3 Mods for 3 Guitars

Dirk Wacker

I know guitar players of all kinds: bedroom shredders, hobbyists, semi-pros, and pro players, and they all have something in common: They all have more than one guitar. With that in mind, were presenting three modsdivided into beginner, intermediate, and advanced levelsfor three common guitars: Telecaster, Stratocaster, and Les Paul. These three circuits are very different and require very different work to mod them. But they are versatile, and once you get the basic knowledge down, you can apply it to other guitars. For example, you can use the Telecaster circuit mods for all electric guitars with two pickups and a master volume/master tone configuration. The Les Paul circuit can also be used for SG, 335, 339, and many more guitars with two pickups with a volume and tone control for each pickup. Well kick this off with beginner mods, requiring only some basic soldering skills. Vintage wiring, or 50s-style wiring, is a good starting place for anyone interested in dipping their toes into DIY modding. Parts-wise youll only require some basic soldering equipment and some small pieces of wire. Lets get started! The Mod: 50s Wiring The Gibson 50s wiring is sometimes also called "Vintage Wiring" or even "50s Vintage Wiring," but it all refers to the same thingthe way Gibson wired up their electric guitars in the late 50s, including the legendary Burst Les Paul guitars as well as SGs and 335s of the era. Though it was forgotten for many decades, the method seems more popular now than ever before, garnering a lot of attention in forums and with plenty of myths and urban legends surrounding it. Electronically, there is nothing too special about this wiring. It simply connects the tone pot to the output of the volume pot (middle lug) instead of the input. So what is so special about it then, you ask? The 50s wiring will have three major influences on your tone: 1. The overall tone gets stronger and more transparent. Its difficult to describe, but its more in your face. The tone of late-50s Burst Les Pauls has been described as having a bloomthe way the notes open up after leaving the guitarthat is hard to achieve without this wiring. 2. The typical treble loss that occurs when rolling back the volume is lessened and both the volume and tone controls react smoother and more evenly, without the typical hot spots. As a result, its easier to clean up an overdriven amp by simply rolling back the volume on your guitar a bit. 3. The tone and the volume controls interact with each other in a way similar to some Fender tube amps. When you change the volume, the tone changes a little bit as well, and vice versa. It may feel strange in the beginning, but it doesnt take long to get used to.

As with any of the mods well be doing, its a matter of personal preference, but this one is easy to do and invisibly reverseso its worth a try. Though the wiring is based off of vintage Gibsons, you can rewire any guitar this way to similar effect. Telecaster (click for standard Tele original wiring diagram) This is, by far, the simplest mod I can imagineswap one wire and you are done! If youve never worked in your guitar before, this is a great place to start. There are no special considerations or quirks, just swap the wire marked in red below and your Tele is converted to 50s wiring.

Wiring diagram courtesy of Seymour Duncan Pickups and used by permission. Seymour Duncan and the stylized S are registered trademarks of Seymour Duncan Pickups, with which Premier Guitar magazine is not affiliated.

Stratocaster (click for standard Strat original wiring diagram) Setting up the 50s wiring on a Stratocaster is not much more complicated than on a Telecaster, but because of the somewhat special arrangement of a master volume plus two tone controls, it requires changing an additional wire. Again, there are no special considerations, so solder along and enjoy the new tones from your Strat.

Wiring diagram courtesy of Seymour Duncan Pickups and used by permission. Seymour Duncan and the stylized S are registered trademarks of Seymour Duncan Pickups, with which Premier Guitar magazine is not affiliated.

Les Paul (also SG or ES-335) - Click for standard Les Paul wiring diagram The original 50s wiring on a Les Paul is basically identical to the Telecaster mod, with each pickup sporting a volume and a tone control. Because you have two pickups with this arrangement, youll have to swap two wires instead of one, but its still pretty simple. Most Les Paul, SG, and 335 players with PAF or PAF-flavored pickups prefer this wiring because it gives a more vintage tone and it is one of the key components for the so-called "bloom" we talked about earlier. Give it a try: I wouldnt be surprised if you never converted back to the modern wiring you had before.

