joshuallen
Well-Known Member
This is my first 7 string. I've owned baritones in the past, but this is my first true 7. It's a decent guitar I received in trade. It's a basic LTD F-207, Korean made. It's got a few paint chips and scratches, but the cosmetic stuff is secondary to me. The neck feels good, if slightly thicker than I'm used to (and wider, obviously). The previous owner but a pair of Duncan Blackouts in it, and botched it all the way. He tried to ground the electronics to the inside of the electronics cavity (!!??). He said he was surprised at how noisy actives were, with a bad hiss. I thought that was weird, but when I opened it up and saw that it was improperly grounded, it made sense. He also claimed he rigged the 3-way to kill, so the neck wasn't hooked up. Since I use the neck almost exclusively, I knew I would have to fix that. When I cracked it open, all the wires were hooked it up, but it didn't work, so he knew he'd done something wrong, but had never bothered to fix it.
I decided after some playing around to redo the wiring from the ground up. There was tons of lead on both pup wires, so I cut them and started over. I removed the tone knob someone had added and inserted a killswitch into the circuit. I grounded it properly to the pot body and basically resoldered and taped all the bare wire (did I mention he had a mass of ground wire sitting exposed, loose, in the cavity?) except on the jack, which looked fine.
I put a sacrificial string on it to test and everything worked perfectly on the first test.
The only issue now is that it frets out a little in the upper registers. It could probably use a fret leveling. It works if I raise the action slightly. Can't decide if I should go for it or leave well enough alone. It's my only guitar at the moment.
I decided after some playing around to redo the wiring from the ground up. There was tons of lead on both pup wires, so I cut them and started over. I removed the tone knob someone had added and inserted a killswitch into the circuit. I grounded it properly to the pot body and basically resoldered and taped all the bare wire (did I mention he had a mass of ground wire sitting exposed, loose, in the cavity?) except on the jack, which looked fine.
I put a sacrificial string on it to test and everything worked perfectly on the first test.
The only issue now is that it frets out a little in the upper registers. It could probably use a fret leveling. It works if I raise the action slightly. Can't decide if I should go for it or leave well enough alone. It's my only guitar at the moment.
![7194_10200842579242151_1978735644_n_zpsab77ff04.jpg](http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f25/joshuallen/7194_10200842579242151_1978735644_n_zpsab77ff04.jpg)