Zero Fret on my Custom 60, plus pickup magnet spacing

[raygun85]

The spacing on mine isn't as bad. I'm not real happy with the neck. The bridge is more acceptable but I'm still not crazy about it. I have noticed vintage Mosrites that are less than perfect so I wouldn't want to nitpick too much. Although the pictures of the lefty above aren't good.

[leftyjay]

i ended up moving the bridge pickup to be centered as good as i could get it. now it looks like raygun85's bridge pickup. better then it was, but it would be sweet if the pickups matched the string spacing.

being i'm pretty much on my own with my lefty C60 guitars, i'll figure out the best way to get to the promised land.

[Veenture]

Man, this forum is so educational, I love it

[Bob Shade]

Hey guys! Thanks Raygun for the pic's in regards to my comments about magnetic field. We did alter the bridge spacing to better the play of the guitar, so perhaps its time to work on the pickup poles. To date, I have never had anyone mention it or say anything about the sound being louder on one string than another. That being said, looks are important too.

You know, I read an article in VG about Seth Lover when he invented the humbucking pickup. Originally, the PAF he designed for Gibson had no adjusting polpieces at one end, the metal cover would have covered the pickup with no holes. Ted or someone in charge said why does it not have adjusting polepieces for each string? Seth Lover replied they were not needed. The magnetic field would still pick up all of the sound. The man in charge said, put the adjusting pole pieces in there anyway, it will give the salesman something to talk about. So they did. True story from Seth himself. I guess you catch my drift here.

Another note of importance, you are never on your own with a Hallmark Guitar. If you would rather have a dealer fix an issue you are more than welcome to send it back to them for service. We are always available for the customer here as well. We are only a phone call away.

Thanks again for the thread and we will be looking to see if you get this guitar just to you liking.

Bob

[erksin]

first off, i have a sunset green and a pearl white lefty custom 60 guitar. i feel fortunate to have 2 of the first run of lefties ever made. the guitars are really nice. just a couple issues i've noticed that seem odd. dont know if this is the norm on all custom 60s or just on the lefty guitars.

i was noticing that my cowboy chords seemed to be out of tune from one chord to the other (G, C, D, A, E, etc). plus the action is quite stiff because of the string height over the zero fret. I was looking at both my custom 60 guitars and noticed how much higher the zero fret is compared to the regular frets. both of the guitars have considerably high action at the first fret. this is usually the reason for the first fret being sharper in pitch when fretted and the action stiffness.

i have a couple other guitars with zero frets and the action is real low at the first fret. my gretsch 6120-60 has a zero fret, but the zero fret is the same size as my other frets. after doing some searching online, i notice that most zero frets are slightly higher than the regular frets, but the Custom 60s are extremely higher.

did this issue get overlooked because of it being a lefty? i'm sure i can get the fret filed down to get the correct string height over the zero fret, but i wanted to see if i was the only one that noticed it.





when i play from the 3rd fret on down the neck, the action seems good and the guitar plays in tune.

i was also wondering if the slotted fret at the top was a replacement for the slotted nut that i see on other custom 60s?

plus..., i know these guitars have a slightly wider neck than the mosrite, and the bridge matches the string span, but are the pickup magnets still the span of the original mosrite guitars? the reason i ask is, i noticed the magnet spacing doesnt match the string spacing. i dont really notice any sound drop in the strings that are not lined up with the magnets, but it seems to look off. i was able to look at these guitars at jerrys lefty guitars in sarasota fl and noticed that all the guitars he had, have the same spacing difference.

my white pearl C60 is centered better between the E strings, but does have the same spacing difference. like i said before, the guitars sound fine from string to string.



and finally, the lefty guitars came wired left handed. the only thing is, the pots are righty pots which doesnt allow the volume and tone taper to be smooth. it basicly was all or nothing. i rewired them back to righty (normal) wiring and they work fine.

just wanted to bring up these questions to see if it is just me, or is this the norm on all C60 guitars?

I really can't speak to the zero fret issue because this is the first guitar I've owned that had one, but I find the action to be quite low on the first fret and find it very easy to play down low which I happen to do a lot. I can bend double stops down there with no problems, etc.

In regards to the pole spacing - at the bridge, the E strings on mine are pretty much equally spaced and both pass over the outside edges of their respective screws. None of the strings pass directly over the center of the poles on the bridge pup - they are all slightly off-center towards the outside edge. On the neck they are all pretty much dead center. I think that's the likely reason - the pickups are spaced so that they can be angled.

