The other night I posted that I had my Comanche "dialed in"... well, I thought I did, but I didn't. The day after I made that bold statement, I A/B/C'd it with my two MIM Strats... They kicked its butt tone wise and playability. I really freaked out about this, plus I was still having the issue with hitting the pickups with my guitar pick. I bought the guitar from DAVE'S and was ready to send it back or trade it in on something else. I really like some of its features and today I decided to give it another chance and got some setup help.
I pretty much tore the thing apart and started from scratch. The only things I didn't remove were the neck and the tuners. I found a couple of things that were incorrect. The locking mechanism for the locks on a couple of the tuners weren't seated quite right and this may have helped kill some of the tone, volume, and stability. Also, when I removed the pick guard, I noticed that the compression springs for the pickup height adjustment screws (on all 3 of the P'ups) were way too short. They were really sloppy and barely making contact at either end of the pickup and limited how low I could safely lower the pickups without the springs functioning at all! I replaced those with some short GIBSON style springs I just happened to have laying around. They fit much tighter and seem more secure. I readjusted the pickup heights (when I did this before, I was getting 64ths, 32nds, and 16ths all messed up... I was reading my gauges wrong! Not only am I going deaf, and nuts, I'm also going blind). I also restrung it with D'Addario 9 - 42 (I had gone with 10s for about a week... I like 10s... even 11s on my Les Pauls) and set the bridge height to FENDER Strat specs instead of G & L specs (the net effect may be the same, but the FENDER specs are easier to read and make more sense). This seems to work a lot better, and the 9s have better tone on this guitar. I'm also using slightly lighter picks with my Strat type guitars (COOL 1.0mm... the ones with the sandpaper type grip). I played it for a while this evening and I'm not feeling so negative about it now. I was ready to pitch the thing out the window
! Anyway... it seemed to feel and sound better the longer I played it tonight, so I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt and work with it a while. Time will tell
!
Has anyone else had a real struggle getting one of these dialed in?
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Originally Posted by Yardbird Mac
! I'm glad I took the time to get some of the little problems fixed and dialed in. I'm getting some of the tones I've heard in my head, but have never quite been able to get with my Les Pauls or my Strats
!!!!! My Les Paul R9 is still my #1, but the Comanche
is a great blues guitar!!
