Posting this miostly becauseone of you (or at least someone from the old Pit), and I now can't recall exactly who, gave me the pup I'm using in this project (and just asked to see what came of it). Thanks for that.
Anyway, after dragging my feet on this for a few years (had a kid, built a studio, effed it up a few times and had to start over etc) here is Maude:
That's a low impedance Les Paul humbucker (gold version from the L5S guitar) wired straight to the jack. I still have to build the external passive pedal preamp circuit with volume, bass, treble and varitone/decade controls as well as an impedance transformer (so pretty much the same as the original LP Jumbo/Recording curcuit, with some minor mods). As it is now it will only work well plugged into a mic input; luckily I have an old Bogen amp with 1/4" unbalanced lo-Z inputs; sounds glorious.
Strung her up with Pyramid Flats (still gotta intonate; round core strings so gotta wait until they stretch and settle in to trim the ends or they can slip) and might have to shim the nut. Happy to find the tension of these strings isn't bowing the neck out at all really (no TR adjustment). I love how she is so hifi and dreadnaught acoustic like when plugged in (way bassier actually; I need that passive bass control), but a dirty. midrange-aggressive blues box when unplugged.
The body is a 60s Harmony that I found at the closing sale of a local shop and had already been refinished in a much too thick white Polyurethane - looked hot but absolutely no bass response; completely stiffled the body resonance (so it had to go). That alone took me an entire summer, including the better part of a cottage weekend.
