G&L Tribute Legacy Alnico Pups -- WAAAAAY too Trebly

[rjb]

Not a Strat Guy

With this Tribute Legacy I couldn't raise the bass side of the pickups very far because the magnetic pulsing effect was larger than I expected it to be. I ended up having to leave them a lot lower than the typical "Strat" setup to prevent interaction between the strings/magnets.

Do typical Strat pickups have lower flux density than vintage pickups?

G&L Tribute Legacy Electric Guitar 3-Color Sunburst Rosewood Fretboard | Musician's Friend

The G&L Legacy blends contemporary refinements from the Leo Fender-designed S-500 and Comanche models with classic Alnico V pickups. If your holy grail is faithful Alnico single-coil tone with modern refinements and superb craftsmanship, the Legacy makes for an excellent choice.

The Legacy's vintage-spec CLF-100 Alnico V pickups have that unmistakable chime and quack reminiscent of the best examples from the late ˜50s,....

-rb

[bob p]

That's G&L trying to sell the Tribute guitars as Stratocasters, while conspicuously avoiding the use of the word "Stratocaster" in their ad copy.

The guitars don't sound the same, regardless of what the ad copy might say. The G&L Fanboys are quick to point out that the new Fender pickups and the PTB circuit are brighter and clearer than a Strat. IMO "brighter and clearer than a Strat" is only possible if you move into the range of harsh and clangy and ice-picky.

Like David said in that other thread, maybe Leo was trying to go for the same tone as he remembered it in the 50s, but 50 years of progressively worsening hearing loss meant that he made every generation of guitars brighter and brighter so they would sound the way he remembered them sounding before 50 years of HF hearing loss.

I had the same idea about the rotary switch, but that breadboard idea was unique. You get points for that one. it's exactly the kind of idea that I was hoping would come along in this thread.

[rjb]

Assuming I was getting at something, I think it might be this:

Would your pickups benefit from degaussing?
Are the pickup wizards who know about this stuff following this thread?

-rb

EDIT:
I ask because you said you had to set the pickup heights lower than normal to prevent Stratitis.

[bob p]

I don't know enough about pickups to answer that, being that I'm not a pickup expert compared to the pickup guys on this forum. As far as pickups go I'm only an end user. I'm hoping that one of the pickup guys might chime in.

Something that I can say though -- the pickups on this guitar are pretty strong. As the guitar came from the factory the pickups were way too high on the bass side and way too low (relatively) on the treble side, with the B/E strings being much lower volume. I ended up lowering them quite a bit (more on the bass side and less on the treble) to eliminate interference with the strings and that did produce a definite improvement in the tone.

I pulled out one of my strats with Texas Specials for comparison and it seems that the pickup height that I dialed in on this guitar is almost identical to the height on my guitar with Texas Specials. so maybe the strength of the pickups isn't that far off from "normal" higher output strat pickups.

With the pickups adjusted low enough to eliminate magnetic interference the PTB circuit still sounds harsh to my ears -- very harsh when the volume is dialed up, but much more tolerable when the guitar is dialed down to 4-5 which I think is sort of a sweet spot to my ears. Of course, that change with volume is to be expected as the volume pot on this model doesn't have the volume bypass cap as shown in the S500 schematic you posted.

I'm thinking that the PTB circuit could benefit from the adjustment of the tone caps and/or tone pot as mentioned earlier, as well as the addition of the S500-type of volume bypass cap. I know that the volume bypass will only add treble, but I'm thinking that it would be nice to have more consistency as the guitar volume changes. My main objective is still to de-icepick the tone side of the circuit to get that into a more useful range, then use a volume bypass cap to preserve that level as volume changes.

The bass-cut side of the circuit is actually pretty nice. The on-board bass-cut helps a lot to clear up the tone when you're driving an amp pretty hard. I think that's a keeper.

All things considered, in this case I think the PTB circuit is probably causing the problem moreso than the pickups. That is to say after "fixing" the pickup adjustment the PTB is definitely adding more treble than I need. The stock PTB circuit is definitely voiced brighter than what I'm used to with strats, where I tend to avoid position 1 (naked bridge pickup) and favor positions 2-5. I think that the PTB method of including the bridge pickup included in the tone circuit is a definite benefit compared to the typical strat wiring. And I definitely like the bass-cut feature of the PTB circuit. It's just that the treble side of the PTB circuit, which seems to have been intentionally designed for more high pass, is just too gratuitous for me. I'm hoping it's as simple to fix as going back to a 250k tone pot.