Diagram by Nick Boogers

I hope you were able to test the modding waters successfully and unlock some new tones from your favorite axe. Check back next week for our intermediate mods for Tele, Strat, and Les Paul. Well be setting up an additional out of phase pickup setting, so stay tuned! Now that youve gotten your feet wet with a dead-simple guitar mod, lets move on to the intermediate level. For this mod, well be adding an out-of-phase option to Strat, Tele, and Les Paul. In addition to the wire and soldering equipment required for our previous mod, youll also need a 2PDT switching device like a mini toggle or a push/pull or push/push pot with a 2PDT switch. There are additional considerations for this mod depending on which guitar youre looking to mod, so well address those in each proper section. The Mod: Out-of-Phase The out-of-phase mod is most common on Strats, and there are a lot of misunderstandings about exactly what the term out-of-phase means. When we are talking about "out-of-phase" sounds on a Strat, we are not talking about positions 2 and 4 of the 5-way pickup selector switch. Its a common misunderstanding that these positions are out-of-phase, but theyre still in phase. Another common misunderstanding is that physically rotating a pickup 180 degrees (think Jimi Hendrix) will put it out of

phase. You will achieve a different tone, especially with a pickup with staggered pole pieces, but its not out of phase. My favorite misunderstanding is about the basic structure of an out-of-phase sound: it is important to understand that on a guitar with two pickups you dont have to use two phase switches because reversing the leads of both pickups would put them back in phase again, and you will receive the stock sound. And putting a single pickup out of phase will also have no audible resultplaying a bridge pickup alone out of phase will sound the same as in phase. You can only get an out-of-phase sound when you use two pickups together, one of them out of phaseperiod! When two pickups are in phase, they work together and reinforce each other. When they are out of phase, the two pickups are working against one another and the resulting sounds are the "leftovers" from these cancellations. The closer the two pickups are, the greater the cancellations, and the sound is thinner and has less volume, so the neck and bridge pickups are usually the best choice for setting an out-of-phase mod. What does it sound like? Basically, its a thin, inside-out, squawky kind of soundtwo pickups that normally sound full and rich turn into a thin and shrill-sounding couple. You may think, Why would I want that? Well, its great for reggae or funk, where you need a thin sound, and it will cut through a lot of effects or distortion that would otherwise muddy up your tone. A great example of this sound is Brian Mays Red Special. His guitar offers individual out-of-phase switches for each pickup, and he used the sound on a lot of the Queen recordings. James Burton is another famous guitarist who said once that he discovered the sounds on accident on his late 50s Tele while playing with Ricky Nelson. He found out that he could move the 3-way selector switch between the bridge and neck position to get a thin out-of-phase sound from his Tele that can be heard on famous Nelson recordings like Travelin Man and Fools Rush In. Peter Green is another musician who made use of out-of-phase sounds, but on his famous Les Paul. When we are talking about out-of-phase options here, we are always talking about electrical out-ofphase. There is also magnetic out-of-phase, but most of the time this is a factory accident or the result of a sloppy repair work on a pickup. Dont confuse magnetic out-of-phase with reverse-wound/reversepolarity eitherthis is yet another configuration! So lets heat up the soldering iron and put some pickups out of phase. In order to achieve this sound (and to return to a regular sound), use a DPDT phase reversal switch (see diagram below). Wiring the phase switch is fairly simple: unsolder the two pickup leads, solder the phase switch "out" leads (hot and ground) to the exact same spot where the pickup leads were, and solder the pickup leads to the "from pickup" terminals on the phase switch as shown below. Mount the switch, close up the guitar, and start enjoying the new sound you have just created! Naturally, you can also use a push/pull or push/push pot for this.

Wiring diagram courtesy of Seymour Duncan Pickups and used by permission. Seymour Duncan and the stylized S are registered trademarks of Seymour Duncan Pickups, with which Premier Guitar magazine is not affiliated.

This is the basic structure for out-of-phase wiring on all guitars: the pickup you want to put out of phase is connected to the DPDT phase reversal switch the way shown above, running the two output wires from the switch to ground and to the pickup selector switch, volume pot or directly to the output jack, depending on the guitar. So the phase reversal switch is additionally inserted in the normal wiring of the pickup. There are some things to consider when setting up a phase-reversal option, and here are some guidelines. Stratocaster There really arent many special considerations on a Stratyou should connect the middle pickup to the phase-reversal switch, simply because the middle pickup is always involved when two pickups are used together on a Strat, so you will receive two new sounds with only one switch: bridge and middle pickup together out of phase or middle and neck pickup together out of phase. If you also have the "7-Sound" mod on your Strat and you want the bridge and neck pickup together out-of-phase, there is no way around a second phase-reversal switch. One is for the middle pickup, and the other for the bridge or neck pickup, it doesnt matter what pickup you decide on. Telecaster Setting up the out-of-phase option on a Tele is fairly straightforward as well, but there are a few additional considerations. In general it does not matter if you connect the bridge or the neck pickup of a Telecaster to the phase-reversal switch, but you will have to unground and reground one of the pickups. If the pickup's negative wire has continuity with any metal partssay, the cover or the frameyou must break this connection to separate the metal cover or frame from the coil's negative wire. When you put a pickup out of phase, the negative side of the pickup's coil is now on the positive side of the guitar's circuit. This means that a metal cover or frame (mounting screws, springs, pole pieces, etc.) will have continuity with the hot side. This will make the pickup more susceptible to hum, and it will have the

