Chibson "Angus" SG Mod.

[DrNomis_44]

A friend of mine picked up the replica Slash Les Paul signature Chibson, looks good but sounds horrible, it squeals like a pig, he's desperate to off load it.

Have a talk to your friend and ask them if they would like the pickups replaced with some better ones, there's nothing like changing out the pickups for improving the sound of a guitar, the original pickups on my SG have a tendency to squeal when I'm using an overdriven sound.



Incidentally, this is something that I really enjoy doing, modding an existing guitar to improve it's tone and performance/playability, and seeing what I can do to get the best out of it.


Actually, I do more than just that, I also build my own FX pedals, instrument leads, and I've got an amplifier that I've been working on since my days working in my Dad's workshop as a fitter and Machinist, been thinking about starting a new thread about the Amplifier and decided that I would go ahead with it as I think some of you guys might be interested in checking it out, stay tuned.....

[DrNomis_44]

Update:


I have just gotten home after picking up the new Entwistle HV58 pickups from the Post Office and will be installing them along with the new nut this afternoon, will see if I can post a link to a soundcloud demo clip so stay tuned.

[wokkaboy]

Awesome Doc, love it when all the parts arrive from the snail post aka Oz Post.
So is that all the parts you need to make the Chibson a Gibson sounding SG ?

I would be interested seeing a thread on your FX pedals and building your amp head !

[DrNomis_44]

Awesome Doc, love it when all the parts arrive from the snail post aka Oz Post.
So is that all the parts you need to make the Chibson a Gibson sounding SG ?

I would be interested seeing a thread on your FX pedals and building your amp head !

Me too, I love it when things come together and plans go right, I don't know if the new parts will be enough to turn the Chibson guitar into a Gibson but one thing's for sure, the guitar should play and sound better than it did when I got it, while I was waiting till the time came to collect the pickups from the post office, I started replacing the original nut with the new one, it was only after I had removed the old nut that I found out why there was still a small amount of sitar buzzing on the high e-string, it turned out that when the original nut was installed a bit of the glue got into the high e-string nut slot.


I would absolutely love to do a thread documenting a pedal build and as it just so happens I'm going to be building a new valve distortion pedal based on some PDFs I downloaded recently, so I'll start the thread when I've got all the components together and will document the build, same goes for the Amp Head, will document the build in full with pics and a sound demo.

[wokkaboy]

wow a bit of glue in the nut slot - thats all it takes to turn it into a sitar !

cool look forward to the amp and valve distortion pedal threads. What does the valve do to the sound in this pedal ? Sure it will sound better than a traditional distortion pedal

[DrNomis_44]

wow a bit of glue in the nut slot - thats all it takes to turn it into a sitar !

cool look forward to the amp and valve distortion pedal threads. What does the valve do to the sound in this pedal ? Sure it will sound better than a traditional distortion pedal

Well, with a traditional distortion pedal the distortion is produced by what are called Solid-State devices, these Solid State devices take the normally smooth signal from a guitar and chop off the tops and the bottom of the signal (this is called Clipping Distortion) and the signal gets all squared up, a good example of this clipping distortion is the Ibanez TS-9 Tube Screamer, now, before solid-state distortion pedals became all the rage with we guitarists, distortion used to be produced with valves, a classic example of valve distortion is the sound you get when you turn a Vox AC30 up too high and overdrive it with a hot signal, think of Brian May's tone (he's the guitarist in the rock band Queen), another classic example is the sound you get when you turn a Marshall Super Lead Plexi up full and play a Gibson Les Paul through it (think AC/DC), most guitarists tend to like the sound of valve distortion because they think it sounds better and,or, more musical because a valve distorts differently to solid state devices, it supposedly produces more musically pleasing harmonics, valve based distortion pedals were invented to overcome some of the difficulties in getting that sound at lower volumes, personally I have heard the difference between valve and solid-state distortion pedals, and yes there is a subtle difference, valve distortion sounds fatter, smoother and more pleasing to my ears.


In the pedal that I'm going to be making, the valve is going to take the normally smooth signal from the guitar and it'll distort it in a particular way that is a bit different to solid state distortion, the top of the guitar signal will clip sharply but the bottom will clip softly (more rounded) so the harmonics produced will be different, there is a solid state distortion pedal that comes close to valve distortion and that is the old Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face, as used by Jimi Hendrix, believe it or not, Pete Townshend of The Who used a Fuzz Face at one point in his career too.

[wokkaboy]

cool thanks for explaining that Doc, so basically the same difference between a valve amp and solid state amp, cool.
I will be mega keen to build one of these valve distortion pedals

[DrNomis_44]

cool thanks for explaining that Doc, so basically the same difference between a valve amp and solid state amp, cool.
I will be mega keen to build one of these valve distortion pedals

No worries at all mate, I have built a couple of old school Fuzz Pedals using Germanium Transistors, I built a Sola Sound Tonebender Mk I, and a Tonebender Mk II Professional as used by Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin (remember them?), they both sound really good with my Les Paul, they're at Uni at the moment so I'll have to bring them back home so I can take pics of them, but, I do have sound demos of each that I uploaded to soundcloud, I'll post links to them here for you:


https://soundcloud.com/drnomis_44/mk-i-tonebender-demo


https://soundcloud.com/drnomis_44/mk...ebender-record




Here's a pic of the new Entwistle HV58 pickups, unboxed:

[DrNomis_44]

Update:

I've finally got the two new Entwistle HV58 pickups installed in the SG and they seem to be working properly, they seem a little underpowered but I guess that's just because they're supposed to be replicas of PAFs from the 50's, I'm liking them though as they don't squeal like the originals do.


I've also got one of the new Tusq XL nuts installed too, I thought it was going to help with the tuning stability but it doesn't seem to have made much difference, the D-string and the A-string seemed to have developed the Sitar-Buzzing that the E-String was suffering from before, I had a good look and if my eyes aren't playing tricks on me, I think the end of the fretboard where the nut sits isn't exactly 90 degrees to the centreline so I'm going to have to check this at a later stage when I can buy the tools I need to fix it as I'm very low on money at the moment.

[DrNomis_44]

Update:


The Angus Young sticker I bought on eBay turned up in my letterbox yesterday, haven't had a chance to put it on the SG yet, while re-tuning the SG after gluing in the new nut one of the strings broke so I'll have to buy some new strings in the morning.


Will also buy the parts for the Valve distortion pedal too.