Skinnerburst A3 set too bright

[Orville]

I have a set of Skinnerburst pickups in my Orville Les Paul model. When I had them put in I bought a 50's wiring harness for it. I understand what vintage PAF type humbuckers should sound like, but to me this set is a bit too bright. The 50's wiring is supposed to retain the highs as the volume is rolled off, does it also make the pickups brighter when everything is full up on 10? I have heard conflicting theories. Some say even with everything turned up the tone pot is not loading the pickup and makes it brighter, some say with everything all the way up 50's wiring has no affect on the tone when compared to "modern" wiring. To me this set in my guitar sounds overly bright. I know there are tone knobs on the guitar, but I'd like to figure this out. Maybe this isn't the set for me. I was looking for a vintage set when I scored these, but maybe they are too vintage. Lowering them just make the set sound kinda dull. This set was designed to copy a set in a specific guitar so maybe that guitar and mine don't have a lot in common.
Thanks for any advice !!

[GuitarStv]

50s wiring with everything fully up should sound the same as regular wiring.

[Clint 55]

You could bump down the pots for the bridge. Or you could take the cover off the bridge pickup and swap in a double thick A2. Or both.

[larryguitar]

Before changing the pickups, would you consider 330K pots? They're the right answer for some guitars, in spite of their vilification on the internet.

Larry

[freefrog]

Knowing that the tone of a passive pickup not only depends on its magnetism and inductance or on pots resistance but also on parasitic capacitance, it might also be useful to watch this:

https://youtu.be/u2sjeVQpS94

Note that the darkening tonal effect of a cumbersome length of cable can be emulated by a small cheap capacitor from hot to ground at the output of the guitar (trick that Seymour evoked in his FAQ back in the day). :-)

[beaubrummels]

In my Les Pauls, 50's wiring is brighter all around, even with the pots full up. Anyone on here is free to argue that it's technically not possible, but I'm just telling you want I have experienced with my guitar when I wired it both ways with the same pots and pickups in the same guitar. But it is very slight, it's just a slight crispier top end that gives me some articulation and room to play with. With modern wiring, that crisp top end is just not there and you can't get it back even with the presence knob on an amp.

I have the Skinnerburst set and have used them in an LP Studio and an SG. Mine weren't overly bright. They actually sounded like a mellow, darkened Seth Lover set.

I don't know what the Orville specs are (does it have a maple neck?) or what amp you are using, but I might suspect you have your amp set for other guitars and that makes this one come out too bright maybe?

[freefrog]

There's many testimonials on the Web about vintage wiring brighter sounding than modern one even with pots full up and... that's my subjective experience as well (shamelessly).

Some people would probably attribute that to psychoacoustic.

Personally, I've encountered way too many unexpected phenomenons with guitar electronics to discard the possibility of some unseen interaction. After all, a guitar signal is amplified several hundreds of times by a typical amp so it's not shocking to think to minuscule differences as becoming finally perceptible. Frank Falbo did evoke such things in his posts years ago.

To be honest, I've not dug the question theoretically. But if I do it and if time permits, I'll share my findings.


Back on topic, to put in perspective my previous answer: vintage LP wiring was good with low-fi vintage rigs including non buffered signal paths, warm sounding loudspeakers and so on. I've rarely played a vintage circuit without finding it softer than modern equivalents and I think it's not only due to aging but also to modern components being more consistent and efficient.

The tricks evoked in my previous post are a way among others to make the sound like when guitarists were plugging their guitars to their amps through 9m of coily cable or things like that. It makes a BIG difference.

For the record, the strap mounted Fryer treble booster designed for Brian May hosts a cap meant to emulate the missing cable from guitar to amp and this cap measures 4,7nF: it's enormous. like 30m of wire or more.
Santana has a "sweet switch" in his PRS guitars, doing the same thing thx to a delay line (equivalent to a series of inductors separated by capacitors to ground: more refined than a crude cap but not that different either)...