The spacing on your Sunset Sparkle definitely more skewed than mine is from those photos - like the pickup was mounted a little east of the center line or something. Mine looks identical to your Pearl White's spacing.

And yeah - it would have been nice to have had actual lefty pots installed, but NOBODY does this on any off-the-rack lefty I've ever tried. heck my lefty '78 LP Deluxe is wired righty from the factory - they didn't even bother to switch the Les Paul signature around.

I think a lot of these minor issues can be chalked up to the fact that Bob didn't have final QC on these and the guy responsible for setting them up was completely inexperienced with Hallmarks which seem to have their peculiar quirks when doing the final set up. All fairly small things that were easy to fix by the users which IMO shows that it's a great design.

[raygun85]

Originally, the PAF he designed for Gibson had no adjusting polpieces at one end, the metal cover would have covered the pickup with no holes. Ted or someone in charge said why does it not have adjusting polepieces for each string? Seth Lover replied they were not needed. The magnetic field would still pick up all of the sound. The man in charge said, put the adjusting pole pieces in there anyway, it will give the salesman something to talk about. So they did. True story from Seth himself. I guess you catch my drift here.

Bob, no offense, but you're begging the question here. Adjustable poles only correlate to vertical height adjustment, which only translates into the proximity effect. (i.e. the closer you move the pole to the string, the volume, bass, mids, and attack will be accentuated.) The magnetic flux is hottest at the top of the pole itself, so when a string is moved off to the side the proximity effect is totally insignificant.

As for never having received complaints, well, it seems you just did on this thread. I didn't complain because I was gonna change the pickups out anyway and I didn't want to appear overly critical of your guitars or pickups. Either way, it is still no excuse for poor engineering. The reason we didn't catch it is because we're only making pickups and copying old Mosrite dimensions. Never had a chance to put them in a guitar with a wider bridge and nut width until we made our prototype last year. This was ONE of many problems that discouraged us from taking on orders too early. (And of course, it looks like we'll never be doing more than one-off custom orders now.) Anyhow, people make mistakes. Not condemning you. We have made mistakes. Now that it has been pointed out, I'm sure you will fix it on future models, as did we. But bringing up an argument that is relative but really unrelated to the specific problem at hand is nothing more than a strawman argument. Seth Lover, adjustable pole-pieces??? Unless we're talking about horizontally-adjustable pole-pieces, that subject is totally irrelevant.

That being said, the 60C is a nice guitar. Not a perfect guitar. No guitar is.

Resepctfully, matt

[Bob Shade]

NEWS FLASH Man, I totally forgot we fixed this pole piece issue already on new models models. We made a run of pickups with the standard Mosrite spacing just to have around the shop and these got used on the lefty's and some other one off's. We realized the spacing was slightly off for our newly improved spacing and adjusted the polepiece spacing on all the new models and corrected it on the last couple of runs.

All of the right handed models made this year have the correct spacing. Raygun's spacing should be correct on his guitar however with the pictures he took of his off to the left of center I can't tell.

I can say is we do the very best we can for all of our customers here and literally have letters that go on and on from Hallmark fans about our quality and craftsmanship.

Jerry from Jerry's lefty's will be notified about the polepiece adjustment. He is our lefty dealer and takes care of making the tailpieces and aligning the pickups and so forth.

Until then please understand this is our first lefty run of 60 Customs, and we do appreciate your input for any future runs. If anyone would like to send the guitar back for any adjustments, we are more than happy to help.

All the best, Bob

[raygun85]

Sorry, I'll get the old tripod out tonight at home and take a straight on shot on the pickups.

[olrocknroller]

My Hitchhikers use the same size zero-fret as the others on the neck, but they are stainless. I notice that these guitars need to have a little relief set into the necks for best playability, so I think the higher zero fret would permit an absolutely straight neck, which a lot of players prefer...

OOPS!!! Just dug out my 'Hikers and took a second look at the zero-frets...guess what, they are slightly higher than the other frets. I don't have any measuring equipment to say how much higher...but I stand corrected!!! I still find that they play better with some relief in the neck though.

[raygun85]

From working with Don and Tim Wilson I learned that Bob Ito from Aria took Nokie's Hitchhiker project under his wing. In fact, if you look at the Aria 40th Anniversary Ventures model, it has the same vibrato as Nokie's Hitchhiker. It's similar to a Mosrite vibrato, only it's stamped as opposed to being cast. The Wilson Bros models all have a taller zero-fret too.