2-wire Mods?

magillver

New member
I'm just putting a parts guitar together with things I have laying around, LP style. I'm putting in a pair of 2-wire Seth Lovers that I took out of something else, and I'm just wondering if there are any useful mods that can be done without tearing the pups apart? Thanks!
 
Swapping magnets doesn't really 'tear the pickups apart' like re-wiring to a 4 wire humbucker does. But a stock Seth Lover sounds great as is.
 
There isn't much you can do with 2-wire pups. Series, would make one cover "hot", besides probably sounding real muddy.
 
Basically your best options are a passive bass cut, a passive treble cut, a black ice boost, phase switching the middle position.

If you absolutely need to have mods, I would suggest replacing the tone controls with two push pulls, one puts a passive bass cut on the neck, the other gives the "Arlo cocked wah" mod on the bridge. You could try the Eldred mod for something simpler, but I prefer the Arlo, it essentially gives you a band pass filter on the bridge pickup that cuts treble and bass.
 
Thanks for all of the input! At the moment I just have it wired up like a 'normal' guitar, and it sounds great, but I'm a tone tinkerer, so I'll definitely look into these options...
 
Seths are some of my favorite pickups. They have a pleasing honk to them that works well with non-master volume amps, too.
 
the pic i posted of me and my buddy playing recently, i was using a seth loaded guitar straight into a deluxe reverb ri (changed speaker) with the volume on 7. sounded great and gave me everything i needed. great pups!
 
the pic i posted of me and my buddy playing recently, i was using a seth loaded guitar straight into a deluxe reverb ri (changed speaker) with the volume on 7. sounded great and gave me everything i needed. great pups!

Yeah, I use mine into a Deluxe on 4 or so, with a TS-inspired pedal. Or a non-master volume Mesa Blue Angel. Fantastic, dynamic sound.
 
+1 on the ideas above.

As they already involve parallel inductors* or capacitors (in series or in parallel), let's recall that such components can be used altogether in a VariTone giving various notched frequencies from mids to bass range.

This circuit has a bad rep because many recent applications use too low inductance chokes**. But a vintage specs VariTone is an interesting option, especially with vintage sounding PUs like Seth Lover's. The last notched positions give access to an out of phase kind of tone without having to reverse the phase...


*On inductors, I've shared a few things in a past topic: https://forum.seymourduncan.com/for...-changing-the-voicing-of-pickups…#post6244220
**A flawed Gibson schematic evokes a 1.5H choke. A VariTone needs 5 to 10 times more to work properly. ;-)

FWIW. HTH.
 
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