Changing Pickups, Urban Legends & General BS

O

Osensei

New member
Well before I started my first PU change project, I thought my way would be clear. Now I see that there is a tangled overgrown forest of good information tangled w/ misconception, exaggeration, deceit and outright BS.

Issue #1:

First there are the wiring schemes. I've read one author that seems to think that modern LP wiring is a crime against humanity. Naturally this chap favors the old 59 LP Sunburst wiring with the caps wired btw the vol and tone pots on specific lugs. For this guy, the Holy Grail also features Bumblebees caps, Centralab tone pots and the like. But at least he does suggest that there are modern components which are equivalent. Sheeeesh!

Nevertheless, having tried out the Gibson VOS LP which is supposed to be a reissue of the 50 and 60's period guitars, I'll have to agree that the old setup does seem to have a little extra mojo compared to their modern counterparts.

Issue #2:

This one really irritates me the most! Yes, I mean the long standing debate over which pots, linear or audio! OMG! My head is spinning over this one. One camps says, "Audio for vol & linear for tone". Another camp says, "Audio for both". Yet another says, "Linear for vol & audio for tone"!

To complicate matters further there is the complaint that the taper on modern audio pots are inferior to their antique counterparts, with modern pots having an 80:20 ratio while old Centralab supposedly had 70:30 or 60:40.

For example one guy claims that having a linear tone pot will give you smooth tone changes along the entire sweep of the pot. Yet another guy claims that a linear pot is basically an on/off switch, with noticeable tone changes occurring only btw 1 & 2 on the dial and no noticeable change btw 3 - 10! What the hell can I believe.

I do know however, that most guitar mfgs go with audio pots in both control sets. But I've seen $100 pots for God's sake!

Issue # 3

Caps are not created equal? Ceramic disc, film, mylar, paper and oil, Bumblebees, Mallories, Havs, Orange Drops, Vitamin Q's and all sorts of outrageous prices to boot! I've seen $75 caps. You could by a new Epi LP by the time you get the wiring harness together! LOL!

Fortunately, there is an easy way to A/B caps.

Does anyone want to chime in on the seemingly ongoing Internet debates! But keep the discussion in the vintage arena! I understand that if you play Metal or a high gain style, then a vintage passive system may not be for you.

A. Wiring schemes modern vs vintage, pros and cons
B. Caps, tapers, the effect on tone and vol applications and the BS thereof
C. Does the brand name of a friggin cap really effect its ability to filter? LOL! I mean, what the hell is wrong with a good old Orange Drop for God's sake!

My personal opinion ...., "A sucker born every minute"! There just seems to be some ppl that want to take advantage of us pickup swappers! LOL!
 
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Re: Changing Pickups, Urban Legends & General BS

I like 50's style wiring myself, simply because I roll back my volume quite often and I don't like to lose my highs when I do.

As far as pots, I like CTS. I've never tried the uber-pots, but, to be honest, I've never felt the need to either. As far as linear vs. audio taper, I do find that linear has a more abrupt curve than audio.

For caps, Orange Drop does me well. Again, I personally see no need to swap to a more expensive cap.

To be honest, I think that most guys who go out there and try to see how "authetic" modern components are compared to what came out in the 50's are full of it.

Who cares if the pots in my LP don't match what came in the orginal Goldtops or 'bursts? I've never played a real '59 LP, and I don't think I ever will.

As long as I dig the way my guitars sound, who cares what Buddy Holly, Chet Atkins, and Michael Bloomfield had in their axes. I'm still not going to sound like them even if I blow $300 on caps.
 
Re: Changing Pickups, Urban Legends & General BS

audio pots = logarithmic pots = how our ears respond[logarithmicly],not linearly.Hence linear pots have an uneven effect to our hearing.

:kabong:
 
Re: Changing Pickups, Urban Legends & General BS

Benjy_26 said:
I like 50's style wiring myself, simply because I roll back my volume quite often and I don't like to lose my highs when I do.

As far as pots, I like CTS. I've never tried the uber-pots, but, to be honest, I've never felt the need to either. As far as linear vs. audio taper, I do find that linear has a more abrupt curve than audio.

