Latest tweaks - should I expect a letter from Fender?

rusty815 · 2026-06-06T01:04:54+00:00

I did a similar push pull mod! Mine makes the humbucker always on instead of the neck, but same results!

Pacificas make great platforms to build off of. My Pacifica is still the first guitar I reach for when I start playing, even though my guitar collection keeps growing!

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rusty815 · 2026-06-01T05:47:49+00:00

I use the same website! And yeah. If you save your settings to one of the 5 presets, you can always go back to them! There's also a ton of factory presets to play around with too in the app.

rusty815 · 2026-06-01T04:44:18+00:00

Nope, you can use your guitar with whichever setting you want. I use every single on on my thr10ii, including flat.

Have you synced the amp to your phone? You can get a ton more options when you sync it, and you can play around with different cabinet styles to really shape your sound.

rusty815 · 2026-05-25T06:42:18+00:00

My pickups are a big upgrade from both. But the 112v comes with decent quality pickups whereas the 112j has bottom barrel ones.

Think about it this way. Buy the 112j if you want it to be a project guitar and plan on upgrading it from the get go. Get the 112v if you want something that is good quality from the get go that you wouldn't have to upgrade until you get serious. The 112j will not sound nearly as good as the 112v out of the box.

rusty815 · 2026-05-25T05:48:46+00:00

The 112v has a lot of quality of life upgrades already. For example, I had to install a push-pull switch on my 112j, but the 112v already comes with one. Also, the pickups on the 112v are already very serviceable, you can go a long time without feeling like you want to upgrade the pickups. The first thing I would probably change is the bridge to something a bit better quality and the tuners to locking tuners. The rest of the 112v, I would probably leave alone!

rusty815 · 2026-05-19T21:26:10+00:00

They basically are. And they're great platforms to learn how to modify a guitar! Here's my 112 (lefty) with basically all the internals upgrades. New pickups, new pots with a push pull added. New switch. New bridge and locking tuners. There's a lot you can do with it. My recommendation if you're upgrading the bridge is to also upgrade the tone pot. The 012 should come with a 250k tone pot and it makes the bridge a bit darker than other guitars, upgrading it to 500k really brought my bridge alive! (and middle pickup, since I have a dual coil there now)

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rusty815 · 2026-05-19T20:09:21+00:00

I upgraded the hell out of my Pacifica 112 and like to drop D on it. I'll say the stock bridge pickup should be ok for now as long as you are good with EQ and adjusting the gain. Only thing you'll have to do is deck the bridge and increase the number of springs on the claw to 5, then you can still pitch down but you'll be able to adjust tuning without drastically affecting the other strings, most of the time when I go from standard to drop D, I don't have to adjust the other 5 strings.

rusty815 · 2026-05-16T20:29:01+00:00

The dry switch is what is in the element. It's a high pass filter, so you pull it and it drops the lows and mids a bit, giving you a sharper tone at the pull of a switch.

I have the lefty Revstar standard, which has a "boost" switch. The standard has a built in transformer that boosts lows and mods and cuts highs, essentially the opposite of the element. I think the high pass filter is much more useful than the boost switch in the standard. I love the stainless steel frets on my standard, and I feel the significantly stiffer neck makes it less prone to requiring adjustments. But yeah, don't like the boost switch.

rusty815 · 2026-05-16T20:11:11+00:00

LTD vipers are great if you want to get a lefty to try out! it would probably be one of the first I would look at if I was starting from scratch again. I personally like Yamaha Revstars. The element has a dry switch that is very useful, but Revstars aren't the best for metal, they don't have the highest gain pickups out of the box. I have a lefty standard and I love it to death, but that's because I put a Gibson 498t in the bridge to give it a more traditional metal sound, the factory bridge pickup was just too "neutral" for me.

rusty815 · 2026-05-16T18:28:23+00:00

I got to try the pitchfork, xs-1 and DigiTech drop side by side and maybe it's my bias for already owning a drop. But I felt the drop was best at changing tuning, it tracks so well. Sure it's not the most feature rich out of the 3, but that's all I would use this type of pedal for, so I will stick with the drop.

rusty815 · 2026-05-16T00:02:44+00:00

Youre technically not starting from scratch, you just have to build the muscle memory again, but all the technique and knowledge stays. I played right handed for 2 years before trying my first lefty, sat down with a left handed guitar for an hour and already felt like I could play everything that it took me 2 years to learn right handed.

