Last time we checked in, Jon Herington's Talladega Pro was in the spray booth. Gary had applied a nice Ic'd-T burst (Yo) over an Oxblood back and then topped it with a clear coat dosed with a flattening agent. It was Jon's idea to give the guitar a patina that didn't scream "new" and I think that we did a pretty good job. Gary tried a couple different mix ratios until I felt we had just the right amount of gloss. It's funny—I had just posted a story about how hard we work to get super-gloss finishes, and here we are dulling one down!
The nice thing is that as it gets used it will polish up a bit is some areas to give it a real lived-in look without resorting to distressing or relicing.
Backing up a little, let's talk about the electronics. Jon had a working test-bed guitar fitted with different pickups at different times. His final preference was a pair of Fralin Unbuckers.
These pickups are unequal length tapped, which allows a single coil mode to be used that isn't just half of a humbucker. The tapped (or split) mode delivers a nice clean, snappy and articulate single coil-like tone that is ultimately usable. It was Jon's desire to wire the tone controls as switches so we installed push-pull tone pots to provide the single coil positions.
The tone pots are first in line, then wired to the switch. The output from the three-way is fed to a master volume, leaving the fourth pot as a "dummy" in case we do something different later. I think this was a good move, as there's enough going on with al the coil switching that a master volume will vastly simplify things onstage.

I got quite a bit of time on Jon's guitar, and I have to say it was a very versatile setup. The Unbuckers in split mode did a good job of mimicking some Tele and Strat tones, especially in the middle position. The longer scale length (25.5") could really be made to cluck and twang. The bridge humbucker sound was fat enough for Bluesbreaker leads or classic Free tones with a welcome extra bit of "tap" on top of the note. Surprisingly, the neck pickup with the tone rolled back offered up some really sweet Joe Pass type jazz sounds. Overall, I thought that this guitar was a good balance of punch, girth and articulation—perfect for the wide span of material that Jon will be called to cover onstage.
And speaking of stages, Jon is heading into rehearsals with Steely Dan, so Todd got the whole thing buttoned up and out the door in order to be there on time. No matter how many times we do this, it's always like seeing your child walk out for their first recital, except the stage is a lot bigger!
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