Coma
Well-known member
Hiya kids and welcome to uncle Coma's house of melting metal fun.
[Disclaimer! This design, though my own, is surely nothing new. So don't get crusty if you've seen it before - I haven't]
So a couple of weeks ago I decided to face my fear of accidentally causing a nuclear meltdown inside my main guitar (as well as risking invoking the wrath one encounters when conjuring old threads back from the dead) and install a treble bleed mod. Tried my hands at the Duncan version first. Results were... let's say less than stellar. Switched to a Kinman mod (more on that later) and quickly realised that continuing to open up, unscrew nuts and unsolder/resolder components every time I wanted to change something up would be huge PITA. Alligator clamps are an option, but that only works as a tool for making testing simpler, it's not a permanent solution. Well, despair no more - enter "Uncle Coma's Modular Treble Mod Modding Mechanism" (name pending).
What do you need?
- A soldering iron and some basic common sense
- Solder
- A vacuum pen (in case you **** up)
- Two lengths of wire
- One miniature connector block (such as this one)
- Assorted resistors and capacitors
- One piece of double sided adhesive foam pad
- Your favorite beer
- Patience
- A decent soundtrack (I listened to Strauss' "Also Spracht Zarathustra", because it's less distracting than death metal when handling something hot enough to melt metal and also because I'm pretentious. Unclear whether this affected the final resualt. YMMV.)
Ok, how is it done, smartypants?
1: Take your two wires and cut them to a generous length. Strip away the ends, bend if needed. Insert into the connection ports of your choice in the connector block and solder.
2: Cut the wires to adequate lenghts (I, uuuuh, may have missed this step. See picture below). Solder them onto lug 2 & 3
.
3: Attach the connector block to the inside wall of your control cavity using the foam pad.
4: That's it! You're done. Have fun trying out any component combinations your heart might desire without the need for soldering inside your guitar (you will still need to solder together resistors and caps if you want to do a Kinman or Duncan style mod.
The "Neckbeard" mod
Prior to installing UCMTMMM This particular guitar had the following specs:
* Set maple neck
* Rosewood fretboard
* Mahogany body w/ maple cap
* Dimarzio Air Zone in the neck
* Dimarzio Tone Zone in the bridge
* Treble bleed modded with 1200 pf poly cap and 130k metal resistor wired in series
* Tuned to C
The reason I decided to open this guitar up again (apart from wanting to install the connector block) is that I wasn't entirely happy with the Kinman mod I had in there. Ideally, a treble bleed mod is not supposed to have any effect on your sound when the pot is fully opened (set at 10, so to speak). On my axe, it did. Whether this is due to old worn pots or just the anture of the beast itself, I dunno. Suffice to say, it had some interesting tradeoffs. The bridge pickup became way too bright for comfort. This could be tamed a bit by rolling back the tone pot, but didn't really solve the issue. The neck pickup however, started doing some magical things. Sounded nice enough played clean (it always did) but with distortion on, it was almost like playing with a super-smooth built-in fuzz.
Now, I'm not actually a fan of fuzz pedals in any way, but this was so much more controllable and articulated than any fuzz I've ever heard. Playing rhythm through the neck pickup - esp when tuned down four half-steps - has never sounded good to me. It's muddy and dull. But these values on the treble bleed mod worked wonders. I stopped using the bridge pickup entirely and played everything through the neck.
I'm pretty new at this stuff, so maybe somone else with more experience can chime in. But if anybody else decides to try this version of the mod, please let me know. Would be fun to hear how it changes with pickups.
[Disclaimer! This design, though my own, is surely nothing new. So don't get crusty if you've seen it before - I haven't]
So a couple of weeks ago I decided to face my fear of accidentally causing a nuclear meltdown inside my main guitar (as well as risking invoking the wrath one encounters when conjuring old threads back from the dead) and install a treble bleed mod. Tried my hands at the Duncan version first. Results were... let's say less than stellar. Switched to a Kinman mod (more on that later) and quickly realised that continuing to open up, unscrew nuts and unsolder/resolder components every time I wanted to change something up would be huge PITA. Alligator clamps are an option, but that only works as a tool for making testing simpler, it's not a permanent solution. Well, despair no more - enter "Uncle Coma's Modular Treble Mod Modding Mechanism" (name pending).
What do you need?
- A soldering iron and some basic common sense
- Solder
- A vacuum pen (in case you **** up)
- Two lengths of wire
- One miniature connector block (such as this one)
- Assorted resistors and capacitors
- One piece of double sided adhesive foam pad
- Your favorite beer
- Patience
- A decent soundtrack (I listened to Strauss' "Also Spracht Zarathustra", because it's less distracting than death metal when handling something hot enough to melt metal and also because I'm pretentious. Unclear whether this affected the final resualt. YMMV.)
Ok, how is it done, smartypants?
1: Take your two wires and cut them to a generous length. Strip away the ends, bend if needed. Insert into the connection ports of your choice in the connector block and solder.
2: Cut the wires to adequate lenghts (I, uuuuh, may have missed this step. See picture below). Solder them onto lug 2 & 3
3: Attach the connector block to the inside wall of your control cavity using the foam pad.
4: That's it! You're done. Have fun trying out any component combinations your heart might desire without the need for soldering inside your guitar (you will still need to solder together resistors and caps if you want to do a Kinman or Duncan style mod.
The "Neckbeard" mod
Prior to installing UCMTMMM This particular guitar had the following specs:
* Set maple neck
* Rosewood fretboard
* Mahogany body w/ maple cap
* Dimarzio Air Zone in the neck
* Dimarzio Tone Zone in the bridge
* Treble bleed modded with 1200 pf poly cap and 130k metal resistor wired in series
* Tuned to C
The reason I decided to open this guitar up again (apart from wanting to install the connector block) is that I wasn't entirely happy with the Kinman mod I had in there. Ideally, a treble bleed mod is not supposed to have any effect on your sound when the pot is fully opened (set at 10, so to speak). On my axe, it did. Whether this is due to old worn pots or just the anture of the beast itself, I dunno. Suffice to say, it had some interesting tradeoffs. The bridge pickup became way too bright for comfort. This could be tamed a bit by rolling back the tone pot, but didn't really solve the issue. The neck pickup however, started doing some magical things. Sounded nice enough played clean (it always did) but with distortion on, it was almost like playing with a super-smooth built-in fuzz.
Now, I'm not actually a fan of fuzz pedals in any way, but this was so much more controllable and articulated than any fuzz I've ever heard. Playing rhythm through the neck pickup - esp when tuned down four half-steps - has never sounded good to me. It's muddy and dull. But these values on the treble bleed mod worked wonders. I stopped using the bridge pickup entirely and played everything through the neck.
I'm pretty new at this stuff, so maybe somone else with more experience can chime in. But if anybody else decides to try this version of the mod, please let me know. Would be fun to hear how it changes with pickups.
