1984 Vantage Avenger

Completely remade my first electric guitar, a 1984 made in Japan Vantage Avenger I bought when I was 17 for $70.

Pulled all the frets and cleaned the slots because the finish was built up over them.

Drilled out a middle cavity for the three single coils I was planning and cleaned up the hack job a previous owner did to put in a bridge humbucker.

Made a new pick guard, the third time I've done that for this guitar.

Then the hardest part, laying out where to drill for the single coils, pots, and switches. For the pickups I looked at a few examples of SSS guitars and took relative measurements, trying to find pictures as flat on as possible. The switches were another story because I decided to wire it so all pickups could be run in series or parallel in any combination and that required three 4PDT switches plus the master tone and volume pot. I just had to guess, hovering the pick guard over the cavity where I thought they could probably fit, and they did! Didn't have to widen or nudge or plug any mistakes!

In all my dad's old electronic stuff I found a box of orange drop caps he used for doing actual electrical engineering work. He was unaware they are the ultra sacred mythical tone cap. So I used one of those.

Anyway, then wiring it all up, and again trying to keep it all tight to fit in the cavity. I didn't come up with the series/parallel wiring, I found it here: https://hermeticoguitar.blogspot.com/2013/10/wiring-diy-3-single-coils-in.html

And it worked first try! I couldn't believe it. After getting it all together I found one string buzzed open so I made a new nut too. Also new tuners (the originals were always terrible) and a new bridge. I think I did about everything short of stripping it and refinishing.

It is my first three single coil guitar, a sort of Japanese strat. I was prepared to get more 60 cycle hum than I'm used to but it is just about dead quiet. You can see how much conductive tape I used in the cavity and on the pick guard. I also made a separate terminal for all the ground connections, so I'm sure that all contributes.

It sounds great, the series/parallel switches change the sound quite a bit, and to my particular interest, change how it interacts with many different effects. I find the tone pot with humbuckers is almost complete useless, but is very useful with single coils, and again changes interaction with effects in an interesting way.

That was a lot of work, but this guitar desperately needed it so I'm glad I finally did it!

 

Multipurpose Room

 

I love Multipurpose rooms, they're so depressing. 

An example of the process from the rough script to pencil drawing to digital painting in Krita.

 Sergi offers a bagel to Hieronymus with his trademark thumbs up. Also a mysterious halo has appeared around a reactor in which a man was just melted.

Schecter Damien

 

Doing a rebuild on my first guitar, but while I was borrowing my brothers' tools I recrowned and polished the frets on my Damien. The stock Damien I found to be a fat chunky guitar so years ago I slimmed it way down, made the horns pointy, and slimmed the neck significantly. It still feels like coming home whenever I pick it up, I really like how it turned out. I also blocked the floyd rose in place because I don't like tremolos and set it on fire because it should look like it came out of Hell.

Coyote Pups

 

Coyote pups replaced the neighbor's cats in my backyard. They keep bringing trash up and they ate the cigar butts out of my fire pit. Sad to see them making such poor choices so young.

Dr. Köse Gives Heartfelt Encouragement

 

Last words to a man about to be turned into goo inside a reactor. Dr. Köse has less bedside manner than Fiona- the woman who dissolved all her flesh to become a living skeleton.

The Boys Bear

 

The Boy's Bear, Uncensored and Censored Versions

 

We learn the story of how just before their inception, the boys escaped into the woods only to return with a dead bear and that's whycome they have a bear pelt on their armour.

Hieronymus and the Hell Spidre

Fussed with the Hue slider a bit.
 

Hieronymus in Hell in Colour

 

Debating on doing the dream in colour, the usual black and white, or just pencil. In colour I think it looks a little too cozy, guess I could try to make it look more like an endoscopy.

Hieronymus in Hell

 

Hieronymus dreams of Hell as Long Stephen described it. I thought I'd do this as one page even though it is three shots, as things run together in dreams like that. I was thinking about how so many medieval depictions of Hell are about being eaten or entering a Hellmouth, so Hieronymus seems to be crawling through some digestive guts while being bitten by strange spiders.

I wonder if Long Stephen was always so long or if eons in a place like this changed him into the man his is today.

Red and the Wolfe Update

 

Okay looks like it updated fine! All the redundant title pages on kindle are now replaced with a clean version of the cover. You should also be able to download it as an epub or pdf, at least I enabled that from my end I don't know how it is implemented LINK

Red and the Wolfe cleanup

 

I've been cleaning up my folder for Red and the Wolfe and I was embarrassed to see how many times the credits card comes up. It's an artifact of each chapter being published individually on ComiXology but now feels very Kojima. I want to replace them with a clean no text cover instead, so hopefully amazon will let me just drop that in without having to republish.

The God Labs Chapter 02 is Out!

 

The God Labs Chapter 02 is out! Tell your kids! Tell Grandma! Tell your most beloved Item! And remind them, this may just be a silly little story about research into the persistence of the human soul and what happens beyond the veil, but they are whom really matter to you.

Link

Stephen's Genitals

 

The next panel shows it is a box of random food from the cafeteria, didn't want anyone to get any depraved ideas without that being explicitly stated. Almost done with chapter 2, this is the fastest I've worked in my life ever.

The Gang Meets Long Stephen

 

The gang meets Long Stephen what appeared in The God Labs Strip Club #03. I've never been in a strip club so I'm taking my best guess at what might be on the walls.

Cool Fiona Chapter 2 Cover Redo

 

I finished the Cool Fiona cover for Chapter 2 already but I thought I'd redo it in Krita. I have a lot more fun painting in Krita

The Overseer Parties with the Generals

 

Jim.

 

As established in The Satan Killers, Jim had an office next to Satan. Maybe The Overseer feels he should have done something when he no doubt heard all the shooting. Also I edited my watermark for MMXXVI

Working in Public

 

At the table I was working there was a little girl sitting next to me, it severely limited what I could work on since she could see my screen. So every time I caught her looking over I started drawing bunnies