#upgrade projects

[velmas-guitar-shop]

New project guitar: Jet JS300

Jet Guitars is a newish brand originating in Slovenia, a sister brand to the well-regarded Flight Ukeleles line.

Designed in Europe and manufactured in Asia, their line offers tremendous value for money. Their entry-level Strat-style, the JS-300, retails for about $210 USD and has been getting enthusiastic reviews - many calling it better than comparable Squiers. I recently sold my Fender Japan short-scale Strat and decided to take a plunge on one.

What you get at this price is really nice - way better than the heavy, plywood budget guitars of my youth.

Central to the JS300’s value proposition is its roasted maple neck, which comes with well-dressed frets and slightly rolled fingerboard edges. Finished in a clear satin, it’s fast and comfortable, with a bone nut, modern C profile and 9.5” radius. There’s a dual-action truss rod with access at the nut. (What would put it over the top for me would be a truss rod adjuster wheel at the heel of the neck instead.)

Roasted maple is treated with heat in a low-oxygen environment to drive moisture out of the wood and crystallize its resins, creating greater resonance and stability, and reducing the propensity of the wood to twist or shrink with seasonal temperature and humidity changes. Getting this on a guitar in the sub-$500 price range is phenomenal.

The body is basswood (common at this price point) which is not too heavy, and it has a shaped carve on the lower rear horn to facilitate upper fret access - a feature you usually see on guitars like the $999 Charvel Pro-Mod DK24.

The pickups are single-coil ceramics, and the electronics setup is a standard Strat-style 5-way switch with Volume-Tone-Tone controls. The pickups and knobs are cream-colored and set in an aged-white, not-quite mint green pickguard.

The gold metallic finish is gorgeous - I couldn’t see any flaws.

The hardware is ok at this price range, but you’ll probably want to upgrade the tuners and restring it; out of the box I had a lot of problems getting it to stay in tune. Most of the reviews mention the tuners being an issue; they’re generic Gotoh clones. The string tree is a cheap bent-metal kind prone to binding, so that’s another item to improve.

The bridge is a generic chrome vintage 6-screw Strat type with bent steel saddles; it’s fine.

That said, it’s zingy and resonant, even unplugged, and it feels really easy to play.

Here’s a review video from Trail of Sound:

The Upgrades

I’m going to upgrade it with:

Gotoh staggered locking tuners

Two roller string trees to further improve the string break angle

Gotoh-Wilkinson VSVG bridge - this is a six-screw drop-in replacement for vintage Fender-style bridges with a modern take on bent-steel saddles.

Dunlop Super Pots - sealed, lifetime warranty potentiometers. Using a 250k master volume pot with a treble bleed to maintain brightness at lower volume settings, and a 500k master tone pot with an 0.47µf Sprague Orange Drop capacitor - this will make it darker sounding when fully rolled off, but still maintain brightness when fully open.

An SPDT (single pole, double throw) toggle switch in place of the second tone knob, to enable the ‘Gilmour mod’ - being able to add the neck pickup to the 2nd and 1st switch positions to get all three pickups together, and the bridge & neck pickups together (Tele style).

A new white pearl pickguard and knobs

Finally, Zexcoil Z-Core Vintage Hot pickups - these are hum-cancelling with one coil per string, and the best I’ve heard for that glassy / quacky Strat tone.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The Yiling Band Tour!

[hypnoticmoth]

At Voxtek, we strive for nothing less than perfection ~

Or something something about feeling inadequate (totally not projecting)

[annamationsart]

everyone loves talking about little jon in correlation to mr. spider but no one ever talks about how insufferable this kid was. i wouldn’t wish sitting next to him in class upon my worst enemy

[nonglukest]

Johan & North | Fourever You | Episode 11

So that was 1,000, right?

[accirax]

💙❤️Blind Date or Die Episode 1, Starring Rose, Toshiko, Levi, Grace, Nico, Wolfgang, Teruko, and Jett!💙❤️

[archerinventive]

Happy Workshop Wednesday.

Check out my sticks. :)

I've been saving these for years now, waiting on the right project, and finally found the one.

After a quick paint job. I wrapped these guys together to make one large piece.

I'll be using these as the base to my hanging fairy garden. Which will eventually reside in the studio.

I'm just working on assembling the mounting before all the dangly pieces get attached. :)

I hope you, too, are able to give new life to a piece in your collection this week.

Have a lovely rest of your evening.

[shanklin]

It’s the most honest job Stan’s ever had.

Sure, the company he’s working for is downright diabolical, scamming their customers in all aspects of life, but that’s not Stan’s problem.