And the smoothing effect of stray capacitance is everywhere. Yesterday, I was "tuning" a pedalboard including a treble booster followed by tube driven OD/dist pedals: with this path directly followed by a buffered pedal, the tone was awfully harsh. Through a true bypass pedal, it was perfect.

Enough said: the sound of passive magnetic pickups is too often considered independantly of the whole signal path IMHO. Each transducer has an optimal electrical environment, different for a P.A.F. replica than for a high gain PU.

FWIW (tedious rambling of an old fart while the house is still sleeping a Sunday morning). :-P

[Orville]

Thanks for all the replies!
So my Orville is a typical Les Paul. Made in the Fugi Gen factory in Japan, Orville was Gibson's idea to make guitars in Japan for the Japanese market if I am correct. The chose Orville vs Gibson as the brand name. This is a post lawsuit era guitar but it's still a very solid axe. Long neck tenon, mahogany body and neck, pretty sure a maple cap.
I either play thru a Top Hat Super 33 1x12 combo, or a Marshall mini Jubilee head and a oversized Mesa 1x12 3/4 closed back cab that has seen a few different speakers in it. I do eq the amps to the guitar. I will say that this guitar is fairly light for a LP, but my longtime tech who has been working on it doesn't think there is weight relief going on.
I haven't had a chance this weekend to do more playing with it but should have some tine in the next day or two to do so. I have 2 other hummer equipped guitars, an Ibanez RG550 with a Dimarzio Fred and PAF Joe in it, and an Eastman 2 HB jazz box ( a Gibson 175 style). I know it's not apples to apples by any means but I'll compare and maybe that will bring some perspective to the Skinnerburst set. I play a lot of Tels and strat as well, and when my Top Hat is dialed in for a tone I like with those guitars, when I switch to the Skinnerbursts in the Orville LP I find them bright and almost thin sounding. But I'll play around and get a better picture shortly.

[Aceman]

Everything I was thinking has already been said.

#1 Check the pots - if 500k turn down to 7.5 or so. If that works, try 300k Gibson pots.
#2 Try a cap of whatever value the electronic wizards suggest
#3 Try an A2 mag

[Orville]

Ok, played the following on the same amp with neutral-ish settings on the amp. ( well maybe not neutral but bass, mids, treble and cut on 5)
The Orville with the Skinnerburst set.
My Ibanez RG550 with a Fred and PAF Joe.
My Eastman jazz axe with whatever the hell they put in them.
My Suhr Tele with an overwound A3 bridge pickup.

With the exception of the Eastman which was still "better" but closest to the Slinnerburst, I liked everything else much better. It turns out it wasn't the highs that bothered me, it was a very prominent mid frequency range my Skinnerburst set is putting out. The Fred is supposed to be a cutting, mid focused pickup and it sounded more balanced, while still giving a healthy mid push. Granted it's a basswood and maple neck super strat with a locking trem, but still. The Tele with the hot A3 Cavalier bridge ( I recommend ) sounded less mid focused. Turning down the tone helped on the Skinners, but then I lost other stuff I do like. I'm not great at describing tone, but the Skinners give sort of a AM radio, megaphone vibe, but obviously not the full effect of those. Or taking a 5 band EQ and making an arrow. Maybe the A3 magnet, as suggested by you, Aceman?
I know this is a great set with it's pedigree and Custom shop status and all, and that is why I bought them without a lot of investigation. I kinda feel bad for not liking them, but I can't deny for me they are not working.

[Clint 55]

I believe the skinnerbursts are supposed to sound super vintage. However you can round them out to make them more to your liking without muting them like with the tone. The main 2 ways to do this is to lower the volume pot value or to mag swap. The easiest way to get the effect of lowering the volume pot value is simply to clip a resistor between hot and ground of the pickup. You can use a parallel resistor calculator to gauge what volume value is simulated.

https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/tools/parallel-resistance-calculator/

[beaubrummels]

PAFs are an AM radio midrange kind of pickup. To get rid of that, you'd have to have something more scooped. An A5 magnet would do it. Or an outboard mid-cut EQ just for the Orville.

