Epiphone guitar modding

[Mark Hammer]

You absolutely said it clearly enough. Thanks. And that corresponds precisely to what I had been led to believe from the original GP review. I just wasn't seeing it in the wiring diagrams I linked to. At least not in any obvious way.

I may just try that trick onone of my guitars.

I'm getting a 2-pickup Samick guitar ready for resale, and did a distantly-related trick with the Fender-style pickup selector switch. I engaged a 1500pf (could have been 2200pf, I forget) cap to ground when ONLY the neck PU was selected, and lifted that connection when either both neck and bridge, or bridge, was selected. The Tone control still works as usual in all pickup positions, but with the neck-only it adds to the treble cut already imposed by the cap.

[Fluoroscope 5000]

A ~2nF cap value actually gives a typical ~2.5H Fender SC with 250k pots a several dB ~2kHz range boost b4 rolling off the high end. You may notice the warm Steely sound it imparts. Also great on the bridge pos, and why players like Hendrix, SRV and countless others liked their very high capacitance coil cables.

[Mark Hammer]

Finally saw one of these in the flesh at a local store yesterday. Holy moly, that's light! Strumming acoustically was nice. They may look like a plank but the necks are mounted at an angle. The body would appear to be 1/8" or so thinner than similar-shaped guitars. But nicely resonant.

[ric]

No attachment Mark. Logged in but still see nothing...?

[Mark Hammer]

"These" = Epiphone Les Paul SL; the theme of the thread. No image required.

[ric]

"These" = Epiphone Les Paul SL; the theme of the thread. No image required.

Understood.

[Mark Hammer]

I have a beater Jaggard solid-body, that I put a hard-tail bridge and a pair of home-made pickups onto. The neck is something I wound on a Strat bobbin with #43 wire, and the bridge is #42 on a Jaguar pickup coilform with the steel comb.

I had installed a phase-reverse switch for the N+B position, but in followup to discussion elsewhere about the Jerry Donahue Tele, I decided to wire up the phase switch as "half-cancelling" by simply inserting a 15nf cap in series with the neck pickup when in the phase-reverse position. Worked like a charm! When both pickups are in phase, I get a standard Tele-like N+B sound. When I flick the phase switch, it sounds like a Strat "cluck" position, without the need for any middle pickup, and without any audible loss of level like you get with full phase-inversion. I'll be damned!

The bonus is that since the switch controls the neck pickup, when you select only the neck pickup, the phase-reverse setting rolls off some of the bass, so you get a different version of the neck pickup.

Daddy like!

This mod might be quite useful for a simpler 2-pickup like the SL.

[Mark Hammer]

I have a beater Jaggard solid-body, that I put a hard-tail bridge and a pair of home-made pickups onto. The neck is something I wound on a Strat bobbin with #43 wire, and the bridge is #42 on a Jaguar pickup coilform with the steel comb.

I had installed a phase-reverse switch for the N+B position, but in followup to discussion elsewhere about the Jerry Donahue Tele, I decided to wire up the phase switch as "half-cancelling" by simply inserting a 15nf cap in series with the neck pickup when in the phase-reverse position. Worked like a charm! When both pickups are in phase, I get a standard Tele-like N+B sound. When I flick the phase switch, it sounds like a Strat "cluck" position, without the need for any middle pickup, and without any audible loss of level like you get with full phase-inversion. I'll be damned!

The bonus is that since the switch controls the neck pickup, when you select only the neck pickup, the phase-reverse setting rolls off some of the bass, so you get a different version of the neck pickup.

Daddy like!

This mod might be quite useful for a simpler 2-pickup like the SL.

[rjb]

I decided to wire up the phase switch as "half-cancelling" by simply inserting a 15nf cap in series with the neck pickup when in the phase-reverse position. Worked like a charm!

Yup. Been there, done that. Just replace one of the "criss-cross" wires with a cap. Instant "quack", I mean "cluck".

-rb

[Mark Hammer]

Exactly what I did, although I had a little more rewiring to do since I had originally installed the switch to flip the phase of the bridge pickup. So, flipping the phase of the neck required a little more work, undoing the previous wiring.

[Fluoroscope 5000]

Bill Lawrence recommended 5~10nF for the HOoP Tele wiring you all have tried -- the smaller value producing a sweeter high end, but it's all personal preference. I've gone as low as 2nF on my 1.8H & 2.8H pickup Microcoil Srat set. The "vocal" ~1.7kHz boost just below the ~2.5kHz crossover on the bridge pickup sounds particularly sweet and fat. Those freq points are a little higher when reversed or between the two 1.8H pickups, but it's still very nice. It's actually brighter with that cap value when phase-reversed, whereas the higher values can make it sound darker when reversed -- almost like the pickups are in series, but without the high end loss.