Shrill Les Paul with WLH & BB3 in Bridge: Losing Hope...

[Gooch]

I have a LP Traditional Pro, 2013, and it came with a BB3, that I felt was very shrill and ice picky no matter the amp, particularly on the treble strings. The wound strings are fine. I play modded Marshalls/Splawns. I replaced it with the Duncan Whole Lotta and I'm now experiencing the same thing. I LOVE the guitar and the way it plays, but I've struggled with this off and on. ...I don't remember the WLH always being like this so I'm wondering if it's something else.

I play 11-56's in EFlat and i top wrap the strings. None are touching the bridge.

Before I throw out the guitar, I want to try some things... I've done the following:

1) Played with pup height. I have it raised, but the treble string poles sunk down.

2) Tone knob barely helps, and i feel it loses clarity.

3) I know how to dial an amp, so please don't go there...

I have read that older strings can get 'shrill' and you need to change them. ...I've had these Elixir's on the LP for a while now. So I will see if that helps, but I can't believe it's just old strings...

Any pup advice or changes are appreciated. It might just be my ears, but...

Thanks!

 

[Demanic]

Re: Shrill Les Paul with WLH & BB3 in Bridge: Losing Hope...

How about a different pickup? Custom Custom maybe?

Sent from my MotoE2(4G-LTE) using Tapatalk

 

[Jeffrec]

Re: Shrill Les Paul with WLH & BB3 in Bridge: Losing Hope...

How about a different pickup? Custom Custom maybe?

Sent from my MotoE2(4G-LTE) using Tapatalk

+1 CC's a good choice

Are the electronics original? Has anyone done any mods before you got it?

 

[Discharged]

Re: Shrill Les Paul with WLH & BB3 in Bridge: Losing Hope...

I have a LP Traditional Pro, 2013, and it came with a BB3, that I felt was very shrill and ice picky no matter the amp, particularly on the treble strings!

If you find a BB#3 is "shrill and ice picky", and you even play half a tone down, sorry to tell you, but I don't think you have any other option but to change the guitar.

/Peter

 

[Clint 55]

Re: Shrill Les Paul with WLH & BB3 in Bridge: Losing Hope...

1) Listen to Demanics and try a pickup that isn't vintage output and designed to be ice pick in the first place.
2) Go to 300k pots in the bridge. Using resistance is different from using capacitance to darken the sound.
3) A corian nut can mellow out the sound some.

 

[Gooch]

Re: Shrill Les Paul with WLH & BB3 in Bridge: Losing Hope...

THanks for the suggestions, folks. I'll play with the tone knob a bit more before going pup replacement route. I have C8's in other guitars and wonder if that may be the ticket. I don't want a super hot pickup, though. Maybe I can look t the Custom Custom, since i should roll off the highs a bit.

 

[Mincer]

Re: Shrill Les Paul with WLH & BB3 in Bridge: Losing Hope...

Alnico II magnets (if the current pickup doesn't have them) can help. Otherwise a Custom Custom and Alnico II Pro are a great set for a shrill guitar. This is a good example of listening to the guitar to inform you of what it needs to sound like you want, rather than preconceived ideas about how particular pickups sound.

 

[eclecticsynergy]

Re: Shrill Les Paul with WLH & BB3 in Bridge: Losing Hope...

I agree with Mincer- you might try a magnet swap in the Whole Lotta. UA5, or A2, instead of the polished A5 that's in there now. This would keep you in vintage output territory and should mitigate the highs a bit, while also giving you a little more elasticity in the mids.

Unfortunately I think your 2013 may have the infamous circuit board so changing your volume & tone pots could be problematic.

 

[AlexR]

Re: Shrill Les Paul with WLH & BB3 in Bridge: Losing Hope...

^ The BB3 was an A2 pickup......and most of the reports on the BB's are that they are quite rounded. The BB3 is on the higher output side anyhow for vintage - as is the WLH - and both are typically not described as shrill.

You might get some luck with higher output....but I never typically find that shrill is a component of the quality lower output pickups just by themselves. They have treble to be sure but balance is another component making them lose the shrill edge.
I have had a guitar or two that (for whatever reason) takes the more PAF like pickup and gives it that annoying edge - and that does seem to be what you are saying. I put a number of pickups in the Trad + that exhibited the bright bridge/muffled neck bit - and nothing changed the base nature of that guitar. It got sold.