For caps, Orange Drop does me well. Again, I personally see no need to swap to a more expensive cap.

To be honest, I think that most guys who go out there and try to see how "authetic" modern components are compared to what came out in the 50's are full of it.

Who cares if the pots in my LP don't match what came in the orginal Goldtops or 'bursts? I've never played a real '59 LP, and I don't think I ever will.

As long as I dig the way my guitars sound, who cares what Buddy Holly, Chet Atkins, and Michael Bloomfield had in their axes. I'm still not going to sound like them even if I blow $300 on caps.
Click to expand...

This pretty much echoes my opinion on the whole deal except I prefer audio pots in both applications.
 
Re: Changing Pickups, Urban Legends & General BS

I prefer 50's wiring because it preserves treble when the volume knob is turned back. Without this, I think that volume controls can be unusable in some guitars.

Strictly speaking, linear pots will give an even response for tone knobs. There's really no logical reason I can think of to use audio taper pots for tone controls, although they will work. For volume, though, audio taper pots are a must, because they're made for audio volume, and they respond the way our ears do.

For caps, I don't think they matter a lot, as long as they're half-way decent quality.
 
Re: Changing Pickups, Urban Legends & General BS

hanumanlangur said:
Strictly speaking, linear pots will give an even response for tone knobs. There's really no logical reason I can think of to use audio taper pots for tone controls, although they will work. quality.
Click to expand...

The problem is that unless you have experience installing an using them, you have to take someone else's word on it. I've heard that linear pots don't change the tone much until you get near to the end of the sweep. Then there are ppl like you who say they are fine. The only way to know for sure is to install them and try them for myself.

If they suck then it extra work for me! LOL!
 
Re: Changing Pickups, Urban Legends & General BS

It sounds like it's the same as most things..............personal preference, matter of taste and 'feel'...

We've just gone from arguing about Fender vs. Gibson to arguing about all these tiny little variables that are pretty insignificant in the big picture.
 
Re: Changing Pickups, Urban Legends & General BS

Osensei said:
A. Wiring schemes modern vs vintage, pros and cons
Click to expand...

These affect how exactly the pots react when yout turn them down. Basically they influence whether the volume pot just kills the amplitude of the resonance peak (no special mod), whether there's a lameass attempt to counter that with a first-order high pass filter (not the same thing as giving you the resonance peak back) or whether the tone pot should automatically engage when you turn down volume (the opposite of a treble bleed mod, what you get when connecting the capacitor to the middle volume pot post).

Osensei said:
B. Caps, tapers, the effect on tone and vol applications and the BS thereof
Click to expand...

Tapers, again, only influence how the thing reacts as you turn down. You can get all linear positions with an audio taper and vice versa, although they might be hard to find.

If you put in a 47 nF cap, you cannot dial anywhere to get exactly what a 22 nF gives you.

Osensei said:
C. Does the brand name of a friggin cap really effect its ability to filter? LOL! I mean, what the hell is wrong with a good old Orange Drop for God's sake!
Click to expand...

Sorry. I was sceptical, too, but ceramic caps and high-quality caps are actually very easy to tell from each other, and that is with the pots at "10". My howland musicap is much warmer, rounder bass and more transparent, a cheap ceramic cap I compared with a A/B switch sounds more direct, more intense.

I don't rate the ceramic as strictly worse, though. In my Explorer I would have kept it.
 
Re: Changing Pickups, Urban Legends & General BS

I don't have an opinion about the vintage vs modern wiring scheme question, and I have no strong opinion about the taper of pots (except that volume needs to be audio taper).

When it comes to caps, I agree with uOpt that different cap types do make a difference. A lot of it may just comes down to component drift, tolerance differences, etc, or there may be more properties of the dielectics in play (capacitors are many, varied, and there is a LOT to them), but you can definitely hear the difference. That's not to say that more expensive caps are always better, of course. I think there's a lot of hype over vintage caps, a lot of which I think can be explained by the drop in their capacitance due to age.