[rjb]

...... I'm hoping it's as simple to fix as going back to a 250k tone pot.

OK, enough talk. Time to get out a screwdriver and soldering iron and try it. :geturdun:

-rb

[bob p]

plan for the weekend.

[Steve A.]

A quick thought regarding bass and treble settings... if you need to set the Bass control high and the Treble control low perhaps you want to reverse the tapers, so that the Treble control would have a reverse audio taper and the Bass control an audio taper.

In days when RA pots were not so easily available I would wire audio taper pots backwards. So just for ducks you might try reversing the leads on the outside terminals on both controls.

After looking at the schematic I see that it is similar to the "treble bypass" (actually bass cut) control on my 1948 Gibson lap steel which is similar to some of Howard Roberts control circuits...



Here is the thread on that from 2010...

http://music-electronics-forum.com/t20045/

After reading the replies here I also like the idea in Post #6 by rjb about adding caps across the pickups. You might also try wiring a trim pot or fixed resistor in series with the cap to make it more like a treble cut circuit.

Steve A.

[rjb]

I was going to half-jokingly suggest a non-invasive way of taming the treble:


But it turns out nobody knows how to make crappy high-capacitance cables any more (according to this guy, anyway).
https://www.premierguitar.com/articl..._Simulator_Mod

Such cables have been out of production for many years. Modern spiral cords are high-quality, low-capacitance designs that only mimic the appearance of the old cables for a retro look on stage

.
Just for reference:

So let’s start with some recommended cap values for simulating varying lengths of vintage coiled cable:

10-foot (3 meters): 1nF
15-foot (4.5 meters): 1.5nF
20-foot (6 meters): 2.2nF
30-foot (9 meters): 3.3nF
Ultra-long: 4.7nF

Hope this helps some one, some where, some day.

-rb

[Justin Thomas]

I mean, I play a Tele through a Chorus and a big Brown Fender. Why the hell would I <NEED> low-capacitance cable? Dammit, think of the poor folks sitting right in front of my amp!

Then they try to sell me low-capacitance cable for my bass, too...

Justi.

[Steve A.]

In case anyone was wondering after 24 posts here's a link to info on the G&L site on Bob's guitar which answers a lot of questions...

G&L® Tribute® Series Legacy?

I guess you would need to ask Leo Fender why you would want a Bass Cut control on a guitar that is very bright to begin with... Well, he did design the strat without any tone control at all on the bridge pickup. It makes me wonder if his hearing was damaged, like he had a hard time hearing high frequencies. Like Dan Torres... at least that was my theory why some of his designs were too bright or too harsh. He would tilt his head when you were talking to him like he was hard of hearing, probably from playing guitar on stage too loud and without proper hearing protection.

In any case I like to rewire my strats with a master treble cut tone control (a modified TBX if I have one around, with the 82k resistor replaced with a 220k as recommended by Doc H. at AMPAGE back in 2001.)



https://www.dropbox.com/s/60ifomb9t9wl1z4/tbx_mod.gif

For the middle pot I like a master mid boost/cut control based on a Dan Torres circuit surprisingly enough similar to the one in Craig Anderton's books (it even uses the same Mouser audio transformer as an inductor. Coinkydense? I think not...)



https://www.dropbox.com/s/bluewgzst2xj4m0/dual_mid.gif

BTW I have wired up one of my LP's with a master treble cut tone control and a master mid cut control by eliminating the mid boost half of the Anderton/Torres/Ahola circuit. I used the stock Gibson long bushing pot (~300k to 500k.) I need to measure it and also check the values of the resistor and capacitor to see what I finally ended up using 20+ years ago. The mid cut works really well in cleaning up the sound of a LP — you might want to call it a MUD cut control... [insert GROAN smilie here]

Steve A.

P.S. While on the subject of modified TBX controls Joe A. Arthur came up with one that was an actual bass cut when you turned it up from the detent position:



https://www.dropbox.com/s/db5wrdk2v0...x_bass-cut.gif

BTW I was looking all over the web for this circuit yesterday only to finally find it on my website.

D'oh!