 

[freefrog]

Re: Shrill Les Paul with WLH & BB3 in Bridge: Losing Hope...

Old school heroes were often plugging LP's in Marshall's through cheap, long and/or coily cables, featuring a lot of "stray capacitance". Using cheap, long and/or coily cables is a way to emulate that vintage lo-fi rounder tone. Of course, we can scale down the "resonant frequency" in the same way that capacitance does thx to a greater inductance (a Custom having twice the inductance of a T-Top, if memory serves me). But it's also doable with a vintage voiced PU feeding a normal cable + a small cheap capacitor between hot and ground. It won't provide the extra dB's due to added inductance but it will fiter the high range in a comparable way.

Food for thought: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2sjeVQpS94 (use a good set of headphones and compare 8:47 to 8:52, knowing that 75' of cable is roughly the same than a 3,3nF or 4,7nF capacitor ).

I personally use on stage a "virtual cable capacitance box" with various caps between hot and ground on a rotoswitch. It really helps me to tame the tone when I feed my cranked Marshall amp with my brighter guitars. Actually, my main Strat would be ear piercing without that. BTW, a small cap measuring a few nF is tiny enough to be mounted in a guitar and even in the male jack plug of a cable.

FOOTNOTE - Here in an except of the old Duncan FAQ's, those online 10 or 15 years ago :

"If the pickup is too bright, the tone control can be used to reduce the treble and also putting a small capacitor from the hot side of the jack to ground. By using the capacitor to ground will reduce overall treble in the instrument" (FAQ 822).

Oh, and... nylon saddles in the bridge might help too.

 

[chadd]

Re: Shrill Les Paul with WLH & BB3 in Bridge: Losing Hope...

Try lower value pots or 50s wiring. I gained a ton of high end when I swapped my tone pots and went to modern wiring on my R7 with a BB3 in it.

 

[blueman335]

Re: Shrill Les Paul with WLH & BB3 in Bridge: Losing Hope...

You can solder a resistor between the outside lugs of the tone pot. A 470K resistor makes a 500K pot sound like a 250K. You could try various resistor values and see if that works for you.

 

[Aceman]

Re: Shrill Les Paul with WLH & BB3 in Bridge: Losing Hope...

I'm gonna throw a serious flag on the situation...this specific line REALLY concerns me:

2) Tone knob barely helps, and i feel it loses clarity.

I get the 'loses clarity' part, but if the tone knob barely helps the ice picky.... I'm saying that it is either the guitar itself, which I would guess is super snappy/bright for an LP (rare but it happens...), or it is the OP's ears themselves.

Probably already 300k pots in there. BB3 is a hotter A2 pup. NOT an ice picky thing...

 

[allbutromeo]

Re: Shrill Les Paul with WLH & BB3 in Bridge: Losing Hope...

If it's a naturally bright guitar, and that's what it's sounding like, it's tough to dial out. I have two early 80s L.P.s with this problem. The WLH was probably a step in the wrong direction as the less mids/more bass and treble seems to accentuate the problem. I have a Slash A2 Pro in 81 Custom which sounded great, but the bass wasn't tight enough for me. Best sounding that I've tried in it so far was a Super Distortion.

 

[beaubrummels]

Shrill Les Paul with WLH & BB3 in Bridge: Losing Hope...

Shrill Les Paul with WLH & BB3 in Bridge: Losing Hope...

WLH is RCA5, BB3 is A2, neither are ice picky nor is an LP to start with.

Something else is seriously wrong and it's not pickups. Sounds like a wiring or amp problem to me.

 

[Wattage]

Re: Shrill Les Paul with WLH & BB3 in Bridge: Losing Hope...

I am not trying to be insulting but are you sure the guitar is wired correctly?

Both coils are working?

How is the neck pickup?

 

[GuitarDoc]

Re: Shrill Les Paul with WLH & BB3 in Bridge: Losing Hope...

...2) Tone knob barely helps, and i feel it loses clarity.

3) I know how to dial an amp, so please don't go there...

I know my comments are going to sound a bit offensive, but I'm actually trying to help. You say that you're using 11-56's and tune to Eflat. In and of itself, that should have reduce a lot of shrillness.

2): Sounds like you've got it wired wrong; you have the wrong cap (try a .047 uf); or your tone pot is bad (but this is probably NOT the case). Yes, as the tone pot is turned down, it is natural to lose some clarity. Clarity comes from the highs and upper mids which are removed to ground as the tone pot is turned down.