potential for unexpected and unwanted noises if you touch the pickup or its screws while playing. If you accidentally hit it with the strings (that are grounded through the bridge), it can also mute the whole guitar, so you should perform the out-of-phase mod always with the neck pickup of a Telecaster, simply because most players are less likely to touch the neck rather than the bridge pickup while playing. Another benefit is that normally the neck pickup of a Telecaster is also easier to modmost Tele bridge pickups have a bottom plate with continuity to the negative wire, and you would have to remove the strings and the entire bridge to work on this pickup. On typical Telecaster neck pickups, there is a metal cover. One of its mounting tabs, folded under the coil, usually has a small, short jumper to the eyelet on the pickups chassis that connects the coil to the negative wire. To unground and reground the cover, all you need to do is carefully clip that little jumper, breaking the connection, and then add a new insulated wire from the cover's tab into the control cavity, where you can attach it to any given ground spot, like the back of a pot. After this little mod, the cover will always stay on the shielded/grounded side of the circuit, providing protection against hum and noise. Les Paul (or SG/335) An out-of-phase wiring for Les Paul guitars is a very popular and common modification. The difficulty level depends on the pickups installed in your axe. A lot of humbuckers have four-conductor wiring (beginning and end of both coils) plus a fifth conductor, typically a bare wire running inside the insulated cable that is the ground/shield connection to the chassis of the pickup, which is completely independent and insulated from any wires from the coils. If this is the case with your pickups, simply follow the color code from the manufacturer and solder along. Many traditionally made humbuckers sport only a two-conductor wiring with a braided/external shieldhence the term braided shield wire. The external braided conductor is typically soldered to the pickups metal chassis and used as the ground/shield plus the coils negative wire together. Now you have a pickup where the metal chassis, cover, screws, and also the entire length of the exposed braid on the wire has continuity with the ground of the guitar. This is not desirable at all. If its a humbucker without a metal cover or a P-90, you can simply use some heat-shrink, latex, or cloth tubing to insulate the entire length of the exposed braid. While the mounting screws and pole pieces are still connected to the hot side, its better than stock. If you have a pickup with a metal cover, it becomes more complicated. The only way to completely fix the problem is to replace the stock wiring with a four-conductor wiring. This is far more complex than we can get into here, and theres a high likelihood you will destroy your pickup if youre not very experienced. Luckily, many pickup companies are offering this service at a decent rate. Alternately, you could simply replace the stock pickups with replacement pickups that already offer the four-conductor wirings from the start. Thatll wrap things up for our intermediate mod. Watch out next week for our advanced modits a doozy!

Give your Les Paul the vintage tone of a 59`Burst

This seems to be the most sought-after tone for a Les Paul and its not that difficult to make your own Les Paul sound like that. THE magic tone is a combination of several factors and we will go through all of them step by step to convert your Les Paul into a roaring monster. But dont forget that even the old original vintage Les Pauls are very different from each other and they all sound different, so there is no "the vintage sound", we are talking about a special flavour of tone. Your own Les Paul will sound very different with all this things here done to your guitar, compared to what it was sounding before. If you like it ... cool ! If you dont like it, please dont keep it only because its the original vintage specifications. Its your guitar and you have to love the tone. The guitars construction It doesnt matter if you have a real Gibson, a Epiphone or any other copy of the Les Paul guitar, its NOT the label that decides about good or bad, its only the construction and the wood that is important. I played a lot of copies (even cheap ones) that had a much better tone and vibe than the modern originals. The factor we are talking about is the socalled "primary tone", coming from the wood and influenced from the overall construction. In very simple words and without going into the details your guitar should match this factors: 1. massive mahagony body with a curved, massive maple top 2. one piece mahagony neck with rosewood board and bone nut 3. neck glued to the body (aka "set-neck") This is in very simple terms the overall construction of a Les Paul guitar. All the other hardware things like bridge, tuners etc. are not that interesting at the moment and can be replaced later if neccesary. If your guitar has any other construction (alder body, plain top, screwed neck ....) you can stop reading here - your guitar will never sound like an old Les Paul. Sorry, this is a fact and you have to face it here at this point to save yourself a lot of frustrations and of course a lot of money. Your guitar may sound great, but it will never sound like the tone we are talking about here. If your guitar matches all the points, play it without an amp. Is the tone strong and beautiful ? Has is even here a lot of sustain and can you feel the tone vibrations and the vibe ? Can you hear overtones ? If so, congratulations - you have a great guitar and it will sound very close to an old one after doing all the things described here. There is no other electrical guitar where the physics are that important, always keep this in mind. The pickups The PAF humbuckers are often called "the heart of the Burst" and indeed they are. Besides the primary tone of your Les Paul guitar this is the second important parameter, the "amplified tone". In most cases this

