The Lace Alumitone™ pickups, like the X-Bar, which we use extensively, is based on a non-conventional technology (which we will not go into here) that provides noise- and hum-free high definition full range sound in a beautiful and lightweight package. They don’t consist of two separate hum canceling bobbins like a humbucker, so when wiring them, there are less options. The option that they do provide is a “split” which is more similar to a coil tap, but it is again not a conventional coil tap because it does its magic without a dramatic loss in signal. But it changes the voicing of the pickup in a very nice way. Connecting one of these pickups, using the split option, can be confusing because rather than shorting out one of the bobbins or part of the coil, you actually choose a different ground but leave the hot (signal) wire alone. For a humbucker sound, connect the white/black cable to ground and leave the white cable disconnected and for the single coil sound, connect the white cable to ground and leave the white/black disconnected. (Leaving the white cable completely disconnected is important – resist the temptation to connect it to the other white cable, or shorting it to ground.) Here is...
Learn MoreZero frets have an awesome property: they allow open strings to sound as close to fretted strings as possible. In addition, there is no guess work in cutting nut slots, etc. All in all, they just make perfect sense. When it comes to .strandberg* guitars, the 0-fret serves a secondary purpose as well: namely that it provides string ground for the remaining strings after only the high E has been grounded. One drawback, however, is that it can wear out over time since the string is always resting against it. The more the string can move across it during play, the quicker it will wear out. The original design intent for the EGS hardware was to simply fasten the strings in the string locks and let them pass over the 0-fret, but with fanned fret deployments, the string locks don’t line up at the correct spacing. So to provide this, and also to minimize the possible movement, a correctly cut “nut”, or “spacer”, is needed. Now that we have guitars in serial production, it is no longer feasible to hand-cut nuts, as we have always done. We need an outside vendor to produce them in quantities and at a decent price. But the vendors out there are not used...
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