3): Considering that an amp is responsible for at least 80% of your tone, I'm going to "go there". Because if everything that you've said so far is accurate, changing pickups is not going to make enough difference (you're already using a fairly high output A2 pup and you consider it "shrill and ice picky")! I'm a little bit familiar with Marshalls and Splawns and they do come with several controls that affect the tone...quite dramatically actually. Try turning them counterclockwise a bit.

I have read that older strings can get 'shrill' and you need to change them. ...I've had these Elixir's on the LP...

Not sure where you read that. Older strings tend to lose their liveliness/brightness with use and they become less 'shrill'. And IMO, Elixirs tend to start out that way and only get worse with use. In any case, your strings aren't the problem.

From all that you have described, I have to conclude that there is either something wrong with your wiring (possibly the pup in split mode), something wrong with your amp settings, or something wrong with your ears.

You can't do anything about your ears, so check the simplest thing first...play with the tone controls on your amp. Then check your guitar wiring.

 

[zionstrat]

Re: Shrill Les Paul with WLH & BB3 in Bridge: Losing Hope...

Gooch-
I'm a bit unsure from the symptoms, but wonder if it would make sense to set a baseline?

• Ie, have you gone into a music store, plugged into an average amp and still have shrill sounds?
• 5 minutes with any fender mustang and any LP off the wall and you can have a good feel for clean crunch and saturated for your guitar.

If you have already done this and confirm shrill, then it's either bad electronics or a ridiculously bright LP so what I would do is unsolder bridge pup leads, alligator the leads to a patch cord, ook up your amp and you should know a lot-

1. If the BB3 is bright (or even brighter due to the direct connection), then you have a bright LP and the tonal work arounds listed above make sense or maybe time to go with an LP that is more like you.

2. Or, if the shrillness is gone, there was something funky in the wiring and now you can chase it down.

Hope this helps and very interested in how things go!

 

[Gtrjunior]

Re: Shrill Les Paul with WLH & BB3 in Bridge: Losing Hope...

Old school heroes were often plugging LP's in Marshall's through cheap, long and/or coily cables, featuring a lot of "stray capacitance". Using cheap, long and/or coily cables is a way to emulate that vintage lo-fi rounder tone. Of course, we can scale down the "resonant frequency" in the same way that capacitance does thx to a greater inductance (a Custom having twice the inductance of a T-Top, if memory serves me). But it's also doable with a vintage voiced PU feeding a normal cable + a small cheap capacitor between hot and ground. It won't provide the extra dB's due to added inductance but it will fiter the high range in a comparable way.

Food for thought: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2sjeVQpS94 (use a good set of headphones and compare 8:47 to 8:52, knowing that 75' of cable is roughly the same than a 3,3nF or 4,7nF capacitor ).

I personally use on stage a "virtual cable capacitance box" with various caps between hot and ground on a rotoswitch. It really helps me to tame the tone when I feed my cranked Marshall amp with my brighter guitars. Actually, my main Strat would be ear piercing without that. BTW, a small cap measuring a few nF is tiny enough to be mounted in a guitar and even in the male jack plug of a cable.

FOOTNOTE - Here in an except of the old Duncan FAQ's, those online 10 or 15 years ago :

"If the pickup is too bright, the tone control can be used to reduce the treble and also putting a small capacitor from the hot side of the jack to ground. By using the capacitor to ground will reduce overall treble in the instrument" (FAQ 822).

Oh, and... nylon saddles in the bridge might help too.

Any chance you could post a link to where you got your capacitance box?

 

[freefrog]

Re: Shrill Les Paul with WLH & BB3 in Bridge: Losing Hope...

Any chance you could post a link to where you got your capacitance box?

I've built it myself. All it requires is an enclosure, a pair of jack plugs, a few capacitors and a rotoswitch connecting them successively between hot and ground.

If you want a "ready made" product, here is an idea: http://www.musicradar.com/news/guit...e-audios-capacitance-altering-vari-cap-637001

There's also the "Tonestyler", which is a kind of tone pot based on a rotoswitch (but with a maximal capacitance exceeding by far the capacitive load of any cable, of course, since it's a tone pot): http://www.stellartone.com/Page.asp?NavID=313

BTW, 1m of cable measures typically something like 147pF. It gives an idea of the capacitance to select in order to emulate such or such lenght of cable...