I wouldn't go blowing $75 on a capacitor, but I would very likely buy a handful of decent tolerance capacitors (orange drops are 5% - and they're less than $1), so I could swap them out till I found one I liked.
 
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Re: Changing Pickups, Urban Legends & General BS

I'm a big fan of Mallory caps. Like uopt, I was a skeptic til I tried the Mallory's. Something much more clear and articulate about them. Yes, I know, I'm talking about a bleepin' cap. But it's true.

EDIT: And the Mallory's are nowhere near $75.
 
Re: Changing Pickups, Urban Legends & General BS

Well, I did my own wiring on one guitar, and I noticed that when I roll the volume pot down sond gets crystal (not muddy like on other guitars). I am not sure what I did, but it's a very nice thing to have, and if anybody knows what causes this effect, please tell me so that I could mod the other guitar.


Another question is about quality of the brand name pickups. I was thinking about putting SD in my guitar, but somebody told me that I won't hear the difference unless on the all-tube amp.
Since I do most of my playing on SS, I am wondering will I get any improvement over my stock pups (INF or PSND...don't quite remember)?


About the pots:
I made a mistake in this guitar cause I put audio (log) pots for both volume and tone.
Volume control works fine, but the tone works exactly like Osenseis 'friend' described:
'noticeable tone changes occurring only btw 1 & 2 on the dial and no noticeable change btw 3 - 10'
After all this I think that linear pots are the right ones for tone control, and will stick with logarithmic (audio) for volume.
 
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Re: Changing Pickups, Urban Legends & General BS

Osensei said:
Well before I started my first PU change project, I thought my way would be clear. Now I see that there is a tangled overgrown forest of good information tangled w/ misconception, exaggeration, deceit and outright BS.
Click to expand...

WARNING: Your first pickup change is a slippery slope. I joined my first forum a little over two years ago to ask a question about a pickup change. I hadn't changed guitars or amps in over 25 years. I have now spent thousands of dollars on pickups, 4 new guitars ... no 5 ... rewired them all ... then again. Built an amp myself ... bought several new speakers and cabinets, tubes, and ... oh yes a drawer full of pickups. A couple of pedals to boot ... i never use pedals.

Issue #1: Wiring schemes - these are different but having tried both I like modern. Maybe they changed for a reason. Modern components are fine.

Issue #2: Audio is better due to the way we hear - modern CTS are fine and inexpensive - modern ratios are fine

Issue # 3 - Orange drops are fine - buy at least .047uf, .033uf, .022uf & ,015uf for about $1 each and test with alligator clips until you find the ones you like.

"A sucker born every minute"! ... some ppl that want to take advantage of us pickup swappers! ... absolutely true ... but more people trying to help than take advantage ... but they (we) are sick too.

Now go see for yourself ... poor bastard. :D
 
Re: Changing Pickups, Urban Legends & General BS

yea, i'm with Benjy26. Some of these guys who HAVE to use these authentic vintage components, all the way down to the wire and caps, are just absurd. I have an Epi les paul that i wired myself with new pups, basic CTS pots and O-drops. I wired it w/ two mini switches so i can now not only cut coils, but i can isolate each coil and use them in any combo i want. And believe me, that guitar can go toe-to-toe with any non-custom shop gibson.
 
Re: Changing Pickups, Urban Legends & General BS

Empty Pockets said:
It sounds like it's the same as most things..............personal preference, matter of taste and 'feel'...
Click to expand...

Bingo! There is no right way. Tone is a blend of many variables & we end up with what works for us, thru our gear. That's what makes up most of this forum. We argue constantly (usually with a minimum of name-calling & personal attacks), but we all learn something in the process, and part of it works out for each of us. I don't agree with a lot of the posts, but then, it's not my guitar and amp, or my music style they're talking about. We just need to be exposed to the wealth of ideas out there that come from all this brain-storming. There's strong feelings about music, it's an emotional thing, and this is a healthy process.

See what others do & why, and use the pieces of it that make sense for you. There are some very good suggestions that have been brought out on this forum. If you can use 10% of them, your guitar will sound much better than it used to.
 
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