The Electra Forums

I picked up an Alden Blues Line Abalone Shell Guitar - supposedly inspired by Zematis shell guitars such as one owned by James Honeyman Scott of the Pretenders. I can't leave anything alone though, I have to "make it better" or at least make it my own.

The guitar was pretty good stock. The wood seemed pretty good - nice mahogany, and nice fret board and inlays. Good bones.

Pickups were Entwistle designed (the guy that started Alden is named Alan Entwistle). He has his own line, think of him as an English GFS. But I thought they were a lot like the Epiphone LP pickups. I had a set of duncan designs that were copies of the JB and Jazz so so I put them in. I adjusted the action, filed on the nut, set the intonation, oiled the fretboard, polished the frets, put some .010 regular slinky strings on it (the chartreuse pack). I put an Epi smaller tuneomatic on it. I remove the cheap pots and put full size ones in the volumes, and put push/pulls in the tone controls. I wired it like the pro endorser, the top tone control for a single coils switch for both pickups and the lower tone control push/pull is for out-of-phase. The put some foam behind the neck pickup (in the cavity) to help the pickup angle be more level to the strings. I ordered a new 3-way switch but am using the original for now. Lots of work and tweaking but used mostly what I already had on hand. I like an oversize strap button so I may put some different ones there (don't have any now). Oh, the previous owner put abalone inlaid knobs on it. Those stayed. It had 18:1 Grovers in it stock too, so those also stayed.

This guitar is pretty nice. It ROCKS. The single coil sounds are good. And the phase switch is nice in both humbucking and single modes. it plays great. It already had grovers on it stock so no change there.

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Thorny