736
The Pickup Place / Re: Pickup suggestions
« on: June 23, 2017, 12:18:57 PM »
Cool - please let us know how it turned out.
Cheers Stephan
Cheers Stephan
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737
The Pickup Place / Re: Neck Single to match Illuminator bridge
« on: June 23, 2017, 12:17:55 PM »
In my strat I have tried both the Injector neck and the Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues 2 in the neck position and preferred the Heavy Blues for its fatter tone, though the Injector neck was very good, too. It is now in the middle position. Both together sound great as well.
Cheers Stephan
Cheers Stephan
738
The Pickup Place / Re: Pickup suggestions
« on: June 22, 2017, 04:33:23 AM »
The Rebel Yell is a pickup with lots of top-end and bite for a medium output pickup. Can be too much depending on the guitar/amp combination. For the tones you linked I would choose the AT-1. Has the broad midrange and the harmonics but the top end is smooth and not harsh.
Cheers Stephan
Cheers Stephan
739
The Pickup Place / Re: Neck pickup to pair with Super Distortion bridge
« on: June 13, 2017, 08:24:30 AM »I could care less about 'vintage' or any of that!
I am not much of help with your pickup choice question but I like that quote. It definitely is going to save you money by not falling for vintage marketing hype.
Cheers Stephan
740
The Pickup Place / Re: Faulty Les Paul wiring
« on: June 13, 2017, 08:22:16 AM »
Hi,
The first thing I noticed is that the backs of the tone pots are not grounded. You should run a bare wire from each back of the volume pot to the back of the tone pot.
Are the pickups DiMarzios? Then you should wire them as follows:
bridge: red to bridge volume pot input, black and white soldered together and taped, green to ground (= back of bridge volume pot).
neck: red to neck volume pot input, black and white soldered together and taped, green to ground (=back of neck volume pot).
From the middle lug of each volume pot to the toggle switch.
From the toggle switch to the output jack.
Do you have a multimeter? If not, you should get one. They are cheap but invaluable in trouble shooting non-functional guitar wirings.
If you have one, put a guitar cable into the output jack. Set the toggle switch to the middle position and turn all controls up. Then measure the following:
- one probe to the tip of the cable, the other to the middle lug of the bridge pickup. Do you get zero ohms? If yes, fine - the connection between volume pot and jack is fine. If no - there is the trouble. Open the toggle switch control cavity and measure from the bridge volume middle lug to the input of the toggle where the it is connected. Zero ohms = connection is fine, anything else - here is the trouble. Also check between the toggle output and cable tip. Again, zero ohms = fine, anything else = trouble.
Do the same thing with the neck pickup.
- next we check whether there is a ground connection where there should not be one. Measure again from the cable tip but this time hold the other probe against the back of one of the volume pots. You should get the parallel reading of both pickups (appr. 3k to 9k depending on the pickups). Do you get zero? If yes, the signal wire is touching ground somewhere where it should not. Recheck the wiring.
The thing about physics is if something does not work, there is a reason. It's just a matter of finding it.
Good luck,
Stephan
The first thing I noticed is that the backs of the tone pots are not grounded. You should run a bare wire from each back of the volume pot to the back of the tone pot.
Are the pickups DiMarzios? Then you should wire them as follows:
bridge: red to bridge volume pot input, black and white soldered together and taped, green to ground (= back of bridge volume pot).
neck: red to neck volume pot input, black and white soldered together and taped, green to ground (=back of neck volume pot).
From the middle lug of each volume pot to the toggle switch.
From the toggle switch to the output jack.
Do you have a multimeter? If not, you should get one. They are cheap but invaluable in trouble shooting non-functional guitar wirings.
If you have one, put a guitar cable into the output jack. Set the toggle switch to the middle position and turn all controls up. Then measure the following:
- one probe to the tip of the cable, the other to the middle lug of the bridge pickup. Do you get zero ohms? If yes, fine - the connection between volume pot and jack is fine. If no - there is the trouble. Open the toggle switch control cavity and measure from the bridge volume middle lug to the input of the toggle where the it is connected. Zero ohms = connection is fine, anything else - here is the trouble. Also check between the toggle output and cable tip. Again, zero ohms = fine, anything else = trouble.
Do the same thing with the neck pickup.
- next we check whether there is a ground connection where there should not be one. Measure again from the cable tip but this time hold the other probe against the back of one of the volume pots. You should get the parallel reading of both pickups (appr. 3k to 9k depending on the pickups). Do you get zero? If yes, the signal wire is touching ground somewhere where it should not. Recheck the wiring.
The thing about physics is if something does not work, there is a reason. It's just a matter of finding it.
Good luck,
Stephan
741
The Pickup Place / Re: Pickup recommendation for an RG565
« on: June 09, 2017, 11:16:35 AM »
Going by what I know of H-S combinations I would say Virtual Vintage Heavy Blues 2 in the neck and AT-1 in the bridge would make a great combination (even though the guitar I have them in is set up for H-S-S, with an Injector neck in the middle). No idea though whether the AT-1 is hotter than the Air Zone as I have never played an Air Zone.
