The Story behind the FuzzCaster
Photo: https://instagram.com/p/2ogjiUFJWu/?taken-by=itscliche
My passion for electronics brought me an idea , why not including an effect pedal directly into the guitar instead of being activated by foot?
Of course that was after I discovered Matt Bellamy playing with his own on stage, but to be quite frank, he’s a guitar legend, I’m not, and I’m also probably sure he didn’t mod his guitar on his own. Manson (famous luthier) made it for him. The choice of the FuzzFactory is not related to Muse or any kind of “Fan” stuff, I could have chose a Big Muff, a Pre-amp, a Mastotron or maybe an Octaver, but the 5 Knobs ZVex Fuzz Factory is pretty well versatile! (Octave Up/Down / Grassy Big Muff Sounds to Modern Fuzz and the well-known Squizzy sounds to play with..)
Anyway, back to our horse, I bought this Left-Handed Telecaster a while back when I was student, it was just a 150 $ guitar (the price for a Fender Telecaster 40 years ago though), and at the time, Squier didn’t produce any Telecaster for Lefties. It was also black and the paintjob was awful, the pickups were terrible and the neck wasn’t even near a Fender shape.
Therefore, I started with removing the neck, for an unfinished Fender Strat Mapple neck, witch I tainted with some laquer. Next removed those bad pickups and put an Epiphone Dot Neck pickup on and a Fender MIJ Telecaster bridge pickup. I also wanted to remove the tailpiece for a Fender MIJ or MIM one, but the holes didn’t fit.. But it’s on the list.
Then it was a hell of a ride to adjust the Strat neck to a Tele body, had to settle for hours to find the right height for the strings and the proper truss-rod adjustment.
After that I decided to repaint the whole thang, in ... silver, yeah I only had 2 cans of Silver spray paint lying in the garage because of a delivery mistake few months ago. Ok I’ll give it a shot..2 hours to sand the body to the wood (darn chinese paintjob & dings all the way).
Then spray time, ok the grey isn’t perfect, the spray isn’t really accurate or even progressive, and it’s a pain in the neck to harmonize the whole thing..
24 hours required to dry... Hmm Ok, it’ll be enough to plan on the electronics, try to figure out the switching plan to do the job, I had some SPDT ON/ON Switches witch I used on this “#FenderMods”. Soldering Iron in my hand , and ready to roll! Ok it’s Working it’s really working, and it’s pretty fun!
Ok but now, it’s time to drill a hole in the back of the guitar, oh darn it, I only got a Drill to do the job. One hell of an afternoon with my drill and doing the job like a hobo outside, trying not to drill the whole body was WILD! A 3x3 inches square later and 6 holes for the controls, and boom, it’s ready to go.
Again trying to fit the 5 pots in the right position is tricky, but still fun if you don’t brake one! (happen on my 1st attempt).
Plugged the 9V battery with all my fingers crossed and boom, there you go, I played with it 2 hours this morning, It’s RAW, handle with care!
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