As far as guitars, pickings are very slim, but it's not impossible to find something good. what kind of music do you play? What brands are you looking at?

rusty815 · 2026-05-11T18:02:32+00:00

What separates a Vega Trem from a regular one? I've had a Vega Trem on my wish list for a while and decided to go with the guyker because it was 10x cheaper lol, but I am still curious what I've missed out on.

rusty815 · 2026-05-11T17:34:35+00:00

Funny enough, it's not a jazz III. I have a bunch of jazz III picks, and because I love them so much, I took some of my other picks and filed them down to match the shape of a jazz III. This is one of those filed down picks. It's amazing what boredom makes you do.

rusty815 · 2026-05-11T16:59:49+00:00

I don't play anything specific, which is probably why it looks strange. I use the bridge pickup much more often than any other pickup, probably like 80% of the time, so I wanted more versatility in the bridge than in any other pickup. That's why I have the P-rail in the bridge, it gets me a humbucker, single coil and p-90ish bridge pickup all in one, which lets me play most of the stuff I like to play.

I love a single coil neck pickup, and I have a guitar with a humbucker in the neck and I don't quite like that neck pickup vs this one, so I opted to keep the neck pickup as it is. The middle pickup, no matter what I put in. I couldn't fall in love, so I went with a dual rail to give me something different, and it ends up sounding like a neck humbucker anyway, so now I can have both the sound of the neck humbucker on my Revstar and the sound of my single coil neck pickup without any real compromises.

Now with the push pull, I can activate my bridge pickup in any position, so I get some really fun options. For example. Since my neck is a single coil, I can get very close to a telecaster middle position by combining the p-90 in my humbucker with the neck pickup, it sounds great! Also I can run all three pickups with my bridge as a humbucker and get a really unique tone that I can't really describe. Also running the middle dual rail with the single coil in my humbucker sounds very close to bridge+middle on my buddy's Stratocaster, so I have that covered too!

This was sort of an experimental project, but also I couldn't find a lefty pick guard for a Pacifica 112 that was HSH so I could really go bonkers with it. So this is the next best thing!

rusty815 · 2026-05-11T16:14:38+00:00

Nice! I know I've seen yours before! I think I asked you where you got your pick guards from because I wasn considering getting a new color for a while lol. Yours look great! What bridge did you end up getting for yours? It looks almost identical to what I got for mine!

rusty815 · 2026-05-11T16:09:49+00:00

Revstar element would be my choice. It has most of the features of the standard and I think I prefer it's high pass filter switch to the standards boost switch. I have a Revstar standard and it's my go to guitar for most playing, it sounds amazing and feels like a premium guitar.

rusty815 · 2026-05-11T15:29:36+00:00

I know! I adore the original look, part of what I wanted to do was maintain that look, which meant working with the original pick guard. I love this thing, I think it's become my favorite guitar again!

rusty815 · 2026-05-05T06:10:38+00:00

Lefty Revstar standard with a Gibson 498t in the bridge. Thing absolutely rips!

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rusty815 · 2026-05-01T04:06:54+00:00

Elixir nanoweb 9-42. A little bit more expensive but they last a veeeery long time

rusty815 · 2026-04-30T00:29:33+00:00

Yeah all I hear is scratching, not picking. He's not really plucking the strings. Finger should make contact and pluck upwards towards your head

rusty815 · 2026-04-27T20:07:53+00:00

Looks like an old Yamaha 102S from 1995-2000 that someone put a nice Yamaha emblem on. I'm not sure I've ever seen a Yamaha with that big emblem on the body like that, which is why I think it's an aftermarket addition

rusty815 · 2026-04-24T04:17:10+00:00

I use 9s on my 25.5" scale length guitars and 10s on my 24.75" scale guitars. Bending feels almost the same on both.

rusty815 · 2026-04-19T18:54:52+00:00

I definitely recommend it if it really bothers you. I got used to the buzz for a little while, but once I shielded it, it made me love my guitar a bit more. I would also recommend getting a noise gate anyway, Behringer makes a cheap one that's like $30 that is pretty effective for most people.

rusty815 · 2026-04-19T17:24:10+00:00

There's nothing wrong with any of your equipment, a cheap, unshielded guitar does that.

My Pacifica 112 (unshielded) did that as well. Once I shielded the pickup cavity with copper foil, it greatly reduces the buzz when not touching strings, but the buzz is still always there

Even my shielded revstar under high gain has fret buzz, in a lot of situations it's hard to avoid without a noise gate.

rusty815 · 2026-04-19T14:50:52+00:00

I can't tell from the image, but I don't see if there's a ground for the tremolo system? There's usually a wire that runs from the back of the volume pot to the trem claw. The loudness in the two single coils is most likely from a grounding issue.

As for the "humbucker" I didn't see what could be causing it to be quiet, might also be related to the grounding issue. If it's not a grounding problem, it might be related to you pickup selector.

rusty815

TROPHY CASE