wiring and stuff

[tawraste]

been spending all my time recently with a soldering iron and messing about with the wiring of my guitar.

finally got a switch in to change my humbucker from series wiring to parallel, and another switch to coil tap the thing:

coil tap is on the left, series/parallel on the right. i've found the tonal differences to be significant though subtle. they can be more clearly heard on a clean channel, where the coil tap especially sounds much nicer than the humbucker. the series is beefier, the parallel treblier. i did try getting a volume pot that pushed up and down as a switch but the damn thing was faulty.

 

another thing i got into doing today was looking at capacitors. i have never found anything that changes the sound of a guitar quite so dramatically as different capacitors. what i did first of all was remove the old capacitor and then wire in some push fit connectors in it,s place:

this allows me to swap between the old capacitor (now with plugs on it):

or between some wires that lead to a "capacitance decade box" which an electrician friend lent me:

basically the decade box allows me to change between capacitor values just by flicking switches whilst i'm playing. so i did exactly that, going through all different capacitor values on all the different wiring options. i've found that i really like the sound of a .082uf capacitor over the usual 0.047. together with the wiring options i can now move from ripping sounds like megadeth to deep and rich heavy sounds like sabbath, really tonal bluesy sounds and with the aid of the coil tap i can get that "phantom of the opera" sound just like on the album.

of course, the decade box is much harsher than vintage caps, but it does help as far as picking a good range goes. now i now what i'm looking for i'll simply pick up some nice paper in oil capacitors for a couple of quid and wire them in.

next i'll have a look at that neck pick up and see if i can;t treble it up a little whilst keeping that nice rounded iron maiden solo sound.

and all for a couple of quid.....

R'n'f'R

[tawraste]

anyone know if these are any good or has anyone had experience with them?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/1-PC-ERO-ID-0-068uF-400VDC-Capacitor-Vintage-Sound-/220582912917?pt=UK_Consumer_VintageAudio_RL&hash=item335bc42395

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260692159548

and

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/K40Y-9-Paper-Oil-Capacitor-Cap-0-033-uF-200V-PIO-/260692159546?pt=UK_Guitar_Accessories&hash=item3cb276ac3a

[deadbeat2010]

interesting, good info taw.

[tawraste]

forgot to mention that with .082uf capacitance turning tone right on all the way gives a super bassy sound very much like kyuss.

 

hell of a range.....