adding a pick up 1957 custom black beauty

[JB6464]

Re: adding a pick up 1957 custom black beauty

Well i've played the Gibson Historic RI 57 Black beauty with 3 pu's and a 57 Historic RI with 2 pu's. I bought the 2 pu guitar if thats says anything. The middle pu is cool looking but just does'nt sound right and adds weight. As for the 57 all mohogany Black Beauty and wine red guitars, i think they rock. Theirs something special about the all mohogany lp's verses the maple cap ones. Their real smooth sounding and with the right pu's they can sound very FAT and Chunky.:cool2:

 

[uOpt]

Re: adding a pick up 1957 custom black beauty

The magnetic fields of the pickups will mess with each other.

As the very least you should put all magnets in with the same polarity in your preferred position (presumably that means the magnet in the bridge is reversed) and that means to also reverse the wire if you get braided wire.

Myself, I test these things in a swimming pool Strat before committing on routing something.

 

[FAC]

Re: adding a pick up 1957 custom black beauty

My main guitar is a 3 pickup 1957 Les Paul Reissue. After about a year of messing around with this pickup or that, I finally came the realization that the middle humbucker looks cool but pretty much sucks in terms of sound, echoing many of the comments above. If your guitar has two pickups, I would recommend leaving it that way. Having had the 3 pickup model, I would never consider routing out a two pickup model...just not worth it.

Ultimately, I ended up with 3 Phat Cats! They work really well in the all-mahogany LP customs. I wired it up so I can dial in any pickup combination...it turns out I still NEVER use the middle pickup alone. I do combine it with the neck and/or bridge for some nice quacky sounds, and sometimes run all three together for an interesting clean sound...but 95% of the time I use the neck and bridge pickups as if it were a normal 2 pickup Les Paul...

 

[orpheo]

Re: adding a pick up 1957 custom black beauty

I have one 3pup LP custom by gibson, and three 3pup Les Pauls by Warmoth, and on most of them, the 3rd is just a fake for cosmetics. but thats just lazyness. I want to have 2x prails and 1x stagmag as my standard setup for my guitars. the stagmag gives me the stratty quacky tone combined with the prails (either a more bright or a warmer quacky tone), and the prails cover all the rest. I do set that pickup low though. if used correctly, you can get a lot of different, and usefull sounds out of it.

I used to have phat cats, but I'll never go phat cat again, since prails do the p90 sound, and more.

 

[blueman335]

Re: adding a pick up 1957 custom black beauty

I want a 3-pup Custom though. And the middle pu will be a rod mag Phat Cat style with a gold cover at about 6k. And the tones will be killer.

If you already have an HHH guitar, triple Phat Cats (or P94's) would be interesting.

If you're determined to have a middle PU routed, why not do a Fender-type single coil?

 

[uOpt]

Re: adding a pick up 1957 custom black beauty

Nobody expects to use the middle pickup alone. And just combining middle and one other in parallel with full coils isn't going to be different enough from just neck and bridge in parallel.

The best uses of a middle humbucker would be :

• As a second neck pickup with different sound, e.g. have an A2 boutique neck humbucker but a 59 middle. Or a Phat Cat.
• As a source of individual coils to subtract or add in complicated schematics, for example "bridge humbucker in series with one coil from middle out-of-phase to sharpen it up" or "neck and bridge in parallel, but put middle in series to tighten in back up".

 

[blueman335]

Re: adding a pick up 1957 custom black beauty

[*]As a source of individual coils to subtract or add in complicated schematics, for example "bridge humbucker in series with one coil from middle out-of-phase to sharpen it up" or "neck and bridge in parallel, but put middle in series to tighten in back up".

+1. Agreed, and as much as we link to re-wire, that stuff is way beyond the average HHH owner.