Lespaul Acoustic Wiring

[ansil]

i thought i would update this thread, since gibson is looking into my wiring diagram. My long time friend and client took his lespaul to Nashville and had them look at it because we told him his neck was twisting. really sad so he went to have them look at it and since it doesn't affect the playing right now he decided to keep it cause he got it tricked out the way he wanted it from me. anyway to make the long story short for all of you gibson techs plugged it up and tried it out and they started flipping at the sounds calling other tech's over to check it out. took the back off. luckily i was smart enough to take off the writing of the magic caps. and had one hidden behind another to keep the dream alive. but they busted out magnifying glasses trying to read the values. but since them he has received three emails from gibson. so we are going for a meeting soon.

ed

[psw]

It would be great if you could get a sound clip of the thing...I'll need to study a little more how it functions and if my scheme could perhaps be modified a bit perhaps.

These things are hard to get credit or reward from, but good luck with it and good forethought as well. Have you seen torres engineering's little transformer and tone circuit on a pot to give a more strat like 'out of phase' sound...they produce something of a similar effect in a way

[ansil]

i will see if i can get some clips for you. the modded scheme is a slightly different layout and uses p-90 pickups from lahler. as well as slightly different values and a pot switch. but it was significant enough they want it. truthfully you have to think its not that grand of a scheme but if it gets me a guitar it would be worth it. or a job would be better. who knows maybe nothing. however it is wonderful sounding and everyone who hears it loves it so i am happy at that.

[Tim37]

if nothing else make them give you a guitar and some credit.

[ansil]

thats pretty much the jist of it. i know they were trying hard to figure out what values i used. but they assumed that the pots were stock as well. what they don't know is that each pickup has been measured and calibrated with its own circuit. you can't drop this one i did into a hum bucker setup it just won't work the same. its a matter of lrc circuits. sadly since the pickups have inductance you have to account for that and i found the factors you need to do with hum buckers. i am still tweaking true single coils formulas

it doesn't work quite like a lrc circuit but you have to take in the variables that and on the newer one its a 3db and a 6db filter there

[psw]

Hmmm

You know it wouldn't be hard to test the components to find out the values, including the pots and coils with the right equipment and know how.

What you seem to be suggesting though is that the publicly posted scheme featuring two HB's and component values is not in fact the scheme that produces this result?

you can't drop this one i did into a hum bucker setup it just won't work the same.

Yet this seems to be exactly what you presented in the initial post is it not?

The Torres engineering pots with lrc circuits claim much the same thing, a strat like quack or acoustic like response...even the acoustic simulators that are quite convincing are simply analog filters...but are quite a bit dependent on the pickups and guitar they are in for the response you can get.

Sorry to be a bit 'skeptical' but it does put one of trying things when all manner of other contingencies are not stated. One reason I did not look more closely into this which occurred as you can see just prior to the wiring of my LP is that it seemed a bit 'fiddly' for practical use...far better had the filters been set up as an adjustable thing that could be switched in to produce the 'effect' than the balance of pots and the reliance of unspecified pickup qualities in the circuit for example. However, it does one's reputation no good at all to present things that will not produce the results or results that are substandard by presenting specific diagrams that in the light of these comments, would seem to be false?

[ansil]

sorry bud if you reread above {post 28}you will notice i mentioned i modified the one gibson saw however re reading it i may have not been so clear. the above circuit will work fine with humbuckers as the above circuit was designed to do just that. however the latest one i did the one that gibson is interested in was done with a new circuit. see there are two guitars that i wired with the above schematic. the first one is still running just like that. the second one was wanting to change pots and such and go 100% vintage. which he did including degaussing the pickups and depotting them (feel free to groan i know i did) then after all that and the neck was twisted he was bummed out so i wired the neck pickup again to my little sweet spot. and then trhough much discussion and realization as well as depression it turned out to wire the rest of the thing the way i wanted to do it. [the original one had a pcb in it and when the new pots were put in all the original mods i did were gone] also weird enough is that the p-90 pickups the neck was hotter than the bridge. it was clearly marked neck 8.3k bridge 7.5k so weird and they checked out.

anyway so i put in one of my older caps i haven't used those in a while and calculated the freq roll off for each the hpf and lpf factored in the inductance of the circuit and it sounds great.

the acoustic vibe works best on both pickups and you blend the treble pot to balance the right amount of snappiness. by itself each pickup only sounds like you dialed in your favorite tone.

all i can say is quite simply try it if you want to. or Don't. i first started doing the math on this thing and did it on paper with 100% values i had in my guitar and plotted the freq curve i wanted in the neck pickup to help balance the tone. i put three caps together to get the right value and when i did it it sounded great however it was way brighter than i wanted it first became evident that if i do it straight from the pickups then i am going to have to account for their values as well. simply take a cap and a pot and drop it in there you only have to lift one wire to do the neck pickup mod. it will work on active passive and others you just need to figure out the freq response you wish to attenuate.

of course one thing to keep in mind is having a decent pickup to work with to begin with. I first started this on a Seymour duncan Jazz neck pickup. and an old single coil on a fender strat style guitar. i plan on doing other things with it. but the basic one i put up is for all of you the project gutiar community. peter i even drew you up a block diagram of the new one. i didn't post the most recent one because lets face it this isn't rocket science and if they want to do anything with it i am going to hold on to it for a minute. its not too far from the one posted just far enough to re calculate the values.

the biggest things to keep in mind is foremost:

true values of your pots caps and such.

i use silver mica caps mostly because they have a tighter tolerance and even then you have to have an accurate cap meter.

what freq range do you want on each.

for me i put a standard tone on neck blend on bridge and sweet cap on neck. but i have done it the other way too. standard tone on bridge sweet spot on neck and blend on neck. the nice thing is the tone is a master tone when on the middle section which is where the acoustic magic happens.

anyway love peace and chicken grease.

ed

[psw]

Thanks Ansil...

Well I am interested and will need to do something with this LP to get a better tone for my purposes I suspect, at least with these high powered pickups. They can sound a little boxy and certainly overpowered though split well. I did a full on 4 p-p wiring scheme on it, so it will be a bit tricky to 'mod' further, but am considering adding in some components to tame these pickups a bit more.

I use the middle position most of the time and that is where the 'magic' happens quite a bit...with a bit of fiddling between teh treble bleed and tones and combination of splits and such, it gets some of the effect you are describing but to find it can take a bit of fiddling about...

I am thinking of doing another with different pickups on it down the line though and hope to get a bit more of this kind of 'sound' for the fingerpicking jazzy stuff I'm doing these days...so who know, perhaps I'll give it a go there.

cheers

[ansil]

cool man let me know if ya need anything i did one of those jimmy page mods a while back and it is a major pain however i found using small pcb's to make it work better for me.