P-Rails and Tonewoods

[Brian96]

Hiya, folks. Long-time listener, first-time caller here.

The bottom-line question I have is this: If you were to build an HSH guitar around P-Rails, what (Warmoth) tonewoods would you select (body, top, neck, fingerboard)?

For those of you who like particulars, here are the details of what I'm trying to do and why:

I'm contemplating an HSH, do-everything , "desert island" build. I'm going to start with loading a pickguard to swap into a strat copy (Tagima Stella DW, African mahogany with maple-topped body, roasted maple neck with rosewood fingerboard). But I may Ship-of-Theseus the thing into a full Warmoth build over time.

The replacement neck will be a 24.75" conversion (as my small, arthritic hands are part of the motivation). The replacement body will be a VIP. I prefer natural finishes, but I won't choose aesthetics over tone. It'll be a carved top for the feel, but chambered for the weight relief. The rough draft currently would be roasted maple neck, ebony fingerboard, roasted swamp ash body, and walnut top. Any thoughts on P-Rails with that combo, especially for the neck position tones?

I'll buy the pre-wired P-Rails with Triple Shots for the HB spots. Based on its consistent recommendation as a solid HSH middle with P-Rails for a good and balanced 2/3/4 tone, I'm planning on the Classic Stack Plus, but I'm open to suggestions.

My previous forays into soldering were disastrous, so it'll all be wired up with Obsidian Wire's Universal Blender for Strat (master V, master, T, and blender for the "7-way" mod). It will give me several options for 500K vs 250K in the set up (switchable on the board but not on the fly). I'm planning 500K in all 5 positions (HHH mode), but I'm open to suggestions based on what I'm after for tone (below). The tone cap is 0.022 and I know the SD wiring diagrams for P-Rails show 0.047, but based on other anlysis I've read on the forum, I'm guessing I'll be happier with the stock 0.022 anyway.

The PRS Modern Eagle V is sort of the inspiration, but I don't get on well with PRS necks. The closest factory guitar to what I'm envisioning is the D'Angelico Deluxe Bob Weir Bedford. Its only real drawback (based on YouTube demos--I haven't found one in stock in the southeast UK to put through a clean Fender for myself) is that the Stacked P-90 in the neck lacks a sort of "girth" that I think I can only get from a HB. But I like the other tones and the switching options/methodology.

I'm mostly a bedroom player and I spend most of my guitar time noodling into a clean Fender amp model (Twin Reverb or Deluxe Reverb). I also sometimes play modern worship lead guitar for church or jam at home with friends doing 60s-2000s rock. For church and jams, I can dial in the crunch, gain, etc., tones I need with patches. My signal chain is all digital, so how a pickup pushes a valve amp is not really a consideration.

For the noodling, the tone I value the most is a continuum of warm-but-articulate, sort of jazzy clean like one would associate with a '59 or Jazz neck HB and its slightly punchier (but still warm) cousins in positions 4 and 5 on a strat. I'm aware that consensus is that "PAF-like" is the P-Rails' weakest area, but I'm also not certain that "pure PAF" is my sweet spot. Furthermore, I like the idea of having maximum flexibility, and I'm keen to get a P-90 option into the rotation, so I've decided to take the plunge and see what I can dial in with P-Rails.

My current arsenal (all still stock) is a PRS SE Tremonti (2018 MIK, N DC=8.25, B DC=15.25), Tagima Stella DW (MIC, HSS loaded with A5s, N DC=6.26, M DC=6.35, B DC=7.92), and a MIM Tele (loaded with ceramics, N DC=8.44, B DC=10.33).

I really like what I can get from the Tremonti, though the neck sits closer with the tone at 10 to what I'd like to hear with it rolled back to about 8. But it's close enough (especially for the money) and I also have come to appreciate the higher output bridge, especially to use it as designed to switch from the neck for pure clean to the bridge for high-gain/leads.

I'm also happy with the solid but generally unremarkable strat sounds I get from the Tagima's A5s, especially in positions 2-5 (bridge HB is meh). I also value what the Tele can do, but I find it's just not the guitar I reach for very often anymore. Probably 65-70% of the time, the PRS is what I'm instinctively going to grab, 20-25% the Tagima, and 10-15% the Tele.

