Chasing Tone: 50's Guitar Wiring

As you know, I, like many other musicians, are always on a quest for tone.  I've written many posts on this blog about the subject.  Whether it is guitars, pickups, electronics, or capacitors, I am always on the hunt for a way to achieve the perfect. tone.

I came across an article a few weeks ago that was talking about a surprisingly easy and inexpensive way to improve the tone of a guitar.  Here's the link:

Mod Garage: Three Ways to Wire a Tone Pot

The author brought up a good point.  We look to the 1950's Gibson PAF pickups as the "Holy Grail" of all pickups.  But in all honesty, pickup makers today can create pickups that are just as good, if not better than those vintage PAF pickups.  So what's the difference?

As I've written before, many players are extremely fickle about their tone capacitors.  Some claim they can hear the differences between cheap ceramic caps and paper in oil caps.  Here are a few blog posts I wrote about trying out different caps.

Squeezing The Tone

Squeezing the Tone, Part 2 

Long story short, changing the capacitors did nothing for me.  For the heck of it I bought an old Russian paper in oil cap, and soldered it into my Dean Dixie Rebel.  Honestly, I couldn't hear a bit of difference.  That cap cost me $5, and that's on the cheap side.  The modern day Emerson paper in oil caps cost $20 a piece.  Let's be honest, $20 is way over the top for a capacitor.

So when I read the article posted above I originally took it with a grain of salt.  But the author said something that I hadn't thought of.  We accept those PAF pickups as the "Holy Grail" of pickups, but we are forgetting one thing.  They were also wired with 50's wiring.

Now I know you are wondering, "What does that have to do with anything?"  Well take a peek here.




From the article:

The tone cap connects to the volume pot’s output lug, rather than its input.

What’s so special about the ’50s wiring? It will influence the guitar’s performance in three major ways:

1. The overall tone gets stronger and more transparent. It’s difficult to describe, but I think of it as more “in your face.”

2. The typical treble loss that occurs when rolling back the volume is greatly reduced, and both the volume and tone controls react more smoothly and evenly without the typical hot spots. As a side effect, it’s easier to clean up an overdriven amp by simply rolling back the volume on your guitar a bit.

3. The tone and volume controls interact with each other—something you may know from certain early Fender tube amps. When you change the volume, the tone also changes a little bit and vice versa. Such interaction may feel strange at first, but it only takes a few minutes to get used to.

I've cut out a lot of the technical jargon, so I'll boil it down here.  The main problem with modern wiring is when you roll back the volume or the tone knobs.  Simply put, it doesn't sound great.  When backing off the tone knob, the biggest problem is the loss of volume in the high/treble sounds.  

So I decided to use my Guild Bluesbird as a guinea pig for this project.  I've written about it before.  Here's the link:

New Guitar Day: Guild Bluesbird

In that blog post I showed a few mods that I had made to "squeeze the tone" out of it.  Namely, I replaced the Alnico 5 magnet in the 59 neck pickup to an Alnico 2.  I also changed the cheap ceramic caps out for "Tropical Fish Capacitors."  (Yes, that really is what they are called.)

So here is the guitar we are working with.

And here is the inside control cavity. 

Let's fast forward to changing the wiring.

Honestly, it wasn't that hard or time consuming.  But here's the question... did it deliver promised results?  I mean, I've heard a lot of rumors, inuendo, and B.S., but did this actually work?  

Yes.  Yes it did.  I noticed a huge difference.  The sound really was more, "In your face" as described by the article.  Where I really noticed it was turning down the tone pots.  The high/treble sound didn't drop out like it had done before.  In other words, there was no loss of volume of the high/treble notes. 

I also noticed the pickups sounded much brighter.  The 59' neck pickup (with an Alnico 2 magnet) sounded extremely balanced.  They might be considered too muddy for high gain/metal players.  But with 50's wiring it sounded amazingly balanced and soulful.  

The 59' bridge pickup (stock) was much brighter.  It actually reminded me of 1950's music.  I know all the advertisements like to say their vintage pickups are warm, blah, blah, blah, etc.  Have you ever listened to late 50's/early 60's music?  Think of the Beach Boys.  Listen to them and realize how bright their sound is.  I know they are playing Fender instruments, but still, the 50's sound was pretty bright.

With 50's wiring the Seymour Duncan 59' sounds exactly like it rolled off the line at Gibson back then.  What also surprised me was that the bridge pickup had quite a bit of bite that it never had before.  I think some folks might mistake it for a Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates pickup due to the amount of bite it had.  

The verdict?  The verdict is yes.  In fact, it's a huge yes!  In complete honesty I didn't think it would make that much of a difference.  And the one thing I hadn't thought of was, "How do different types of capacitors react with 50's wiring?"  Those paper in oil caps might make a bit of a difference with 50's wiring.  

I already had quality Tropical Fish Capacitors installed in the Bluesbird.  So I'm not sure how much (or little) of an upgrade they are over cheap ceramic caps.  But to get back to the point, 50's wiring really did make that much of a difference.  I'm going to be doctoring a few of my guitars in the coming weeks.  

I am thankful for Premier Guitar for running the wiring article.  I am reminded of what a violin luthier told me.  He said, "We can make anything as good as Stradivarius these days due to sharing so much information.  We don't have to keep reinventing the wheel every ten years."  

