James May and the Strat...

monquixote

I enjoyed it.

I thought they glossed over the setup as the intonation and action would have been shot.

sweepy

And the pots were pre-wired

Fuzzdog

Bit of a cop out having all the pots prewired like that, but was an interesting show.  I could just watch James May sat there waffling on about nothing for hours, no idea why.

sweepy

On vintage fender slotted headstock so always take the length of the string as the machinehead plus 2, therefore the low E would be cut just after the D string, this imho gives the correct number of turns on the post

littlegreenman

That was a definite "not waste" of half an hour. Reminded me of my first excursions into modding as a teenager.

Take it to bits and see if you can put it back again.

ICBM

richardhomer said:

[quote=ICBM](just back from band practice), but I'll iPlayer it.

'Rehearsal' [/quote]
You may be right. Practice makes perfect, which is something that could never be said about my bass playing .

monofin

I fell asleep half way through.
Funnily enough that didn't happen on the lawnmower one

fretfinder

sweepy said:

On vintage fender slotted headstock so always take the length of the string as the machinehead plus 2, therefore the low E would be cut just after the D string, this imho gives the correct number of turns on the post

I'm not sure about this. IMO you hardly need any turns on the bottom E, A and D (1-2 max), you need a good few on the top E and B, and on a Tele with a single string tree you want as many turns as possible on the G to give the maximum break angle. 

Limehouse_Blues

I enjoyed the bit about Japanese screwdrivers and the stuff about third intervals. Being a bit of a MIJ geek I appreciated the choice of axe too.

ICBM

He used an axe?

I'm pretty sure you don't need one to assemble a Strat, unless you're starting from a tree.

Mick

Haven't seen the Strat one yet, will do on catchup. 

The Suffolk Colt one made me chuckle a bit though, "the first thing we fit to the engine is the valves" erm, no you don't.  Fit all the internals to the engine then fit the valves, otherwise you can't set the tappets which entails grinding a tad off the bottom of the valve stems. Or if too tight cutting seats and or lapping in.

Then again it was about reassembling, and not servicing and replacing with new parts, so I guess putting components back in the exact place they were originally located should work well enough.

west

well the strat one rendered me all asmr very relaxing zzzzzz  ...

UnclePsychosis

I watched five minutes of it. It was even more dull than I thought it would be.

normula1

I enjoyed all three. I remember disassembling one of the Bakelite phones in my youth, and I had to work out how to correctly set up the clutch mechanism on an electric version of the Suffolk lawnmower we inherited when my wife and I got our first house and it goes without saying that I've done the odd Strat or five too. 

I also used to have one of the split screwdrivers  

boogieman

I missed the lawnmower one but enjoyed the other two. A few cop outs and shortcuts but that's understandable for a TV program I guess. You would have thought that someone would have told James May about the dandruff all over his jumper though.

GazLion

The only interesting bit was where the camerawoman knocked over the lid of his toolbox

GuyBoden

Lawnmower was my fav...........

boogieman

GazLion;1029559" said:

The only interesting bit was where the camerawoman knocked over the lid of his toolbox

To be fair, if you already know how to put a Strat together, it isn't ever going to be that riveting a program. I do find him funny though and he's obviously passionate about the work he was doing, so it was still worth watching IMO. I liked the odd snippets of geeky info he came out with too, like the Jap spec screws and the stuff about screwdrivers.

EdGrip

It was the first one of these that I caught - I thought it was a great programme - I think James May is excellent at presenting things like this. I feel he's a man after my own heart. The number of things that got disassembled when I was a child on my mum's living room floor, or in the garden, just to see how they worked... It's like that, but televised and in reverse.

What was the amp? It looked very nice.

scrumhalf

Reminds me of How

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_VU02GALa_s/Tu0yDIOq5nI/AAAAAAAAIFA/k5JhAVbsHgg/s1600/Out+Of+Town+-+EP+14.avi_snapshot_23.19_%5B2011.12.18_00.18.31%5D.jpg