece, so even after tax, it's a sub $2.50 upgrade, and worth every penny. I've since switched out the intonation screws on my Jazzmaster and Jaguar.
One little wrinkle I did find, was that these reissues have nickel hardware, while the mustang bridge was chrome (you can see the difference in the pictures above). Well, for some reason guitarpartsresource sells the talman jack plates in chrome, gold and black. So I bought a new one in chrome.
I currently have a Mustang neck in need of a body, as well as an extra nickel Talman plate.
Plan V3 (future):
This will be getting an Inca Silver refinish (maybe in the spring), white pearl pickguard and since I think these guitars really need to have oddball pickups, I'm thinking goldfoils (maybe firebird sized goldfoils from mojopickups.co.uk).
Plan V4 (future & final):
Also, I'm looking for a similarly good deal on one of the strat variant reissues in the same color. Those only have maple necks, I plan to switch the necks. The strat type will get a new red pearl pickguard and a set of lipsticks, creating a reissue version of the TC630, but with a wood body, instead of MDF. This one would then get the maple neck, creating a silver Talman with a maple neck, mustang trem & goldfoils.