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So having a good look at these videos, decided to ugrade some parts and wire up 50s style. Went with the GOTOH's for no reason other than good reviews and could get them from same seller, were about same cost as the toneriders.
Some fun ahead
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Neck is set - some small gaps to sort and then onto final sand and fill - then to decide on finish
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I'm going to take a punt and say you have now spent more on parts than you did for the kit???
If I'm right, congratulations! Everyone needs to have at least one over-capitalised guitar in their collection!
Just curious, with that clamping arrangement, how did you confirm the neck alignment?
Did you check the neck angle before gluing? I don't think the Single Cut kits have been too bad, but there have been numerous "PRS" and "ES" kits that have required shimming.
I notice you’ve got 0.047uF caps. It’s all down to personal preference, but the ‘standard’ fitment for humbuckers these days is 0.022uF, with 0.047uF being the ‘standard’ for naturally brighter single coils. The bigger the cap value, the lower the tone controm’s low-pass filter’s ‘knee’ frequency is and the more the treble and mids get rolled-off. Historically, Gibson have fitted tone caps between 0.1uF and 0.022uF over the years in their guitars, but 0.022uF has been pretty much the norm since at least the 90s and the 58-60 ‘bursts had 0.022uF caps fitted as standard (though undoubtedly there will be exceptions due to component availability and at least three different types of cap were used). You’d have to have golden ears if you can hear the difference between the two values with the tone knob on 10 (especially with 500k tone pots) but turn the knob down and 0.047uF will get a lot darker than 0.022uF and get darker quicker.
I’ve experimented with different tone pot values and tone cap values, and I’ve settled on a personal preference for 250k log pots and 0.015uF caps for all my guitars. I’ll never use the very wooly sound of bigger cap values with the tone control on 1 or 0, so I prefer to have far more control over smaller changes in the tone over a wider knob rotation range. But for some people that just wouldn’t be enough.
If you have a multimeter, I’d measure the pot resistances (across the two outer tabs) and pick the two with the highest resistances to be the volume pots. The higher the value, the brighter/clearer the pickup tone will be. The best sounding 50s bursts (or so the experts say) tend to have pots with values in the 520-530k region. Standard pot resistance tolerance is normally +/- 10%, so can range from 450k to 550k. In reality most pots are closer to the nominal value, but even so, you’ll probably notice a difference between a 490k pot and a 510k one. That’s why some people (like Bare Knuckle) offer 550k pots, so that the resistance will fall on the high side of 500k. Some ‘bursts pot have measured at 600k, so 550k should cover all the vintage range of values. (My own experience of the BK 550k pots on the one guitar I fitted them to is that the shafts rattle a lot more than normal, very noticeable on a hollow body guitar, and I’ll be replacing them soon).
Really powerful pickups with lots of inductance will normally sound quite dull if played clean, and these can benefit from using 1Meg pots, which will help to keep what treble there is. There’s not much point going above 1Meg as the gains in treble lie on an exponential curve, and 1Meg is very close to the limit line.
As I work on a lot of guitars I have a collection of pots ready for use and I’ve taken to measuring them all and writing the values on the side with a Sharpie, so I can use the highest value ones for volume pots.
Quote:
Originally Posted by McCreed
LOL, yes you are correct, online shopping is a trap - its a hobby and my wife said OK
As far as neck align goes, i did a dry set up and measured it all, so I could reset it when glued. I had it set up with the bridge and tailpiece on, low and high e strung, for align. clamped it with 1 clamp, neck angle is a bit low, but feel I will have plenty of adjustment in the bridge, but I really could not see a way to adjust it, the neck pocket is really firm. Overall no adjustment needed. So from there pulled all the bits off applied the glue set it in position and double clamped it, checked measurements and left it alone.