[larryguitar]

I know this is a great set with it's pedigree and Custom shop status and all, and that is why I bought them without a lot of investigation. I kinda feel bad for not liking them, but I can't deny for me they are not working.

That's the thing about pickups (or anything related to tone, really); there is no 'good' or 'bad', just flavors. Some folks like Italian, some like Mexican, some do or don't like chocolate. And while chocolate is super-popular, there's nothing wrong with not liking it.

Some of my favorite pickups have been ones that would never have been popular, and weren't even technically 'good.' I just liked them.

Larry

[Mincer]

PAFs are an AM radio midrange kind of pickup. To get rid of that, you'd have to have something more scooped. An A5 magnet would do it. Or an outboard mid-cut EQ just for the Orville.

Really? I don't hear that at all. A PAF doesn't generally have a lot of mids, but more highs and lows than anything.

[freefrog]

Ok, played the following on the same amp with neutral-ish settings on the amp. ( well maybe not neutral but bass, mids, treble and cut on 5)
The Orville with the Skinnerburst set.
My Ibanez RG550 with a Fred and PAF Joe.
My Eastman jazz axe with whatever the hell they put in them.
My Suhr Tele with an overwound A3 bridge pickup.

With the exception of the Eastman which was still "better" but closest to the Slinnerburst, I liked everything else much better. It turns out it wasn't the highs that bothered me, it was a very prominent mid frequency range my Skinnerburst set is putting out. The Fred is supposed to be a cutting, mid focused pickup and it sounded more balanced, while still giving a healthy mid push. Granted it's a basswood and maple neck super strat with a locking trem, but still. The Tele with the hot A3 Cavalier bridge ( I recommend ) sounded less mid focused. Turning down the tone helped on the Skinners, but then I lost other stuff I do like. I'm not great at describing tone, but the Skinners give sort of a AM radio, megaphone vibe, but obviously not the full effect of those. Or taking a 5 band EQ and making an arrow. Maybe the A3 magnet, as suggested by you, Aceman?
I know this is a great set with it's pedigree and Custom shop status and all, and that is why I bought them without a lot of investigation. I kinda feel bad for not liking them, but I can't deny for me they are not working.

To me, what you describe might simply be the sound of vintage correct P.A.F.'s in a Les Paul.
Because of materials, construction AND scale, a typical Gibson LP or faithful clone has an acoustic response looking like a wide dome, with a "notched dip" around 400 or 500hz.
Real P.A.F.'s and good clones have a very variable EQing (because of variable specs AND electronic contexts) but most often exagerate this nasal character.

some other LP clones are only correct cosmetically while made differently with different materials and don't exhibit this acoustic spectrum: some (not so good) Epi LP's, for instance, have flat mids and a narrow pointy peak around 4khz. I don't think it's the case with your guitar but IME, good faithful P.A.F. clones don't sound "at home" nor even "correct" in such repro's. They seem thin and bright unless they are corrected by external (electrical) means.


Your Ibanez RG has a longer (Fender) scale imparting typically deeper bass and brighter / richer harmonics (IOW: a wider spectrum, flatter if not "scooped") + a different construction. The locking trem probably changes the bass and might "carve out" the lowest mids. A P.A.F. in it would not sound like in a LP.


Your Eastman Jazz has probably a Gibson scale but a semi-hollow or hollow body doesn't focus the acoustic resonance on high mids like a solid body LP does.

Your Suhr Tele has again a Fender scale...

I wouldn't expect comparable tones from all of them. I've struggled a long time just to make a Gibson Flying V closer sounding to a Gibson Les Paul and it needed many little tuning mods.

But enough with words. Here is an example that I find typical of what vintage P.A.F.'s in a Les Paul sound like:

https://youtu.be/sACF5jQighY?t=44

Is it what you hear?


EDIT - and below is the same kind of thing from a SG, in order to hear a real vintage P.A.F. in another luthery / through another amp (not without mentioning that it would have benefited from different settings in drive mode: the guys did apparently set their FX's and/or amp as for a standard modern humbucker and it was not a good idea, IMHO. YMMV).

https://youtu.be/l8VnYBb6JVw?t=1474