Best Cheap Upgrade on your Gibson Guitar Handsdown!

[PT]

Another +1 for RS Guitarworks. I just spent $50 on 4 pots and 2 caps for my 335. It sounds so much better now. Totally worth the money.

I was using the crap stock electronics, then no electronics (just the bridge PU straight to the jack), then the RS electronics. Three totally different sounds. So the RS electronics will make a difference in the sound of the guitar. And I do think it's an improvement.

[meldar produxshunz]

yeah, i have always been a bit put off when i hear about people putting preamps and such in their guitar. seems a bit complicated dealing with one outside of the guitar sometimes. my guitar setup gets less complicated with every year and it feels good. yes, in this dang world, spending $50 to take something up to the next level is a GOOD FEELING.

[FlowersForHuman]

HIJACK WARNING: one piece of young-guy wisdom and one question for those who know:

1) I don't know if this is the 'treble bleed' mod, as I did this mod years ago, but I replaced the tone capacitor on my 2000 Gibson LP DC Standard in order to lessen the amount of top end that the tone pot rolled off. Cost about $3 for a huge pack of capacitors and was the greatest thing I ever did to that guitar. Just so people know how awesomely easy this stuff is, go here for info:
http://www.guitarnuts.com/index.php
Everyone should seriously consider this simple mod.

2) I am curious and have a question for those who have been in the business of guitars for a long time. Why WOULDN"T different qualities of pots make a difference in sound quality? Seems like some must at least be more transparent than others, right? I could put a signal through iron or I could put a signal through banana pudding and there's an obvious difference...but I'm probably oversimplifying.

[Marc Alan Goodman]

2) I am curious and have a question for those who have been in the business of guitars for a long time. Why WOULDN"T different qualities of pots make a difference in sound quality? Seems like some must at least be more transparent than others, right? I could put a signal through iron or I could put a signal through banana pudding and there's an obvious difference...but I'm probably oversimplifying.

There's no reason they wouldn't. I think Jim was just saying that it doesn't make a significant difference when he's using his wiring setup. Obviously everything in the signal chain makes a difference. It just depends how much of one, and how much modifying it costs!

[Jim Williams]

Maybe I should start making those again? 1" square, low noise, 20 ma output current, 250 ua battery draw, 200 v/us slew rate. 6~26 db gain bourns trim pot.

[calaverasgrandes]

I guess thats why my basses and guitars would always sound crazy good after I yanked out all the electronics and wired the pickup straight to the jack.

[roygbiv]

I think the Les Paul Artist had active electronics, but I don't remember what they sound like.

[ashcat_lt]

I guess thats why my basses and guitars would always sound crazy good after I yanked out all the electronics and wired the pickup straight to the jack.

Probably. Also, much more reliable. Fewer things to go wrong.

[calaverasgrandes]

hence my decision at one point to gut them of everything.
I have never been into monkeying with the volume and tone on a guitar. Thats what an amp is for!
Though OTOH I am a big fan of whacking away at the pickup switch mid song.
I actually have never even looked at certain basses that dont come with a pickup switch. Like Fenders, Carvins, etc
Heck pretty much all basses these days expect you to stroll around on stage wearing a sweatervest and subtly varying the mix between your treble and rhythm pickups. Fuck that!
A, B or A+B.
If I ever got an artist model it would likely be a Fender jazz with a les paul style pickup switch and an ebony fretboard. No Knobs.

[ashcat_lt]

A, B or A+B.

Well, I'm Nutz. I like to be able to get A*B, not to mention A-B, A*(-B)... So I end up replacing the pots with rotary switches. This actually creates many more things which can go wrong...

Removing the load from the controls causes a pretty drastic increase to the resonant peak at the cutoff of our big, complex lowpass filter. It's not so much that you're turning up the freq knob as cranking the Q. Well, sort of.

[Knights Who Say Neve]

I have never been into monkeying with the volume and tone on a guitar. Thats what an amp is for!

Hmmm, I like to use the volume knob to vary the tone from clean to distorted and shades in-between. If you've never had a setup that can do that, try one - it's quite nice. And easier than walking over to the amp in mid-song.

[Jim Williams]

I did that on a Rex Bogue guitar for Joe Spry of "Felony" back in the 80's.
I wired 2 active EQ circuits into the guitar. He had 2 volumes, one for each feed. One output would go to a BGW 500 watt power amp into a Marshall Major 4x12 cab. The other feed was to the 200 watt Marshall Major head into the other 4x12. He could play and blend clean with dirt. Sometimes he would strum a clear chord with the BGW and then bring up the overdive after it to fill it in. It was also pretty loud too.

My Hawaiian Koa PJ bass has a dual input 2 band sweep EQ preamp. One input is for the P and J pickups, selected with a toggle switch. The other input is fed from bridge mounted piezo pickups for that acoustic sound. They mix via an active pan pot. The top EQ sweeps from 1k to 20 k hz. the low band does 40 hz to 2k hz. I used a 5 pin XLR to an Alembic style outboard power supply. That way I'm not limited to low power semiconductors.

Dial-a-tone!

[ashcat_lt]

Hmmm, I like to use the volume knob to vary the tone from clean to distorted and shades in-between. If you've never had a setup that can do that, try one - it's quite nice. And easier than walking over to the amp in mid-song.

I use pick hand technique for this. Strumming more gently cleans up the amp just fine. Changing the angle and position of attack tends to change the tone/harmonics produced.

[calaverasgrandes]

what ashcat said. A long long time ago my uncle admonished me for playing to hard. He showed me how you can get much better tone by playing as lightly as possible, right hand AND left hand. So I like to keep my gain pretty high but vary the pressure of my playing (and pickup cobination) to get clean/distorted.
Ahhhh, the glory of toooobz.

[tdbajus]

Fender markets a tone control with a switch that disconnects the tone control when on 10. That does open up the tops as most of my guitars have no passive tone controls to avoid pickup loading.

I have looked for these, and have been unable to find them. Do you know what they are called?

CTS pots are ok, but one should consider using the excellent Bourns conductive plastic guitar pots available from Mouser and Digi-Key. Those are a cut above any carbon based pots.

Would you be kind enough to put up a parts number for mouser? I always dread ordering pots from them, as it is easy to wind up with some pretty wacky stuff.


And a slight detour- I have noticed a tremendous difference in the values of the pots as well. I tend to play Jazzmasters and Jaguars, which come with 1MΩ pots. I experimented one time putting in a 500Ω and a 250Ω pot in the volume, and the whole nature of the guitar changed.