OK Then. Got the little bird put back together, wired up and ready to go.
I'm thinking of calling it a "Gold n' Black" sort the inverse of a "Black N Gold" Gold"
Actually pretty darned happy with the end results. A few comments from my end:
Wound up doing the headstock logo myself with waterslide paper purchased at a model shop, and a little fiddling around with Paint Shop Pro on the computer. Basically took a pic I had of the old headstock, filled in the missing bits of the logo, then re-sized to get the correct size. Actually worked out pretty well, as did the decal for my yellow cs-350. (I'll probably make a separate post about my home made decal experience. In the meantime if anyone needs a black Skylark logo or black APII logo, or artwork for either, drop me a PM and I'll help you out if I can).
Thanks to all for their suggestions and support. I took Graeme's suggestion about the "Tulip" tuners and went with it. These are from GFS, as are the pups, (more on that in a minute), but they seem to be pretty decent, and most of all they were CHEAP, which fit in with the low $$ mandate I had given myself for this project. They are perhaps a little more"green" than I might have preferred, but I looked at a friend's vintage Gibson, and wouldn't you know it, the color is pretty darn close, and it compliments the overall vibe and color scheme just fine.
"How's it sound? ", I can hear you asking. Pretty darn good, actually. I wired the mini-toggle to be a phase switch, and I'm glad I did. With the pick-ups flipped out of phase, I can get either a delightfully funky sound out of it (played clean) or a pretty gnarly, almost half -cocked wah-wah sound when hit with some nice distortion ( Micheal Schenker fans rejoice) The bridge pup is a marvel, fat as any HB, but with better definition than most. Very cool. And for what it's worth, I had this cranked up to "neighbor calling the constable" levels through my 50W HI-Watt custom into a 2X12 Marshall cab ( with a TS-9 and a Turbo Rat up front, just for fun) and didn't experience any squealing or bad noises (except from the aforementioned neighbors
)
The Bridge PU is a GFS "mean 90" the neck is a GFS "cream 90". If I had to recommend one over the other, I would have to say I prefer the Mean to Cream, but that may have as much to do with placement as anything. Are these as good as the SD "Phatcats" ? Maybe, maybe not, but for way less than 1/2 the cost, for anyone who wants to go cheap, I think these are pretty hard to beat.
(Sorry about the somewhat blurry pics-using the wife's camera, at least that's my excuse today.)
"Enough of my Yackin'-Let's Boogie !"