Making my Les Paul Sound Better

[blueman335]

Re: Making my Les Paul Sound Better

Naw...no scowl here.

I just know your an Epi guy...no problem with that.

I have lots of priorities. I have an acre of yard filled with a collection of hundreds of palms; I breed tarantulas for 'fun and profit.' I'd rather spend my money getting local stray animals fixed and fed, then own high end guitars. For what I do and the venues I play at, Epi's work just fine.

 

[Lewguitar]

Re: Making my Les Paul Sound Better

I had the CC and SH5 combo in my monaco elite. I have to wonder what Jol was thinking there too. The CC was passable with gain, but cleans are garbage. The Custom in the neck surprisingly sounded great for a shredder high gain tone like a souped up full shred...but totally not my thing. Burstbucker 1/2 totally took that guitar to new sonic realm. Night and day improvement.

What is odd though is that I never once thought of my Monoco as being a shred-o, use with mondo-distortion, kind of guitar. I thought of it as being in the same vein as a ES-335.

 

[ExplorersRock]

Re: Making my Les Paul Sound Better

I test pickups through a harness that has a Tele style three-way switch, between a 250/250/47 and a 500/500/22 setup, and one where I have more things to pick from (load capacity, LCR network etc, switch between different vol pot values and use one of 4 or 5 capacitors for the tone pot). When doing a test 1:1 like this you will notice a real difference when switching all parameters at once, but just switching one of the pots or the capacitor is not that obvious.

If your only test is to solder up a new pickupguard and then play it's no wonder the mind is playing tricks.

First, you gotta tell me how you rigged this setup as it sounds like a pretty sweet way to test pickups. I'd be very interested in trying this out.:bowdown:

Secondly, I'm being honest in saying that I have only been messing with pickups, pots, and caps for a year, so my knowledge base and experience probably pales in comparison to yours. So I am listening. But the advice that has guided me in switching pots came from different local techs I know, each with around 30 years experience working on guitars. I feel confident in their suggestions. Lou doesn't believe in messing with caps as to him, like you're suggesting here, it doesn't make any noticeable difference. I did it because caps are cheap and I figured, why not? Mark suggested that if I wanted the pots to have an effect, the volume would have a bigger effect then the tone pot. He did suggest, just as you did, that if I wanted a profound effect, I needed to change the whole setup: volumes, tones, and caps together. On a different guitar I switched out a tone pot in an attempt to take out some of the brightness. I didn't hear any noticeable difference like both Mark and you are suggesting. When I changed the volume instead, I thought the guitar sounded a little less bright. Not dramatically, but enough to make me happy.

Look, maybe you are right and I am hearing something that isn't there, but I do believe that I am hearing something. And I would ask you grant me the following. The placebo effect basically states that you will experience whatever type of difference that you expect. Wishful thinking will create what you want to hear. But that isn't what happened in this case. I was really hoping that by changing the two volume pots I would get the tone I want and be happy. That's what I wanted. I got the opposite. To my ears, the clarity suffered and I didn't get any more warmth. It also seemed to have a greater impact on the neck than on the bridge which caught me off guard. :dunno: Complete 180 degrees from what I was looking for.

My take away from what you're saying is that messing with one pot or cap is a waste of time. If I want a meaningful difference, I gotta change the whole set-up. Suggestion respected and accepted. Given what others are saying here though, I think a total control swap would make a muddier tone, which i don't want, and I think that you have suggested the same thing. Maybe, the best thing I can take away here is that if this pickup set-up is at 8/10ths the tone I want, then I just need to man-up and try different pickups. Or at least try Itsa's suggestion.

BTW, I didn't expect to get as much input as I did on this thread and I really appreciate it. So feel free to add anything more, I'm enjoying reading it. Even you want to tell me it's all in my head :smash:

 

[ExplorersRock]

Re: Making my Les Paul Sound Better

wait up a sec...
what amp are you using?

Sorry, I totally forgot you asked this! My main amp that I am using, and which I am judging my tones on, is a Carvin V3 head with a Fender GE412 4x12 cabinet.

 

[Chickenwings]

Re: Making my Les Paul Sound Better

Ah cool. I was just checking you weren't using a peavey vypyr or a fender 15g and before going tone chasing! lol
So you want a sweeter, smoother neck tone, and a less overwound, slightly more cutting bridge tone?
You are currently using a slash in the neck and a custom bridge with 500k pots all round?

 

[uOpt]

Re: Making my Les Paul Sound Better

First, you gotta tell me how you rigged this setup as it sounds like a pretty sweet way to test pickups. I'd be very interested in trying this out.:bowdown:

I once posted this:
https://forum.seymourduncan.com/sho...kup-test-harness-(pics)&p=1664520#post1664520

It has more toys now - LCR network and I added a second ceramic capacitor that reads exactly the same capacitance as the orange drop on an ohmmeter to see whether there really is a difference between capacitors (and not caused by variance) and some things I can't recall right now.

