Mixing 50's and Modern Wiring in a Les Paul

[ToneJourneyMan]

Hey everyone. Hoping you can answer a question for me.

Modern wiring and 50's wiring work very different, both electronically, and in how they shape tone and affect volume. I have found that I really prefer modern wiring in the bridge pickup for the way that it maintains volume, while rolling off highs for a rounder, more middle heavy Robben Ford or Larry Carlton vibe. One the other hand, I really prefer 50's wiring on the neck pickup because I tend not to use the tone knob very often in that position and prefer the way the natural way 50's wiring maintains more of the highs as the volume is rolled back. Oh, just as a side note, I'm not looking to do treble-bleed circuits. I've tried them and am not a huge fan so far, which is why I'm tending towards the 50's wiring in the neck.

I know that when switched to either the neck or bridge position, there should be no problem with having each pickup and pots circuit wired differently and not affecting each other. My question is, will this cause any issues or undesirable characteristics when I'm in the middle position and both circuits are running in parallel?

 

[Chistopher]

If you can try it yourself that's probably best. Not too many people have experience with using the two wirings at once and it's a few minutes of work to try it out. With my understanding of circuit theory, I can tell you it will have draw backs, but there's a reasonable chance that they will be small enough in magnitude that if I didn't tell you, you would never notice

 

[jeremy]

i have a guitar wired just as you say, 50s for the neck, modern for the bridge, and i havent noticed it behaving weirdly but thats the way its always been wired so id wouldnt know if its different than if both were wired modern. i can say it works as i expect it to without issue

 

[freefrog]

Fellow members have answered but to share my take on this: AFAIK, you shoud hear no significant difference when pots are all full up, when only the volume controls are lowered, when only the tone controls are lowered.

With ALL controls lowered, the "hybrid" wiring should bring a tad more bass / mids and less extreme high frequencies than a full 50's wiring (whose sound would be a wee bit more open).

5spice sim below, with all controls virtually lowered when both pickups are enabled ... Non normalized response, for the record, but readers should "get the picture".

 

[ToneJourneyMan]

Thank you so much for that Spice sim. It looks like the difference is negligible. Its a super quick change, so I'll go ahead and try it.

 

[GuitarDoc]

This is an interesting concept that I hadn't thought about before.