Happy Columbus Day! I received the repaired harness on Friday, and was suprised to find that there were new filters sent back with it. So of course all the new guts went and and the old filters came out! (Mica...would you like the old filters back?) In my haste to get the harness in I forgot to take before pics, but here is an after. Here is the harness installed, notice the new wire colors. The new wires seemed to be more substantial in than the originals.
Since all the switches were out, I oriented them a little differently. Previous to disassebly they were oriented following the curve of the body shape, and in the heat of performance I'd slip my hand down and find it difficult to tell which switch I was flipping. When I re installed them, I reoriented them so they are parallel right angles with each other and switch straight up and down. See pics..
So after all that I didn't have time to test it, and ran off to rehearsal on Sunday. Needless to say, the scream of Further was heard prominently throughout the land! The new harness works perfectly, and my volume control is extremely useable now. This is a testament to the superior design of the harness. Not that I didn't wish to test it before rehearsal, more that I was confident that everything would work great. There was an ease of reassembly due to the plug-in nature of the components; everything is pre-placed and wired so all pots and switches just slip in their holes! More happened than the Volume control too. Previous to the gut-come-out project when more than one pickup was on, the output gain would increase. I always thought this was a normal characteristic, but I got a call from Mica letting me know there is another option. The gain increase was indeed by design (she said Ron thought it would be cool) and indeed it did add an item of controlthat worked well. However after the upgrade using more than two pickups would NOT increase the gain, and make everything more stable (unless I purposly set the pickups hotter than one another). After a lot of discussion with her (thanks Mica) I decided to get the upgrade. I do use gain sensitive equipment. So now with the gain output at a normalized level, and the volume control working perfectly (I cannot stress how much I love it) I feel all in control. Woo-hoo! The Alembic "Further" refined my guitar into it's pure essence, and I say THANK YOU for that! They supported this issue free of charge, I only had to pay shipping to the factory. Best $5k I ever spent (on the guitar that is ) Rock on!