Secondly, I'm being honest in saying that I have only been messing with pickups, pots, and caps for a year, so my knowledge base and experience probably pales in comparison to yours. So I am listening. But the advice that has guided me in switching pots came from different local techs I know, each with around 30 years experience working on guitars. I feel confident in their suggestions. Lou doesn't believe in messing with caps as to him, like you're suggesting here, it doesn't make any noticeable difference. I did it because caps are cheap and I figured, why not? Mark suggested that if I wanted the pots to have an effect, the volume would have a bigger effect then the tone pot. He did suggest, just as you did, that if I wanted a profound effect, I needed to change the whole setup: volumes, tones, and caps together. On a different guitar I switched out a tone pot in an attempt to take out some of the brightness. I didn't hear any noticeable difference like both Mark and you are suggesting. When I changed the volume instead, I thought the guitar sounded a little less bright. Not dramatically, but enough to make me happy.

I never said it makes no difference. I wouldn't be able to use a Strat with 500/500/22, that sounds like thin tin. But just changing one at a time doesn't make that much difference.

The key is that you either record in a controlled environment before/after or that you have a direct A/B switch. If you don't then psychology kicks in and unless you are specifically trained not to fool yourself you are gonna hear what you expected or hoped or feared to hear.

Look, maybe you are right and I am hearing something that isn't there, but I do believe that I am hearing something.

Yeah but now you read what you wanted to read and not what I wrote

I only said it doesn't make that much of a dramatic difference for individual components. Some people make it sounds like a wrong value volume pot ruins the whole guitar.

And exchanging a 500 Kohm tone pot for 250 Kohm is never required since it behaves exactly the same if you just dial it down to where it reads 250 on an ohmmeter (same trick doesn't work for volume).

My take away from what you're saying is that messing with one pot or cap is a waste of time. If I want a meaningful difference, I gotta change the whole set-up. Suggestion respected and accepted. Given what others are saying here though, I think a total control swap would make a muddier tone, which i don't want, and I think that you have suggested the same thing. Maybe, the best thing I can take away here is that if this pickup set-up is at 8/10ths the tone I want, then I just need to man-up and try different pickups. Or at least try Itsa's suggestion.

BTW, I didn't expect to get as much input as I did on this thread and I really appreciate it. So feel free to add anything more, I'm enjoying reading it. Even you want to tell me it's all in my head :smash:

Nah, I never said don't bother with single anything. If you are doing your circuit you do change everything.

I only said that it makes much less of an audible difference than some people make it if you do not change one of the parameters. And obviously changing the capacitor doesn't do much if the tone pot is 500 Kohm and full open.

 

[dr. ad]

Re: Making my Les Paul Sound Better

In truth, the tone is good and very solid. I'm just being a picky S-O-B :cool2:

i can completely understand having bonded with a more affordable instrument.
in that case, i would think 500K pots all-round with a .022 cap on the neck tone and .047 on the bridge is a good place to start;
have you considered the regular A2P or PGn for the neck, and a demon or distortion for the bridge?

 

[formula73]

Re: Making my Les Paul Sound Better

I have lots of priorities. I have an acre of yard filled with a collection of hundreds of palms; I breed tarantulas for 'fun and profit.' I'd rather spend my money getting local stray animals fixed and fed, then own high end guitars. For what I do and the venues I play at, Epi's work just fine.

All that doing and all that playing and all those TOANZ and not a single, grainy, lo fi video clip?

 

[ExplorersRock]

Re: Making my Les Paul Sound Better

uOpt - I think I had missed the finer points of your original threads. I appreciate you taking the time to break it down for me in specifics. Like I said, my experience is limited so I'm still learning this stuff. This kind of information is very helpful. I also appreciate the link on how to build the rig you mentioned. Not sure if my know-how is there yet to build it, but I''m seriously considering it.

I also gotta say, I feel kinda dumb for not having thought of recording before and after demos. This would give a definitive answer to what if any difference was made. I did do this once when testing if there was any difference between 9-42 and 10-46 strings on one of my explorers. Irritatingly, the files got corrupted and I couldn't open them.:argh:

One last question remains: can I buy ya' a beer? :beerchug:

Dr. ad - Interesting idea on the caps. Also, I had considered swapping the neck Pup to an A2P or even a PG like you suggested. I've heard a lot of chatter on the forum about the Slash pickups being bright, so a standard A2P might be the answer. Never tried a PGN, but I've heard a lot of good things. For the bridge, I was actually considering the Distortion as my next Pup to go to. The Demon I had not considered yet, but again, I hear good things.

 

[GuitarDoc]

Re: Making my Les Paul Sound Better

You want a smoother neck than the Slash with less high-end brightness and not as thick in the low end?......Answer = Screamin Demon with a UOA5.

You want a little more warmth in the bridge than you're getting with the Custom, but want to keep the bite/edge and clarity?.....Just put an A8 in your Custom.

Keep 500k pots all around and .022 caps. Then just play with the height, etc and you'll be good to go.

I too am an Epi fan. I have (and have had) many Gibsons, but I have even more Epis and love every one of them. Maybe I just got lucky, but the quality of tone (with SD pups, mag swaps, better pots and caps, of course) and playability is excellent. The quality of finish is better than any of my current Gibsons, as well. You CAN make your Epi into a monsterous tone machine. Don't give up.