Installed Invaders into prs

[Skidgravy]

I installed sd invaders into prs custom 24 08 and have some wierd sound issues. Wondering if especially since the invaders have a cap inside them, should i have removed the caps and resistors that came installed in the guitar, btw this is an es and not a core model. Came with the crappy sounding I pickups stock.

[Seashore]

Only the neck pickup has a capacitor, and it just cuts some low frequencies. What sound issues are you having? The bridge Invader has a unique sound and needs to be set up differently from any other pickup I've used - I find the sweet spot much farther away from the strings than other bridge pickups I like.

[Mincer]

Welcome to the forum!

What kind of sound issues are you having? I'd leave all the caps where they are right now. We first have to figure out what is wrong. Invaders are very powerful with lots of mids. What kind of sound were you going for, and what are you getting now?

[Skidgravy]

Thank you for the responses. That is good info about the neck only having a cap. So really the only setting i have found that comes close to what i want is 3-way set on bridge, treb all the way up and both mini toggles switched up. If i attempt to set either toggle down, the sound reduces by at least half, sounds very shallow and twangy. That being said, no matter what effects i have set, even clean, the notes do not sound true. There is a " phlange " type element to it. This was not present before i swapped pickups.it is hard to describe, but say i play an A chord as in first chord of Hagars ' heavy metal", instead of hearing what you would expect, there is a slight waviness to the sound, a bit like half a cycle of vibrato to it. Almost as if im slightly bending the whole chord slightly as it rings out. Not such a big deal with single note leads, but annoying with held chords. Ive raised my strings way up to rule out fret interference..ran my pickups to both extremes(,highest and lowest from strings) trying to figure out the issue. One thing i notice, there is a ..smell i get from the componants compartment as i play for any length of time, kind of reminds me of when i soldered new pickups in, that was why i wondered if i needed to pull the caps that i left from original set up. Thought maybe they were ,overheating? I am not new to electronics but sadly lacking in their functionality with regards to the shaping of the signal relevant to the guitar. Thus the thought process that maybe the invaders did not like them. As i understand it, they are basically used as a freq filter, yes? Thats all? I gravitate towards 70's- 90's metal..but Sabbath, aerosmith,zeppelin, priest , maiden, ac-dc eagles( mostly walsh and Feldor) really anything that blows my hair back. I understand i cant expect the sd invaders to have the range my ibanez has, as far as the invaders being meant for heavier stuff, and im ok with that, i just wanna set em up to the best possible state that i can..and again, thank you for all of your advice and experience. It is greatly appreciated!

[freefrog]

Thank you for the responses. That is good info about the neck only having a cap. So really the only setting i have found that comes close to what i want is 3-way set on bridge, treb all the way up and both mini toggles switched up. If i attempt to set either toggle down, the sound reduces by at least half, sounds very shallow and twangy. That being said, no matter what effects i have set, even clean, the notes do not sound true. There is a " phlange " type element to it. This was not present before i swapped pickups.it is hard to describe, but say i play an A chord as in first chord of Hagars ' heavy metal", instead of hearing what you would expect, there is a slight waviness to the sound, a bit like half a cycle of vibrato to it. Almost as if im slightly bending the whole chord slightly as it rings out. Not such a big deal with single note leads, but annoying with held chords. Ive raised my strings way up to rule out fret interference..ran my pickups to both extremes(,highest and lowest from strings) trying to figure out the issue. One thing i notice, there is a ..smell i get from the componants compartment as i play for any length of time, kind of reminds me of when i soldered new pickups in, that was why i wondered if i needed to pull the caps that i left from original set up. Thought maybe they were ,overheating? I am not new to electronics but sadly lacking in their functionality with regards to the shaping of the signal relevant to the guitar. Thus the thought process that maybe the invaders did not like them. As i understand it, they are basically used as a freq filter, yes? Thats all? I gravitate towards 70's- 90's metal..but Sabbath, aerosmith,zeppelin, priest , maiden, ac-dc eagles( mostly walsh and Feldor) really anything that blows my hair back. I understand i cant expect the sd invaders to have the range my ibanez has, as far as the invaders being meant for heavier stuff, and im ok with that, i just wanna set em up to the best possible state that i can..and again, thank you for all of your advice and experience. It is greatly appreciated!

Hi,

The "phlange" effect sounds like a side effect of magnetic pull, to me. Keep both pickups not too close to the strings, since Invaders are extremely powerful magnetically.


Regarding the Custom 24 08 original wiring, IF it's not a SE model...

1-In my understanding, the bridge pickup of a PRS CS 24 08 has its magnet flipped and its wires reversed in order to keep the humbucking effect when both pickup are in single coil mode (slugs coils only)... In this bridge pickup, The finish of the coils with slugs (white wire) is used as the hot output instead of the start (black wire) and the finish of the coil with screws (green wire) is the ground instead of the start (red wire).

If a bridge invader has been mounted instead of this RWRP PRS bridge pickup and wired normally, it doesn't buck the hum no more when both pickups are split and enabled together.

2-In my understanding (bis), each split coil switch of a CS 24 08 disables a coil AND enables a small value capacitor between "hot" and ground (in parallel with the active coils), in order to tame the brightness of the single coil mode. Pretty logical to me.

...BUT this subtle low pass filter is not meant to cooperate nicely with the series cap between the coils of an Invader neck pickup... IF the Invader neck in single coil mode involves the bobbin with a series cap, its bass AND high frequency are both trimmed, giving a narrow bandwidth and a reduced output level... In which case it would be necessary to split the OTHER coil: reversing the hot and ground of BOTH Invaders [EDIT: + their two other wires on each switch] should solve this issue if it exists and would therefore be something to try in this case. It will split the "other" coil of each pickup but it shouldn't be worse than having both a series cap and a parallel cap enabled for the neck PU in single coil mode...

Below is the link towards the schematic that I've used to understand what was going on.

FWIW. :-)

https://support.prsguitars.com/hc/en-us/article_attachments/10785529080475

[Clint 55]

Yes, it's string pull. You have to lower the pickups until it goes away. If that doesn't work, an option is to remove the side magnets in the pickups. Invaders come with 3 double thick ceramic magnets, which is a huge amount of power. It is not essential for the pickup to work to have all that. They'll function just fine with only 1 in the center.

About the mini toggles down: that's probably split. It's supposed to sound like that. It's splitting to only 1 of the coils instead of both in series.

[freefrog]

In the PRS schematic, switches in down positions split the pickups AND enable two low value caps in parallel with the remaining coils: 220pF and 330pF. It shifts down the resonant frequencies of the active coils and trims the high range accordingly, as implied by an old trick also recommended by Seymour Duncan (or Bill Lawrence).

While I'm at it, let's complete and/or correct my previous message: IF the switch for the neck invader splits the coil with a series cap with annoying effects, not only hot and ground (B and D in the PRS schematic) must be swapped but the "A" and "C" wires must be permutated too. Same thing for the bridge PU: swap A and G as well as F and H, or the bridge PU will be out of phase with the other.
swapping the split coil of each pickup shouldn't be a problem with Invaders, since their bobbins are identical. For pickups with screw poles, it could be more annoying...

EDIT - Just remembered that a while back, I had flipped a pair of Invaders in a Superstrat : the guitar was wired to split the inner coils and the tone was not optimal so, instead of desoldering anything, I had just rotated each pickup in its cavity in order to have the outer coils enabled in split mode. It worked like a charm. FWIW...