Basically, I'm hoping to build a guitar that I can dial in that warm, articulate HB sound I like but not have to swap guitars when I want the strat 2, 3, and 4 sounds. Any Tele tones are welcome but not essential.

I've been poring over this and other message boards, and listening to all the P-Rails tone samples I can find on YouTube. So I'm familiar with the general views on the strengths and trade-offs to P-Rails, particularly as series humbuckers. So, another way to phrase my question is this: what tonewoods would draw out the best possible series HB (or at least warm-but-articulate neck tone) from the P-Rails without negating its strengths (particularly the P-90 coil)?

 

[jeremy]

welcome to the forum!

tone woods are always an interesting discussion. i like the idea of the tripleshots and prails with a cs+ in the middle. id suggest 500k pots and maybe using the bridge model cs+ in the middle to compensate for the higher pot value. what i have found, though a friends guitar, is that a bass roll off control ala g&l is very useful to demud the series setting on the prails. .022 cap is fine for the tone, thats typically what i use on most things. i even go .015 sometimes. i find the knee frequency of larger caps doesnt suit me well. the "rough draft" wood selection sounds fine and should work well

 

[ICTGoober]

Good choices on the woods. Proceed and enjoy.

 

[Mincer]

Thing is, P-Rails, while they certainly have a lot of combinations, there will be ones you favor and some that you absolutely don't like. That seems to be most people's opinions about them. Certainly was mine. I like the idea of a 'do everything' guitar, although I went about it in a different way with no middle pickup.

 

[Brian96]

Thing is, P-Rails, while they certainly have a lot of combinations, there will be ones you favor and some that you absolutely don't like. That seems to be most people's opinions about them. Certainly was mine. I like the idea of a 'do everything' guitar, although I went about it in a different way with no middle pickup.

Yeah, I know it's not likely I'll love all 4 combinations of each pickup. I'm hoping with all the options, it won't take me too long to dial in that main tone I'm after, and then all the rest of the stuff will just be for fun.

What is your do-everything guitar?

 

[Brian96]

welcome to the forum!

tone woods are always an interesting discussion. i like the idea of the tripleshots and prails with a cs+ in the middle. id suggest 500k pots and maybe using the bridge model cs+ in the middle to compensate for the higher pot value. what i have found, though a friends guitar, is that a bass roll off control ala g&l is very useful to demud the series setting on the prails. .022 cap is fine for the tone, thats typically what i use on most things. i even go .015 sometimes. i find the knee frequency of larger caps doesnt suit me well. the "rough draft" wood selection sounds fine and should work well

Interesting thought on the bass roll off. I'll have to give that some thought.

 

[Mincer]

Yeah, I know it's not likely I'll love all 4 combinations of each pickup. I'm hoping with all the options, it won't take me too long to dial in that main tone I'm after, and then all the rest of the stuff will just be for fun.

What is your do-everything guitar?

Well, most of them, really. This explains the switching that I use. I use it in about 4 or 5 dual humbucker guitars.

 

[Chistopher]

For a desert island guitar I wouldn't use a P-Rails neck in a 24.75" scale guitar. Everything except the rail setting are going to wind up fairly dark. There are definitely more versatile options in the neck spot, despite what advertising literature would have you think.

I would actually probably say 59/C for the neck. Its advertised as a bridge pickup, but it does alright in the neck. You're not going to get as huge a difference selecting individual coils, but the series and parallel sounds will probably wind up a little better.

 

[jeremy]

59/c in the neck? never tried that

i like the prails neck. i use the p90 sound most of the time, but parallel and rail are also good. series is pretty damn thick so i rarely use it. but on my buddies guitar with the bass roll off, its much more usable,

 

[Brian96]

For a desert island guitar I wouldn't use a P-Rails neck in a 24.75" scale guitar. Everything except the rail setting are going to wind up fairly dark. There are definitely more versatile options in the neck spot, despite what advertising literature would have you think.