So I have written this blog post to keep sharing information.  I believe it's important.  I've seen the quality of guitars skyrocket in the last twenty years.  I've seen the parts on those guitars skyrocket as well.  Sharing information is pivital to making amazing music.  I hope I've helped you out some.  

Little Amp, Smooth Power

So I've talked/ written about my little combo amp before.  It's the Epiphone Valve Jr. that I built into a combo amp.  Here's the picture of it.

Anyway, I moved the WGS speaker that I had in to my Fender Blues Jr.  So I looked around for the right speaker to replace it.  The hard part was finding a speaker that wasn't too loud.  Modern 12 inch speakers are made for such high volumes that it makes finding a low wattage one difficult. 

So I was looking at gear on Reverb.com when I came across something interesting.  There's a company that takes old roughed up speakers, and re-cones them as well as updating them.  The seller had a 1962 Rola, Pre-Celestion Alnico speaker for sale.  It was only 40 watts so that made it perfect for my 5 watt amp. 

So I bought it, and it arrived today.  I dropped it right in my combo amp, and cranked it up.  Since the company's name is Hemppopotamus Speakers, I suspect the cone is a hemp cone.  That means it takes a while to break in due to having such a strong cone.  I turned it up all the way, and noticed it was doing the "speaker fart" when I played the low notes.  However, after I played for about 15 minutes it stopped doing it.

I know a lot of players say that speakers need 20 hours of playing time on them before they start to break in.  I could hear just how "tight" this speaker sounded, and figure it will take at least that long.  However, the longer I played it the more it started to break in. 

I can hear how the speaker doesn't have that modern aggression to it, and it has to be cranked to really get great overdrive to come out of it.  But I can understand how musicians say that Alnico speakers have a "sweet" sound to them.  It's very smooth and early Fender-ish sound. 

He has a few more up for sale on Reverb.com.  If it's something you may be interested in, I'd say give it a try.  His cost is much more fair than the modern Alnico speakers.  In fact, his are the only Alnico speakers that I could actually afford.  I'll see about getting some sound clips up in a future blog.  But I want to break the speaker cone in first.   

Full Service Luthier

When I was apprenticing under my Master Luthier, Dave Pennington, it amazed me just how many services he could perform as a luthier.  There were so many little things that could go wrong with a guitar, and it was important to know how to fix all those odd problems. 

When I was working at Guitar Center I had many of the employees tell me how I was able to do things that they had never seen, and that most of the luthiers there before me did two things.  Change strings and pickups.  Outside of those jobs, they didn't do anything else.  So when I pulled up with a tool case almost as tall as myself it really surprised them.

Which brings us to today.  I don't perform public work on guitars anymore, but I do work for friends, family, and friends of friends.  I was brought a guitar from John C. (we'll call him John C. since I don't want to use his full name on a public blog.)  He had a few problems with his guitar, so I went to work correcting them.  I took pictures so I could show the importance of the work I do.

First off, the three way switch was acting up.  Instead of an expensive replacement, experience has told me it may just need a simple electronics cleaning.

In the second picture, I am using true electronics cleaner to clean the switch.  Never! Use WD-40 on electronics. 

John's guitar is an Epiphone ES-339.  So I will call him Epiphone.  In this next picture I am running Epiphone through my amp to make sure the three way switch was working.

The good news was that it worked just fine.  All's the three way switch needed was a little cleaning and not a replacement.

Next, Epiphone was missing a screw on the pickguard.  So I made a quick trip to Ace Hardware to find the correct parts.

They fit just fine.  So now it's time to adjust the bracket.

Next is a little trick I learned from working on archtops.  Use masking tape to tape off the F hole so you don't lose a screw in the guitar.

Next I made sure the pickguard was fit tight, and in the end everything fit just right.

Next I felt that Epiphone hadn't been socialized properly.  This can happen if an owner doesn't have a ridiculous amount of guitars.  So I let Epiphone socialize with other guitars named Epiphone.

This was greatly therapeutic for Epiphone.  All the Epiphones were able to talk about the usual guitar stuff.  You know, pickups, woods, electronics, and the power of the Alnico 8 magnet.

Next, I felt that Epiphone had a lot to talk about, but no way to loudly express himself.  So I hooked him up to my amp named Epiphone.  They really hit it off.  I had put Epiphone Amp together a few months ago from an Epiphone Valve Jr. Head, a Bitmo mod kit, a WGS C/S speaker, and some mahogany.  Epiphone the Amp really let Epiphone the Guitar find his inner voice.

Epiphone then decided to watch some TV, but I caught him napping. 

I then thought Epiphone was a little tense so I decided to give him some spa therapy.

Next, I thought Epiphone could use a little massage.

I then really had to work the kinks out of his neck.

After the massage I offered Epiphone a nice cup of tea.

Which Epiphone gladly accepted.

Since it was such a nice day Epiphone decided to lay out in the sun, and work on his tan/sunburst.

Well, the fun went on the rest of the day and night.  But when the day ends it's time to hit the hay.  So I made sure Epiphone was comfy at the Adrian Bn'B. 

So that concludes my luthier duties.  As you can see, I really strive to be a full service luthier.  So here's the total:

Spray of electronics cleaner:  $0.24

Screw for plate:  $0.14

Nut for screw: $0.15

Adrian Bn'B for two nights: $378. 63

Total:  $379.16.

I don't think that's too much to ask for such illustrious service.