As Le Ville Corp’s most successful customer service agent in the Oregon area his only job is to follow the company guidelines, sell as many bad deals as possible and never ever let anyone back out of a contract. 

Morality aside, nothing the company does is actually illegal, so at the end of the day Stan gets to collect his almost-minimum-wage-sized paycheck and go home in the knowledge, that no pigs will come knocking on his door anytime soon.

Life is good. Or at least as good as it gets where Stan is concerned. Last month he even got a raise for selling every bad product the company had to offer to one poor kind sucker. 

From household appliances to car insurance, magazine subscriptions and even their extremely shitty telephone and electricity contracts - the McGucket guy brought it all.

Thanks to him, Stan could upgrade from his car to an almost black mold free one room appartment with a community bathroom one block over.

Stan was finally moving up in the world and then his phone rings. He recognises the number. It’s his good friend Fiddle-not-gonna-say-the-rest McGucket.

Stan grins and cracks his knuckles. It’s about time McGucket figured out he’s gotten scammed. Time to make the poor guy’s life a living hell. No one is getting out of a contract on his watch.

“Thank you for calling Le Ville Corp. For us you are more than just a customer. You are family! This is Piers. How can I help you today?”

The moment Stan starts his greeting, he is bombarded with noise disturbances from the other side.

Ah, the good old Le Ville Corp telephone network working as intended. Maybe Stan can convince the guy to upgrade to a slightly less egregious version. 

Wait, what did he say?

His name is Dr. Stammered Lynes? Weird, but okay. Still better than Fiddle-nope-not-saying-it Hardon McGucket.

As it turns out, Stan finally met the mysterious roommate whose money McGucket has been using to pay for all of their products. Stan didn’t think the guy had it in him to ditch his roommate after the scam got discovered. Good for him!

Now, how to best screw Dr. Lynes here over.

***

An hour and a half of data security safety questions and a new phone contract later the doc hangs up to Stan’s cheery and corporate mandated farewell:

“And don’t forget we here at Le Ville Corp consider you our forever family, because you will stay with us forever!”

***

Stanford Pines just had the worst month of his life [not counting the weeks after the science fair that he refuses to think about].

The portal test was a disaster, his partner left, his muse refuses to explain himself and on top of all of that his new fridge won’t open, because this week’s subscription fee hasn’t been paid yet.

What the f-FIDDLEFORD!

[zooophagous]

Melon is rudely awaked from his sleep in the dirt to receive a breakfast (worm)

[skeletalheartattack]

Valve just published a blog post regarding plans for the first MVM update in twelve years for TF2 (to be released later this year, sometime after August), and it shaping up to be the first MVM update to involve community submissions (excluding Robotic Boogaloo).

[emero0]

[immortalsins]

5k/10k of my thesis completed 👍 we might be so back (<- girl who has 3 days to do the rest)

[bloggyhollyva]

BLIGHTS REDESIGN (2025) ✨🩵💙

* Blights 2025 redesign is finally here! I hope you guys like his new look!

* ⚠️!Ecto body on the last slide!⚠️

* I had fun remaking him since his last design didn’t really give anything that goes towards his story or his lore in general, so this remake is just me focusing on that honestly! I think he’s gonna have this design for a long time do to everyone/friends liking it a lot which makes me happy!! ^w^

* Schedule post btw! ✨

[wigglebox]

💚Destiel Doodles Coloring Book💙

ANNOUNCEMENT ✨

After two months of work, this bundle of 42 printable coloring pages will be released!

This art’s journey will now be up to y’all and the whole world of color is available for you to explore!

Some details:

✨It will initially be sold on Etsy for $16 and will in include all the drawings for you to print out whenever you want.

✨The drawings include: 31 drawings from the 2023 Suptober event (which is 16 official prompts and then 15 others I decided on) + 6 florals + 3 bonus drawings + 2 drawings of the cover - one with the text and one without.

✨These drawings are for personal enjoyment and not to be resold either as lineart or colored in. You also cannot repost as if it’s your own. However if you color these and want to post to social media feel free! Tag me so I can see it!

✨Why I chose this price: I am looking to save up money for a new iPad because my needs have outgrown the small space of the iPad mini and it’s 64gb of storage.

All of these drawings are hand made and not generated by computers and so while it’s a little more than some pages out there, given the time and effort spent along with it all 100% being my own, I chose this price. I wanted to sell on my own personal website but I can’t afford to upgrade my monthly plan to allow that right now.

See y’all on Wednesday!! And happy December!

💙💚🌈✨

[byoldervine]

Omg drawing my characters is going so well now that I’ve got my tablet I love it I can’t wait to get them all finished and ready to share

[aroacewxs]

hey everyone do you ever think about how much of rui's love for nene is stored inside nenerobo