point is non-critical, because its not difficult to change cheap pickups for good ones. If you have a Les Paul copy with the correct construction and a killer primary tone but cheap pickups ... no problem. Almost all manufacturers offer more or less exact copies of the old PAF humbuckers and it should be easy to find comparison reviews of them on the internet or in a guitar magazine. In short and simple terms the pickup should have the correct number of windings with the correct wire and should use the correct magnets. Any exact copy from the big guys like Seymour Duncan, Lindy Fralin, Kent Armstrong, Di Marzio and countless others should take you there and all the rest is (as often) a matter of taste. I had good results with Seymour Duncan "Seth Lover" pickups as well as the Rockinger PAFs (www.rockinger.com). I also heard a lot of good things about the Dommenget PAF copies. Its ideal to try different PAFs decide what will work best in your guitar, its simply your choice ! The wiring This is a very important point and what you can find in some guitars today is horrible and has almost nothing to do with a vintage Les Paul wiring. First of all its important to know how to wire the components together. You can find everything here and most shown wirings are simply wrong. The most horrible thing that can be found is the variant with the volume pots wired backwards !!! This is meant to solve a problem that cant be solved in a passive system. In the original Les Paul circuit both pickups influence each other in the middle position of the pickup selector (both pickups together). When you roll back the volume on one pickup just a little bit, the other pickup is much louder than the other and if you roll back the volume down to zero, both pickups are silent. This is not very comfortable, but part of the real deal. With the volume pots wired backwards, this phenomenon will disappear but you pay a high price for this: all your treble and high end is killed when using the pots, your tone will loose any color and will sound dull and dead. You can try to compensate this with a socalled "bridging-cap" but all this fumbling is garbage to my ears. The only real solution for this problem is an active system but we dont have one here in this guitar. So if you cant live with this fact, you can stop reading here - your system will never sound like an old Les Paul, even with original 1959 PAFs installed. So please have a look at the drawings below, compare it with what you find in your Les Paul and if neccesary change it into the real thing. Dont forget the grounding wire going from pot to pot, this is something often ignored. Another detail this is often forgotten is the way the tone caps are wired to the circuit, its different from what is used today and influences the sound. This method was used by Gibson from 1952-1960 and is what you can find in the vintage Les Pauls from 1959. For comparison here is what was used from 1960 on and the modern

method. Some words about the parts. The original pots are from CENTRALAB (500k audio taper). There is something special about them that will also influence the tone. Modern audio pots (aka "log. pots") have a logarhythmical taper with a ratio of normally 80:20 which is more of an on/off switch than an useable taper and sometimes its better to replace the volume pots with a linear pot to get a useable control. The old Centralab pots had a ratio of 70:30 or even better 60:40 which was very good, giving you a smooth control all along the pots way. They can be found as NOS or used parts, but they are very expensive !!!! Its important to use pots with really 500k of resistance and the best way is to have a matched set of them. They can have values from 370 up to over 700k, please keep this in mind. For more infos about matching pots and replacements for the old Centralabs I think its best to join the Les Paul forum and read what all the others have to say (www.lespaulforum.com) The caps for the tone pots are also an often discussed subject and I also spent a lot of time investigating this detail. Its a fact that the cap will influence your tone in a certain way, even if the pot is fully opened. The original value of the caps is 0.022uF/400 volts and Gibson used a cap from Sprague which was called "the black beauty" or "Bumblebees" because of their optics. The more brownish caps with the colored rings to indicate the value are called "tropical fish caps". You can find NOS for high prices out there or you can buy a copy from Crazyparts that is sounding very good, but is also very expensive. From my investigations this caps are nothing more (and nothing less) than metallized mylar caps, very similar to what you can buy today for only a few cents. Its a good idea to simply buy some different types and testing them what you like best. To get a good overview about the wiring of a vintage Les Paul here are two detail shots of a 1959 Les Paul (Burst) with openend electric compartment. This is the real wiring with the real caps. If you have done all this you only have to take care of some details and youre done. On cheap Les Paul copies you can often see very cheap and crappy hardware. If you have such stuff on your guitar, replace it for high-quality parts to get a much better tone out of your guitar. Decide on good tuners with the correct tulip knobs from Kluson (original manufacturer), a good and massive bridge out of the right material and of course good bolts to hold it firmly and tight. If you dont have, its a good idea to replace the cheap plastic saddle with a vintage bone nut for the real sound. You should also use pure nickel strings, the original gauge was .12 but its ok to play other gauges that you like better. You can buy the original strings for your Les Paul from Gibson in all kind of gauges but they dont offer mixed sets like eg.

9-46 Now you "only" need the god given hands and talent of a famous Burst slinger, a cool vintage amp and you will have the optimum ;-)
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