Project: Sanox upgrade

Manfred-Klose

ok, so one morning went onto gumtree with no intention of buying a guitar, and boom saw this, was a bit skeptical to went to have a look, i really liked the guitar and just needed some work.

oh and i cant find any dates of when this guitar made, i want to look if there is something under the neck
dont know if it is matsumoku factory made?

Bolt on
it seems to be a short scale length like gibson, but only at 626mm, where the gibsons is normally 628mm if i remember correctly ?
ashwood sides
maple mahogany center
maple mahogany neck
rosewood fretboard(dont know if its Brazilian)
gotoh pickups
some crappy tuners
......and it has been recently refretted by foster van der merwe(Bonus!!!)

plans for the future:
*Redo the electronics(its a mess!!!)
*replace pickups(i've got a PAF joe neck pickup, just need to get a bridge pickups and see what happens)
*replace tuners
*make some wood knobs on the lathe, and get wood pickup rings.
*replace the jack input

....i'll first do the important stuff and then move on to some touch ups

ok enough talking here is the pics

fretboard:

headstock

back

welcome to the jungle:

any comments of suggestions welcome ?

FenderBender

Looks awesome Manny. The finishes look very good. Looks like you found a winner!

Wizard

Beautiful.
I love the shape.

AlanRatcliffe

Nice! Not a through neck like mine, so it would be nice to get the two together sometime to compare.

Looks like you have the upgrades sorted. Pickups, tuners and nut made the biggest difference to mine (the stock pickups were truly horrible, and the Gotoh tuners had worn out).

Manfred-Klose

yeah would like to compare it sometime.

yeah it has a very unique tone because of the scale length and the bolt on, kinda like a snappy gibson sound.

guidothepimmp

nice! interesting how they went with the neck through look but then bolted the neck on..

Good reputation these old Sanox fiddles!

Manfred-Klose

this guitar has alot of soul.

and its the first time i actually used the tone pot on a guitar while playing :-[
aka santana style.

AlanRatcliffe

Manfred Klose wrote: dont know if it is matsumoku factory made?

It is. Trust me - I can spot a Matsumoku from 300 paces. ?

it seems to be a short scale length like gibson, but only at 626mm, where the gibsons is normally 628mm if i remember correctly ?

24.75" (629 mm) is the the published figure but it actually refers to string rather than scale length - in reality the Gibson Les Paul has a scale length of 24 9/16" (625 mm).

guidothepimmp wrote: nice! interesting how they went with the neck through look but then bolted the neck on..

The Alembic through-neck "look" was very popular in those days (late '70s, early '80s), but more difficult and expensive to make, so this was the compromise on the lower priced models. I've seen similar from a lot of the other Japanese manufacturers of the time - Aria, Westone, Sanox, etc. All made in the Matsumoku factories in Japan - the same place that was knocking out some of the best through-necks ever made.

Manfred-Klose

ok so i went through to marshall today, they had a 30% less sale on pickups.

so i got a Dimarzio norton for the bridge, and will combine it with the PAF joe in the neck.
just need to figure out what i want to do with the wiring and the switches.

I'll upload the current wiring diagram when i have drawn it on the pc.

Manfred-Klose

here is the current wiring diagram i drew up.
it basically just replaced the old pickups with the new ones, keeping the wiring same.
i like this layout, gives you wide range of tones:

the 2 small switches, turn the pickup into single coil mode, each pickup has a switch.
the bigger switch is to switch the bridge pickup in and out of phase, sounds cool with the neck humbucker.
3way switch, normal 3 way switching, bridge, bridge+neck, neck

1 master volume, and a tone for each pickup.

AlanRatcliffe

Similar to mine, but I don't have the phase switch (always found them kind of useless for my application) and have three way on/on/on switches for each pickup to give inner coil/bucker/outer coil. Very flexible setup.

Hey Manny - what you doing tomorrow? I'm going to be in Somerset West trying out some guitars and amps, so if you feel like hooking up there, we can compare.

MikeM

Cool setup.. Tone controls respond in a really cool way when out of phase.

Only thing I would say is consider parallel over coil split. Very similar tone but still noise cancelling which is cool.

Manfred-Klose

alan@ thanks but i'm a bit stuck this week with stuff to do.

let me know when you are in the neighbourhood again.

but I don't have the phase switch (always found them kind of useless for my application)

i find that when its in humbucker mode and i hit the phase switch, the guitar starts to funk all of a sudden

Only thing I would say is consider parallel over coil split. Very similar tone but still noise cancelling which is cool.

i'll put that on the list for things to try out. ?