Best Cheap Upgrade on your Gibson Guitar Handsdown!

[calaverasgrandes]

another improvement, Why doesnt Gibson put volutes on their headstocks?
Guild does it, and IIRC they have some common brain trust.
i've been looking for years for a vintage Gibson bass that doesnt have the headstock crack. I am pretty sure they dont exist.
I am wary of buying any new gibsons as they apparently still do the 'crack' if you have the misfortune of tipping one over.

[Jim Williams]

Bourns model 95 500k audio pot, split knurled shaft part #
652-95A1DZ28EA0303L
$14.00 each
www.mouser.com

[ashcat_lt]

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?

You could try a search for "no-load tone pot" or something to that effect. You can also carefully cut or scrape away a small part of the conductive strip on any pot to accomplish the same thing.

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.

That's that resonant peak thing again. Maybe I'll Spice up some frequency curves to demonstrate some of this. Not today. You could download and play around with JohnH's Guitar Frequency Response Calculator. It's an Excell spreadsheet. I trust the author and his macros. It's got some "presets" you can look at, but you can also type in your own values for the various controls and see how things change. Note that it actually shows the response of the filter composed of the pickup inductance and various resistances and capacitances in the circuit. It doesn't model string vibration or amp/speaker/cabinet filtering, so it's not necessarily representative of the spectrum you might measure on an actual guitar track.

[Jim Williams]

The only way I've ever been able to accurately measure the pickup's response and the effects of loading are with my Audio Precision analyzer. The AP has a 100 k max input impedance so that requires the use of a buffer with a 1 meg input impedance.

If a pickup is measured without any volume/tone pot loading one will see the true frequency response along with the pickup's resonant peak. Those are typically at 6 to 10k hz for vintage, 3 to 5k hz for overwound pickups. That resonance is the cause of many disliking hot pickups as that peak is tinny and pearcing. Vintage pickups have their resonant peak beyond the frequency response of most 12" speakers so they don't add to peakiness.

When you add the passive volume/tone controls, the loading begins. Then you see a droop in frequency response as the resonant peak is also damped out. That was enough to convince me that any passive schemes were an exersize in loss. I like the full bandwidth of a vintage pickup. All the guitars have buffers inside. The Telecasters have a dummy coil mounted and I used a special phase cancellation circuit feeding a trimpot. That way I can "tune" out the hum. I got an 80 db s/n ration with that system.

[calaverasgrandes]

jebus! 80 db snr on a tele? I need to mix me up a circuit like that on my Manum. But then I really dont want to do anything to that girl that would change the tone in the slightest.
It's funny what you guys say about resonant peaks, its true. On my old Fender that I had in high school I wired the pickup straight to the jack.
It suddenly had this bright tone that was very un-fendery!
I liked it, though one PA guy claimed my bass blew his PA! Not sure how that works, he should've been watching the meters.

[RefD]

buffered low-Z guitar electronics are great and all, but good luck using that with something like a Fuzz Face or Fuzz Factory (or any other Fuzz Face derived fuzz) that wants to be fed a high impedance signal.

[ashcat_lt]

Mind you I've never tried it, but I think the Fuzzfaces et al don't really care so much what output-Z they're connected to. Rather, they have a very low input-Z which loads the pickups and rolls off the high end, just like what we've been talking about. I think these boxes want a dull, dark guitar signal input.

But you're right, it gets a lot more complicated trying to make these sound good with a buffer before them.

[Jim Williams]

My experience is opposite. I've used these since the early 70's. I have a home made Fuzz Face and it interfaces perfectly. I've never had any problem with any guitar level box, they all work great. If anything, the additional levels I have drive these boxes better, it reduces their noise contribution as levels are several db hotter and further from the noise floor.

Folks would ask me all the time on how I could have such levels and overdrive but the amp had a complete loss of any noise or hiss. That's even when I crank the Basson 120 watter.

Then there's that tone, a full tone, a wide tone, a clear yet thick tone. I love the fat I get with a taste of high frequency pick attack to add clarity to the notes, even when overdriven.

I lent one of those tele's to Bob Dylan, he heard the difference right away. The guys in the band heard it too. Bob wouldn't tell them what it was, he's like that. They noticed the hf clarity and the mondo levels without any noise or hum.

Bob kept that guitar for 3 months. I had to work hard to get it back. Bob wanted to buy it. I said no, it was a personal instrument that I play. I said it was lent as a demo, I could install those circuits in HIS instruments. Bob got mad. No one says no to Bob. I did. He got pissed and I havn't heard from him since.

BTW, I was inspired and redid the CAD layout for that buffer pcb if anyone is interested in them. I sell them for $35 each.

[space_ryerson]

Back to simple Les Paul mods, I was under the impression that newer Les Pauls have a slightly different wiring than the 50's models. This link lists some of the different wirings. I tried out a wiring pretty close to the 'black rose custom' wiring on my old dark sounding custom, and I am happy with the results.

