Modding my Angry Angel

spinland
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Mon Feb 13, 2017 9:07 am

These mods were much less ambitious (and scary) than drilling holes into my Grande Dame, but still fun in terms of putting my own stamp on my shiny new PRS and making it "all mine." Here are the before and after pix:

Image


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daryl
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Mon Feb 13, 2017 9:35 am

Did you cover the pickups?


spinland
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Mon Feb 13, 2017 10:03 am

Yep. It came with 85/15s that are tough to improve on so I kept them. Added magnetically transparent plastic covers.


spinland
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Mon Feb 27, 2017 7:23 pm

I've been demented busy for a while, working on a challenging and time-critical product pre-viz for a long time client. Those are the jobs you make sure you burn the midnight oil to get right. WHy topical? It's kept me from playing (and posting) for some days now. Oi.

Today I had some spare time awaiting several renders to complete, and took care of a hardware issue that's been bugging me. My new PRS came with a solid "stoptail" bridge so the strings can't be intonated individually. I've had a replacement unit (and a new clip-on strobe tuner) waiting in the wings for a while now and today I pulled the proverbial trigger. I not only had to learn how to do my first bridge replacement, but also how properly to intonate an electric guitar. Challenges are fun! :woohoo:

Here is the original bridge right after I removed the strings:

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This is the new bridge after installation, re-stringing, tuning, a refreshed setup of the neck relief, action and pickup heights, and then intonation adjustments. As you can see from where the individual saddles ended up, the stock solid bridge just wasn't getting it done.

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And, just because I can't get enough of looking at my gorgeous Angry Angel, here she is all put back together and ready to rock:

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Depending on the airline issues I might bring her to Camp along with my acoustic. We'll see. That's very much just a notion right now.

Mark


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auntlynnie
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Tue Feb 28, 2017 7:26 am

Well, I didn't understand any of that, but I like how the guitar looks now, with the pickups covered.

You will likely see discussions about flying with guitars as the time for camp approaches.

Lynn


wrsomers
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Tue Feb 28, 2017 11:56 am

Very impressive work Mark! It's amazing how far off the bridge compensation was compared to your setup. As far as traveling with your guitar, there are several posts under the IGC thread which deal at length with the issue. Just briefly though, you might want to reconsider flying with two full size guitars. Last year I carried 2; a GS Mini which fit in the overhead, and my D28 which I gate checked. All went well. I flew with Delta and they were great and genuinely concerned about the safety of my instruments.

Bill


spinland
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Tue Feb 28, 2017 12:45 pm

Thanks, Bill! Yeah, I was surprised by how far off the original's defaults I needed to go.

I have nothing but respect and admiration for PRS guitars, and they would never use that solid bridge (and they do so on some rather pricey models, not just the lower-end SE line) if it wasn't a quality item. There's much debate on the InterWebz about its merits and drawbacks and, in the end, to me it was a personal choice that I wanted more detailed control. I've loved this guitar since I took it out of the box but I want to put my own stamp on in—make it 100% mine—without doing anything to muck up the original great tone. So far so good.

Very much hear you on the travelling with both. It's really only wistful musing, methinks: I'm having such a blast with both guitars I feel badly about the idea of one of them missing out on the fun of Camp. There exists a very good (and pricey) travel case designed by MONO specifically for travel with an acoustic plus an electric in one dual bag. Several name brand musicians endorse it as very high protection (so long as you don't baggage check it) and the dimensions aren't much thicker than a single case. Quite ingenious design, actually, but in the end I will probably only bring the acoustic. I have an excellent hard case for that one.

Ness pointed me to several threads here all about guitar travel and I've been devouring them, following links, and collecting related DOT and TSA documents. By the time August rolls around I should be dangerous. :silly: I'm leaning either Delta or Jet Blue, both of which have a good reputation with dealing with guitars and also thankfully have service at my nearest airport (about an hour away).

Mark


spinland
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Tue Feb 28, 2017 4:55 pm

Hi, Lynn! I blew right past your post without seeing it. :blush:

Without getting too geeky, intonation relates to how on some guitars a string that's tuned just fine when plucked open can be sharp or flat when fretted down the neck. You saw the thread Michele started with those crazy fret designs to mitigate the issue? Well, with normal guitars the best you can usually do is make sure a string hits the same note open and at the 12th fret, and that's controlled by the distance from the nut to the bridge. If you can tweak that distance a tiny bit on a per-string basis you can get pretty close to an in-tune guitar no matter where you fret it. On acoustic guitars tweaking that distance can be a real issue, but on electrics people adjust that all the time, and I wasn't happy with the limited ability the stock bridge gave me there.

Yeah, I plan to be very much engaged on travel discussion as it heats up here. :side:

Mark


spinland
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Tue Feb 28, 2017 9:06 pm

I've been collecting all the bits and bobs I've pulled off the PRS into a tidy plastic bag. I might never need them again but I'm loathe to discard anything that's connected to this lovely guitar, even by past association.

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spinland
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Thu Apr 13, 2017 11:59 am

This may or may not be the "final" mod to Angel. Added locking tuners handmade by MannMade USA in New Hampshire. He buys OEM PRS SE tuners from the factory in Korea and retrofits them in his machine shop with the lock bolts. Aside from the lack of the PRS branded back plate they are identical to the PRS Phase II locking tuners you can get on the Maryland-made models.

They came stock with chrome tuner buttons, and I wanted to keep the ebony ones I had added to the old set. I had to shim the shafts because they were thinner than the originals, but that was only a minor annoyance and the set is working like a dream.

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I normally play D'Addario Nickel Wound but for this photo shoot I went with DR Black Beauty strings because, well, black. :side:

Mark


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