I would actually probably say 59/C for the neck. Its advertised as a bridge pickup, but it does alright in the neck. You're not going to get as huge a difference selecting individual coils, but the series and parallel sounds will probably wind up a little better.

I was poking around that rabbit hole recently, but I couldn't find much in the way of clean samples of what it sounds like.

 

[Brian96]

welcome to the forum!

tone woods are always an interesting discussion. i like the idea of the tripleshots and prails with a cs+ in the middle. id suggest 500k pots and maybe using the bridge model cs+ in the middle to compensate for the higher pot value. what i have found, though a friends guitar, is that a bass roll off control ala g&l is very useful to demud the series setting on the prails. .022 cap is fine for the tone, thats typically what i use on most things. i even go .015 sometimes. i find the knee frequency of larger caps doesnt suit me well. the "rough draft" wood selection sounds fine and should work well

The harness can be set to an HSH mode that "intelligently switches" to 250K for the middle position(s). Thoughts on that vs 500K with the bridge version of the Classic Stack Plus in the middle?

 

[Brian96]

Alright folks. The first-draft build is complete. Thanks for all your inputs. Here are some observations.

First, the Tagima wasn't routed for HSH, so I ended up buying a Leo Jaymz Strat kit (mahogany body, maple/laurel neck). It's definitely a get-what-you-pay for option, but it gave me a low-risk platform for trying some things.

Second, I'm very glad I went with the solder-free options for everything. This is my first time wiring up pretty much anything, so I needed lots of do-overs. One difficulty was that I couldn't find a basic legend for the SD pickup wire colours, so that took some trial and (mostly) error to get it right. The wiring diagrams tell you what colour to solder where. I needed a legend to map onto the Obsidian instructions (series/hot/ground/etc.). I got there eventually.

The pre-wired P-Rails/Triple Shots saved a lot of hassle but were kind of limiting. First, the bare-metal ground wire for the neck pickup wasn't soldered down at all (hadn't come loose, just hadn't been soldered at all). For now it's tacked down with a bit of copper shielding tape. I didn't want to risk ruining it (and voiding the warranty) in case I decide to send them back. Second, because of where the Triple Shots board is taped to the pickup, it wasn't possible to rotate the pickups within the rings to get the rails to the outside. I ended up rotating the whole rig, so now the Triple Shot switches are at the bottom of each pickup instead of the top. I actually like it better, as it gives me a normal pickup ring height on the strumming side of the strings. I found that the switches are just as easy to access below the strings as on top. Only minor detail is that now the SD logos are opposite to the Classic Stack Plus.

I ended up going with the neck version of the Classic Stack Plus. It's working exactly as I'd hoped, especially after I set the Obsidian to HSH mode, which gives me 250K in positions 2, 3, and 4. Just a bit more quack than in HHH/500K mode.

After some A/B testing, I'm super pleased with the tones I'm getting. I can get quite close to the Tele and Strat sounds I want. I've found the P-90s do a better impersonation of the Tele's ceramic p'ups than the rails. As has been said on this forum, I'm not going to convince anyone that this is a top-shelf Tele or Strat, but it definitely holds its own against the import versions I'm comparing it to.

The PRS has been the biggest challenge to match. It's an apples to carrots comparison, really. The PRS is such a different beast, from the super-heavy tone woods, to the 4-controls, to the custom-voiced HBs. That said, I found that if I dial back the tone and/or volume, I get quite satisfactory HB tone from the neck. The bridge mostly works, but I've more tinkering to do to figure out what I like there. To be fair, I've also had trouble wrapping my head around the bridge HBs on the PRS and the Tagima, so I think it's as much me as anything. I think when I move these from a pickguard to a carved top I'll be able to dial in some depth.

The current draft for the Warmoth build is now a hollow walnut body with a swamp ash top (no f holes) and a wenge neck. I'm still pondering the fretboard. Not sure if I want to go brighter (ebony), warmer (rosewood), or settle in the middle (pau ferro).

 

[Mincer]

That sounds like a great Warmoth! I built a Strat with a wenge neck and it was fantastic. The last Warmoth I built had a padouk neck and fingerboard.