New P-Rails Demo

lyongraulty

lyongraulty

New member
Hi folks,

I just recorded a quick demo of all the basic sounds you can get from the P-rails: P90, Rail, Series HB & and Parallel HB.

Here it is on youtube

The circuit I used is a combination of one from the Seymour Duncan website, and one courtesy of hermetico, which can be found here.

(Here is the thread)

I basically split the SD diagram into 4 seperate push/pull pots so I could control the P-rails independently. Then I used hermetico's diagram for the phase switching and the "pickups in series" switch.

I'll post some more videos with examples of how these options sound in the coming days.
 
Re: New P-Rails Demo

Alright!

I haven't seen the vid yet (youtube is blocked by the server at work), but I am very eager to check it out... I need to decide what is worth wiring in for my P-Rails project in planning stage, so thanks very much for posting that.

BTW, perhaps this is covered in the video, but - do you find it useful to have the opposite coils in the bridge and neck tapped? That is, say, bridge P-90 and neck rail together?
 
Re: New P-Rails Demo

Very good demo and nice tones there. You were able to get push pull pots to work inside a thin flat body Les Paul "The Paul"? Explain as I tried adding push pulls into my SG for years to no avail.

How are you able to pull up on speed knobs and not have them just pull off the potentiometer post? lol
 
Re: New P-Rails Demo

RadsRock said:
BTW, perhaps this is covered in the video, but - do you find it useful to have the opposite coils in the bridge and neck tapped? That is, say, bridge P-90 and neck rail together?
Click to expand...

I do cover it, but not in this installment. I'm planning a second one, where I do more pickup combinations and get into the out of phase sounds.

In normal (parallel pups) mode, I find these sounds are comparable to the parallel HBs on their own, but they lack the clarity and personality of the self contained HB. You do get some interesting tones though. When split to the neck side of the pickups (neck P-90 and bridge rail) and set in normal parallel setting, I find the sound to be usable, but not as harmonically rich as the real HB setting, and it doesn't have the bite of the P90s or the snap of the rails. Split to the bridge side (bridge P-90 and neck rail) the sound is even more trebly. This sound works well when you put the pups in series, but still doesn't sound as good as the p90s together or the rails together.

The real fun hapens when you put the pups in series and out of phase. In this setting (which is humcancelling) the bridge side sounds great! Probably one of my favorite oop setting! But the neck side sounds very thin.

I'll post another one soon with these settings included. I figured out that the way I have it wired offers 72 independent tones. (Not including the subtle changes that come from twaeking the volume knobs.)

I know - I'm a dork. :)
 
Re: New P-Rails Demo

Fusion1 said:
Very good demo and nice tones there. You were able to get push pull pots to work inside a thin flat body Les Paul "The Paul"? Explain as I tried adding push pulls into my SG for years to no avail.

How are you able to pull up on speed knobs and not have them just pull off the potentiometer post? lol
Click to expand...

Thanks for posting. I'm glad you found it useful. The LP Special is about the thinnest body you can fit push/pull pots in, but they do fit. (My last experiment even used a 6 way rotary!) An SG is quite a bit thinner, but I believe they make smaller push pulls.

As far as the knobs staying on... it's actually a fluke that they stick so well. I have fine knurled pots, but the knobs I got were course. So I squeezed the split shaft with a pair of pliers, jammed em on, and hoped they would stay. And they did!
 
Re: New P-Rails Demo

Ingenious idea about the Speed Knobs. Good to know about the push pull pots fitting in a LP Special, I would have never expected it to work. Still hoping someday to find something that will work in my SG.
 
Re: New P-Rails Demo

Thanks for posting this (and parts 2 and 3), they sound great!

Have you tried a humbucker and a rail out of phase with each other?
 
Re: New P-Rails Demo

Hi lyongraulty
Great vids! Love the options.
I wonder if u might have a wiring scheme for the original SD 2PP with addition of phase and s-p PP.
View attachment 11655
I'd rather have the vols for splitting and tones for phase/s-p, not like the SD scheme that uses tones for splitting.
THX
Doron
 
Re: New P-Rails Demo

DoronEsh said:
Hi lyongraulty
Great vids! Love the options.
I wonder if u might have a wiring scheme for the original SD 2PP with addition of phase and s-p PP.
View attachment 11655
I'd rather have the vols for splitting and tones for phase/s-p, not like the SD scheme that uses tones for splitting.
THX
Doron
Click to expand...

As far as this diagram is concerned, you can place the push pulls on whatever control you want - it doesn't matter. (If you want independent controls of each pup, you could use only one side of and put what would go on the the other column on a different switch altogether.) If you want the phase settings, check the diagram I posted at the beginning of the thread - I'll post it here again. It is written for two humbuckers, but it works great for a set of P-Rails too.
 
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