I am pretty happy with this one, the presious one I did was really loose in the pocket and had to shim it
I did a fair bit of research and came up with this combo of 500k pots and 0.047uf caps, was really a starting point and can tweak it if I dont like it, the components are pretty cheap really. To be honest it is an experiment. But it seemed if using Humbuckers many seemed to point to the 0.047 caps. ???Quote:
Originally Posted by Simon Barden
Thats interesting I had thought the opposite with a higher resistance pot the control would be finer and have more ability to fine tune the tone. If it is not what I am expecting I will adjut as required, happy to experiment.Quote:
Originally Posted by Simon Barden
Great info, thank Simon, I shall report back on this set up and see how it goes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Simon Barden
As I said, tone circuits are personal and what suits me may not suit others. So it's worth getting a few cap values and having a go yourself. I rarely use my tone controls anyway, so unless I am striving for a traditional jazz guitar tone, or I need to just take a touch of brightness off, I rarely touch them. Other people use them all the time, so may benefit from the greater range of tone a bigger cap will give. Context is everything. There's a lot of confirmation bias out there with things like expensive PIO caps, and you have to try and be as objective as you can when making changes.
The tone pot doesn't form part of the tone control's low pass filter circuit. It's just a variable resistor that limits the amount of high-frequency signal passed to ground through the cap. The effect of the pot position on the tone is probably best demonstrated with a linear pot, as position then equates directly to resistance. With a 500k linear pot, you'll find that almost nothing happens until you are around 3 (Note that Fender-style knobs start at 1, Gibson at 0 so the number position is approximate), and then you'll still get not a lot happening until say 2, after which the tone really rolls off quickly.
I'm not saying that nothing happens before 3, but it is very subtle and nothing a slight tweak on the amp's treble control won't counter.
So my thinking is that I'd like that '3' position to come much higher up on the pot rotation, say '9'.
So, my first step is to switch from a 500k linear pot to a 250k linear one. As you now have half the resistance for a given rotation point, that '3' point becomes '6' on the dial. Much better, but you'll still find that the big tone changes are at the bottom end of the pot travel, so we now swap to a log pot. Wired up as a standard tone pot, the log curve will quickly drop off the resistance (compared to a linear one) to start with, whilst at the bottom end of travel the resistance drop off is a lot slower. So this helps start the tone control action further up the pot travel, normally somewhere between 8 and 7 (not all log pots have exactly the same taper, there are quite a few slopes available). And as the resistance change is now finer at the bottom end, the overall tone change is (to me) a lot smoother.
But some people prefer the way linear pots work, and prefer the more abrupt change, so you'll always see recommendations for log volume pots and either linear or log tone pots and a description that it's a personal choice.
And even though log volume pots give the most balanced volume reduction when playing cleanly, for those who always play with medium to heavy levels of distortion, a linear volume pot can be preferred as this can make it quicker to back off the amount of distortion just using the guitar volume knob.
And if you just use the knob at 10 and 0 for sound on or off, it really doesn't matter what the pot taper is.
When Gibson were using their 'T-top' pickups, they were also using 300k volume pots and 100k tone pots. Mainly IMO, because the T-top bridge pickups were very bright and the treble needed taming, though the more standard sounding neck pickup did suffer a bit as a result and in the one example I've worked on (a 1980 Gibson 'The SG' that only had the original neck pickup), changing to a 500k volume pot did make the neck pickup sound a lot better. And 100k is a bit below the resistance value I worked out was when you could really start to hear a tone change, so it did make some sense to have a 100k pot and have an effective tone control (though 150k would have been better IMO), but it does knock a bit more treble off the tone, and so helped again with the bright bridge pickup, but not the neck. They could have kept 500k+500k pots on the neck pickup, but logistics and ease of manufacture probably dictated the same pot values were used for both pickups.
So unless you are duplicating a vintage guitar build to the nth degree, you can certainly play about with pot values and tapers, especially if you have a specific pickup set you want to work with and want to fine tune the sound of the pickups. Just do it with an open mind and pick what suits you, not what some chap on a YouTube video says is the combination to use and you're a complete idiot if you don't.
The upgrades look good. I am going along a similar line with my first build but all single coil. Gotoh pots 250, orange drop cap 47, cloth wiring and I have to decide between Yosemite and tonerider pups as I have got both (because why not).
Thanks Juz, my thoughts exactlyQuote:
Originally Posted by juz
Hi again, about to start to assemble, have wired it as per 50s style, now a little unsure what to do with the HBs
Wiring Diagram for the type I purchased.
Main thing is 4 wires plus usual earth, as far as I can work out, using the top left pic, I connect white and red together, Black to earth - assume any earth will work here back eg back of pots, normal earth also to back of pots.
Then as mine is now wired as per 50s style I connect the green wire to bottom lug of volume pots.
As always any help appreciated.