The Acme Blog

Have you seen our new wiring diagrams webpage? We think it’s the nicest out there. We’re adding to it regularly, and there is currently a pretty nice collection, and nearly all available as hi-resolution PDFs. There are some instruction manuals at the top for Acme prewired and ToneShaper products, with lots of Strat and Tele diagrams below, as well as diagrams for other guitars.

Our diagrams are two-part: the diagram on the left is an info page that provides the details for that wiring, and the diagram on the right shows you how to wire it. There are some very unique wiring schemes on there, with lots more to come, so keep checking back. We’ll feature one each month in our newsletter.

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And hey, especially if you can wrangle a new guitar out of the deal! Some of you may not need to beg, borrow, or steal; but many of us have live-in financial gatekeepers who don’t…

(ahem)

understand our needs. This is a bummer. But take heart, for we here at Acme will endeavor to make killer guitars available that won’t have you sleeping on the sofa, at least not for too long. Affordable.

We ♥ guitar players!

…to Leo Fender and Freddie Tavares for the most beautiful guitar of all time (my opinion), the Stratocaster. The beauty above is available as I write this, it’s the most heavily upgraded hot-rodded guitar we’ve done to date, and it’s a knockout. I have a great job!

Woo-hoo, the Les Paul ToneShaper is here!  Check it out!

I always thought Blackie was a cool-looking guitar. So does the rest of the world I guess, and Fender must too, as it appears to have inspired one of the Road Worn Strats. We’ve modded this one though, with cool upgrades, and a subtle color shift with the addition of black pickups and knobs. It’s available now, you can check it out and watch a video of it here.

I posted about Mark King once before, but this was the first time I’d seen his products in the flesh. Wow! Pricey, but of super high quality. Really, we tried and tried, but simply didn’t have the photographic skill to capture the beauty of these things. We had to settle for the images above (click for larger ones). But trust us, these are drop-dead gorgeous, you have to see them in the flesh to appreciate how nice they are. Interested parties can contact Mark here.

On June 1 I deleted all of the email in my inbox.  Well, I didn’t actually delete it, I just moved it to a folder I optimistically named “email not replied”, thinking that perhaps one day when I get some free time I’ll work my way through the folder and reply to all of the emails.

This isn’t the first time I’ve done this.

I heard an interview on NPR with one of the founders of Twitter, and he said that he does this periodically too, when he gets overwhelmed, and then he’ll email a distribution list of friends and family saying essentially “if you emailed me recently and need a reply, please email me again”. I have to say that I found this story comforting, because I’d been buying into the idea that the reason I can’t stay on top of email is because I’m lame, when in reality there are probably lots of people out there who can’t keep up on email.

So if you’ve emailed and haven’t gotten a reply then I apologize.  I do intend to make a better effort going forward, we know you want answers to your questions. But please don’t take it personally, it just means that we’re overwhelmed.  We’re in the process of training several new people so we can get on top of our projects a little more.

Wow, has it really been 5 months since we posted here?  Ouch!

Well, prewired stuff is back, and lots more is coming.  We have lots of Tele options now, and we’ll soon add the ability to specify solderless options and pickups.  Just like the old days, but better, because the stuff is on the shelves, ready to ship.

Callaham Teles
We have prewired Teles that’ll be on the site soon, pre-built on Callaham stainless plates, with Callaham knobs.  We have the ’50s pattern (dome knobs/round switch tip) and the ’60s pattern (flat-top knobs/top-hat tip) in stock as you read this, in modern, 4-way , and alternate 4-way wiring. So that’s 6 different products ready to go.  If you want one before we get them on the site then give a call, we can ship immediately.

Strats
We’ve come up with a new method to funnel people down to the assembly  that’ll work best in their guitar. I’m not talking about wiring details, like vintage vs. blender wiring, or pickup choices, but about lead sets. The one in the image above would be appropriate for someone who wants our solderless option, has a tremolo, and has shielding paint in the cavity as supplied by Fender. What’s not shown is the included jack and tremolo claw, which plug into the three short wires you see (solderless!), and of course that wire with the screw lug tells you that this is for a guitar with shielding in the cavity. See, we don’t want you to get one of our assemblies and have to adapt it to fit your application.  We want to give you exactly what you need to make the installation hassle-free and surprise-free. Quick, simple, right. Now that’s the way to do things.

Lots more coming, lots more. Just too many things to do in the time we have allotted, so everything takes us longer than we think it’s going to (by maybe a factor of 10!), but keep checking back because we’re gonna shake things up!

A lot of people have been asking about when the prewired stuff was coming back, and we’re finally getting it back on the site now.  We added some more Tele options today, and more are coming tomorrow (along with updated images and descriptions for all).  Strats too, “no pickups” versions at first, then “pickups included” versions.  And lots of unique stuff that you haven’t seen before. Really!

=]

We actually have big plans for this section.  This was the product line that we started the business with, and we’re going to really re-focus on it this year.  It was a tough decision to turn off essentially the entire prewired section for several weeks, but we had to stop taking in assembly orders in order to make a clean break to our new way of doing things.

What you’ll see as we add these new products is that we won’t be doing custom work, we’re going to pre-build everything.  So if you see something marked as in stock, that means it ships immediately.  We’re not going to take “to be built” orders in the future, everything will be standardized, which will allow us to build in batches for efficiency, and also to build up inventory.  So this new product line won’t happen all at once, but over the coming months we’re sure our customers will like where we’re headed.

Thanks for your interest!

My wife told me about one of the contestants on American Idol that sounded interesting, so I looked for a video of the performance this morning, and happened across the audition by Caleb Hawley. Wow. He had judge Steven Tyler backing him up on makeshift rhythm, and even J-Lo and Randy were grooving. Hard to imagine the pressure of walking into a room with three mega-stars (and cameras rolling), and giving an a capella audition. And killing it.

So I thought, “well this isn’t your standard AI fare, how refreshing”. So I googled him and watched some YouTube videos, and came across this and this.

Man. This guy is the real deal. Great hands (really great hands), great feel, great singing. And great songwriting. There have been a few bright spots on American Idol (hard to argue with Carrie Underwood, whether or not she’s your cup of tea). But by and large, to me, that show represents all I hate about the current pop music industry, which seems to churn out manufactured pop stars based on looks alone. Oh, and their ability to dance.  When did music become about dancing?

Having said that, most musicians I know hold Prince in high regard, and besides, he’s all about The Godfather Of Soul, and who was more badass than JB? (I’m not referring to Justin Beiber.)

Still, it sometimes seems like being into guitar-based music is decidedly dinosaur-ish, so it’s always cool to see someone carrying the torch to the next generation. Hope Caleb Hawley does well on Idol, because he has massive talent. Talent worth watching American Idol for.