Tone Zone is certainly a step up in output, so would be the Super Distortion or the Steve Morse bridge, maybe even the Breed bridge. All with a different tone, however. Breed bridge is a bit warmer than the Tone Zone and has a bit less sizzle on top. The Steve Morse bridge is quite bright and twangy for a high output pickup.
Cheers Stephan
Tone Zone is certainly a step up in output, so would be the Super Distortion or the Steve Morse bridge, maybe even the Breed bridge. All with a different tone, however. Breed bridge is a bit warmer than the Tone Zone and has a bit less sizzle on top. The Steve Morse bridge is quite bright and twangy for a high output pickup.
Cheers Stephan
742
The Pickup Place / Re: Transitions in a Les Paul?
« on: June 01, 2017, 04:09:19 AM »
Depends on what tone you want to achieve. I would certainly not consider the Transitions if the goal was to be as vintage as possible but everything else is fair game.
Cheers Stephan
Cheers Stephan
743
The Pickup Place / Re: I just lowered the height of my Tone Zone....
« on: May 31, 2017, 04:22:24 AM »
I would suggest to start at about 3mm from the 6th string and 2mm from the 1st string and tweak from there. Really, there is no hard and fast rule to set it as it depends on the guitar, the player and his rig. The only hard and fast rule is that you don't want it so close to the strings that the magnet pull grabs them since this could cause out of tune overtones and loss of sustain. A starting point is helpful if you get lost.
Good luck,
Stephan
Good luck,
Stephan
744
The Pickup Place / Re: Air Classic set
« on: May 26, 2017, 04:35:31 AM »Cool. I just ordered an Air Classic Neck for the bridge position on my HSS Ibanez Andy Timmons. I'm hoping it will play nicely with the singlecoils seeing that it´s way lower output and a bit scooped compared to whats in there now.
Good move. I only had the chance to play the Indonesia made variant and thought that AT-1 in the bridge way overpowered the Cruisers. Depending on what I wanted out of such guitar I would either change the singles to something hotter (Injector neck or VV Heavy Blues 2) or do what you did and go lower output on the bridge pickup.
Cheers Stephan
745
The Pickup Place / Re: Air Classic set
« on: May 26, 2017, 04:33:26 AM »Been a while since I've posted anything (more like years) but I just got these and I got to give my 2 cents. These have got to be the best sounding pickups I've played nice balance, split nicely and can be used in any situtation. You can hear every string, every note as they dont seem to blur together. The marshall patch on my eleven rack roars and then cleans nicely when you back down the volume knob. Cleans are whatever you what them to be, the neck in full humbucker almost sounds stratty, the second position on the switch yields almost a funky bright tone you can almost hear some quack there, 3rd position is like a paul. It took me a long time to pull the trigger on these and now I'm glad I did. Keepers for sure!
I like the zebra look on that guitar. Have fun with it!
Cheers Stephan
746
The Pickup Place / Re: Fast Track 1 or Chopper? Wrong label?
« on: May 24, 2017, 05:39:22 AM »
OK I see.
Seems like DiMarzio uses the same bottom plates for the single coil sized rails humbuckers so that the date 1991 is meaningless.
In that case and given the DC resistance measured your pickup could well be a mislabelled Chopper.
Cheers Stephan
Seems like DiMarzio uses the same bottom plates for the single coil sized rails humbuckers so that the date 1991 is meaningless.
In that case and given the DC resistance measured your pickup could well be a mislabelled Chopper.
Cheers Stephan
747
The Pickup Place / Re: Fast Track 1 or Chopper? Wrong label?
« on: May 23, 2017, 05:13:36 AM »
Since the date stamp on the pickup says "1991" it cannot be a Chopper since that pickup was only introduced in 1994. If a FT-1 has a series resistance reading of 5.xx kohms there is no way to get a 9.xx reading out of it unless it is broken. But a broken pickup usually does not give a reading or one that is much higher so it may be a mislabelled model. Could be a FT-2 which has a series reading of 18k - if you took a reading of just one coil.
Between which wires did you take a reading? Series coil wiring is Black+white together, and then take a reading between green and red.
Cheers Stephan
Between which wires did you take a reading? Series coil wiring is Black+white together, and then take a reading between green and red.
Cheers Stephan
748
The Pickup Place / Re: HELP: Zebra or Reverse Zebra on my RG?
« on: May 15, 2017, 05:35:17 AM »I like the Zebra because of the black Single Coil in the middle
Zebra makes it go black/cream -> black -> cream/black which alternates the coil colors and looks great to me.
I'm personally not as fond of the the way Reverse Zebra puts all 3 black coils next to each other.
That would also be my choice, and for the exact same reason.
Cheers Stephan
749
The Pickup Place / Re: HELP: Zebra or Reverse Zebra on my RG?
« on: May 12, 2017, 07:06:32 AM »
Both pickups have identical coils (you can see that by the "patent n/a" description on the manufacturer's website - otherwise the description would contain the dual resonance patent number). Therefore, it should not matter how they are installed so you can decide what looks better to you.
Cheers Stephan
Cheers Stephan
750
Everything you wanted to know about .... / Re: The Breed
« on: May 08, 2017, 05:56:02 AM »
Incidently I first tried it in the bridge position but did not like it much there - could have been the guitar though.
Cheers Stephan
Cheers Stephan