Mind you I've never tried it, but I think the Fuzzfaces et al don't really care so much what output-Z they're connected to. Rather, they have a very low input-Z which loads the pickups and rolls off the high end, just like what we've been talking about. I think these boxes want a dull, dark guitar signal input.

You might find this link interesting as a workaround for a buffered signal and a fuzz face.

[ashcat_lt]

Back to simple Les Paul mods, I was under the impression that newer Les Pauls have a slightly different wiring than the 50's models. This link lists some of the different wirings. I tried out a wiring pretty close to the 'black rose custom' wiring on my old dark sounding custom, and I am happy with the results.

Mind you I've never tried it, but I think the Fuzzfaces et al don't really care so much what output-Z they're connected to. Rather, they have a very low input-Z which loads the pickups and rolls off the high end, just like what we've been talking about. I think these boxes want a dull, dark guitar signal input.

You might find this link interesting as a workaround for a buffered signal and a fuzz face.

I guess I might seem like I'm push GuitarNutz around here, but this thread is stickied on the Electronics and Wiring board, and directly addresses the differences between modern and 50's wiring.

Aw heck, here's another. It's a post from page 2 of a long, winding thread re: Caps for guitars, which speaks somewhat to the OP.

Your second link goes to a 404 error. The file extension is .htm, no "l". Like this. Again, I've not messed with those types of pedals enough to know the difference, but it seems to me like the guitar itself does a fine job of filtering the guitar input when connected to an appropriate impedance.

The extremely low input-Z of these boxes should reduce the resonant peak when connected directly to the guitar with no intervening active circuitry. This means that less high frequencies are being amplified and clipped, meaning less of the nasty harsh buzzy hi-freq harmonics, and smoother fuzz tone. Seems like adding another resonant filter will do the opposite, tending to boost those highest frequencies, and causing it to sound all nasty again.

[space_ryerson]

First, I apologize for copying/pasting the second link wrong. The guitar pickup simulation article is for when you have a pedal (such as a fuzz face), and want to use an active guitar or use buffered pedals into it, and retain the feel of a passive guitar cabled directly into a fuzz face.

The GuitarNutz link is pretty interesting. I only posted the different LP wirings because they are also a cheap way to 'upgrade'. Some people seek out a 1950's accurate wiring; some don't. I happened to try a Black Rose Custom wiring variant listed in that link, and found it to work well with one of my guitars.

[oldguitars]

my 66 tele, 65 SG and 65 SG jr sound just fine stock, as do all of my other new and vintage guitars. Wouldn't change a thing... well, maybe the amp!

[meldar produxshunz]

just to clear it up, the reason i at first felt unsatisfied with my VOS guitars/pots/caps was that they were using "modern wiring", stock pots, and ceramic caps. i like to use my volume control as a kind of overdrive for my amps. i usually set the amp's volume (marshall 1974x-also superbadass-NO master volume) up enough to get some natural breakup. this starts at around 3. up from there it is all gain and compression. on the 1974x there really isnt any clean up above 3. so i have to use the volume on the guitar to clean it up. any gibson guitar using humbuckers and modern wiring doenst do well with this. rolling the volume down you get too much bass, no highs. first i did was 50s wiring. a noticeable improvement. but with the RS guitarworks "vintage" upgrade (pots/paper in oil caps) it was night and day. now, these guitars with this amp is straight up classic rock at its best. it would take me like 4 different pedals to do what i can now do BETTER with just my volume and tone knobs. there is no going back once you hear it for yourself.

[Knights Who Say Neve]

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.

Yeah, that too.

[uncle bastard]

My experience is opposite. I've used these since the early 70's. I have a home made Fuzz Face and it interfaces perfectly. I've never had any problem with any guitar level box, they all work great. If anything, the additional levels I have drive these boxes better, it reduces their noise contribution as levels are several db hotter and further from the noise floor.

Folks would ask me all the time on how I could have such levels and overdrive but the amp had a complete loss of any noise or hiss. That's even when I crank the Basson 120 watter.

Then there's that tone, a full tone, a wide tone, a clear yet thick tone. I love the fat I get with a taste of high frequency pick attack to add clarity to the notes, even when overdriven.

I lent one of those tele's to Bob Dylan, he heard the difference right away. The guys in the band heard it too. Bob wouldn't tell them what it was, he's like that. They noticed the hf clarity and the mondo levels without any noise or hum.

Bob kept that guitar for 3 months. I had to work hard to get it back. Bob wanted to buy it. I said no, it was a personal instrument that I play. I said it was lent as a demo, I could install those circuits in HIS instruments. Bob got mad. No one says no to Bob. I did. He got pissed and I havn't heard from him since.

BTW, I was inspired and redid the CAD layout for that buffer pcb if anyone is interested in them. I sell them for $35 each.

Jim, I have a Squier Affinity Tele in which I'm going to be putting an Irongear P90 at the neck, and a 30 year old no-name Japanese Precision copy which needs completely rewiring. Neither instrument was expensive, and I'm not scared of modifying: I reckon your buffer circuits would do nicely in these. Would you PM me a quotation for two to the UK?