Members cooltouch Posted November 5, 2013 Members Share Posted November 5, 2013 I'm really into DIY of all sorts. I even build guitars from flat pieces of wood. My specialty is classical guitars, but I also would like to buitd an electric or two one of these days soon. It's a completely different sort of challenge from building a classical acoustic. I got a small taste of DIY'ing electric guitars when I hot-rodded an old Kramer Focus 1000 I had picked up in a 2nd-hand shop for cheap., The guitar was originally basically an Eddie Van Halen special -- single slanted bridge pickup with a Floyd Rose tremelo system, one volume and one tone control. But it had a nice, fast neck that I really enjoyed, so I knew I had to do something to the guitar to make it more appealing to my musical tastes. Well as it so happens I had an extra Gibson P90 single-coil "soapbar" pickup laying around that was just begging for a guitar to be installed in, so I had a local luthier (Ron Pace) route the pickup cavity, and I installed the P90. Because of the new pickup, I had to make decisions about knob and switch configuration. I decided to move the controls down toward the butt of the guitar a notch, and I installed the 3-way-toggle in the hole formerly occupied by the volume pot. The volume pot got installed in the old tone pot's hole and then I had to drill a hole for another pot. I decided that this second pot would be another volume and that I would dispense entirely with tone controls, since I never used them anyway. I eq my guitars at my amps, often employing a 12-channel eq. I just have no need for tone controls. So this kept things compact, plus everything was fitting easily within the existing control cavity. As I had the guitar apart, I notced a curious thing. The single existing pickup had a coil tap.that had never been used. Well, I decided to change that in a hurry,. I went down to Radio Shack and bought a micro switch for the humbucker, and I wired it for humbucker in phase, i.e. "normal", humbucker out of phase, and single coil. I installed the micro switch, offset slightly from the others. I think I wound up with a guitar that looks as good as she plays and sounds. It's awesome having a neck-position P90 now. What do you think? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators isaac42 Posted November 6, 2013 Moderators Share Posted November 6, 2013 I think that a single humbucker out of phase is a pretty useless pickup. Of course, YMMV. Instead, I'd go with series/parallel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members AJ6stringsting Posted January 16, 2014 Members Share Posted January 16, 2014 What K ohms pots did you use ?250K ohms or 500k ohms ? She's a beauty and I bet it sounds good too ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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