Babik Custom Hollow Body Part 2 - Making it RIght
00:00 - Introduction 00:38 - Description of New Build 02:18 - Project Wrapup 02:58 - Sound Sample 1 - P-90 Pickup 03:24 - Sound Sample 2 - Rail Pickup 03:50 - Sound Sample 3 - Both Pickups Series 04:15 - Sound Sample 4 - Both Pickups Parallel 04:41 - Sound Sample 5 - Both Pickups Series - Distortion 05:08 - Sound Sample 6 - P-90 Pickup – Distortion I have this trait. I plow through and finish things that I start. Most of the time it is an attribute and has been a contributor to me being successful at a lot of things in my life. Sometimes I push through when I should stop and be patient. This either gets me in trouble or produces mediocre to bad results. In the case of the part one video of this guitar I should have just waited and done it correctly the first time instead of being impatient. This video fixes that mistake. The first build video of this guitar was as my father would say - a half assed job because I was exasperated and built a guitar that is not worthy of such a wonderful guitar body. I got frustrated and wanted to get a video to the channel on time when things did not go as planned. In that video I installed a MIM Fender Player Stratocaster neck with a Pau Ferro fretboard. I also installed a Seymour Duncan SH-1b 59 Model 1-Conductor Pickup with a really basic 1 volume/1 tone wiring harness. There is nothing wrong with these components. They are just not what I intended this guitar ultimately to be. I had intended to install a US made Fender neck with rosewood and a Seymour Duncan P-Rails pickup with some pretty cool circuitry. The wrong neck was shipped to me, and I settled for what I had in my hands at the time. I had grand plans for the pickup and wiring. I was going to install a Seymour Duncan P-rail pickup with an amazing number of tones and control. Then I could not get the wiring and pickup I installed to work. After building the wiring harness out three times and still no success I decided the P-Rails I had installed in the beginning was bad. I was wrong. It was not until later that I figured out I had been stupid and wired the output jack backwards. That’s what happens when you rush through something and don’t pay attention. I had a P-Rails on the way back to me as a replacement and I purchased all of the parts again that I would need to do this right. The pickups is a Seymour Duncan TBPR-1b P-Rails Pickup – Trembucker for $119. https://a.co/d/a1d9oQI The P-Rail pickup is a unique design that integrates a Seymour Duncan Hot Rails Single Coil pickup with Vintage P90 pickup into a single unit. This allows you to switch between the two distinct sounds using a push/pull pot or a pickup selector switch. The wiring harness I would end up building would be comprised of two 500k push/pull pots that would provide me the following output configurations: 1) Hot Rails by itself 2) P90 by itself 3) Both pickups in parallel 4) Both pickups in series I also decided to go all in and order a Fender American Performer Timber Stratocaster neck with Rosewood fretboard and Fender Classic Gear tuners. I ordered this from Stratosphere for $475 in like new condition. After everything arrived, I set about building out taking the neck, pickup, and electronics I had already installed on the guitar back off and then I set about building the new harness. Each of the two 500k Bourns push pull pots has nine legs on it for a total of eighteen legs between the two as opposed to the normal three legs you find on your typical guitar potentiometer. I proudly bragged about this to my wife so she would be impressed with the skill I would need to have to build out a working harness. Yep, I really did that. I took my time and built out everything shy of the wires that come from the pickup itself. I was a very happy and relieved man when I finished and plugged the body into my bench amp and successfully tap tested each position of the two pots. The sounds now that come out of the guitar while plugged into an amplifier range from crisp cleans to loud almost breaking up sounds.
