Guitar Nerds Anonymous

Ordered the Antiquity humbucker for the neck of my tele. Found it for £115 on strings direct, which is pretty much a bargain. Not quite bargainous enough to splash out on the bridge pu too. Probably just as well... now, where’s that pickguard I ordered?

Gah. Pickup is coming on the 31st (free postage) but the pickguard says not till the 9th despite paying £1.5o postage for delivery in the uk. I’m back at work by then. That’s no good.

I have a couple of options in the bits box here, got the original 3 ply white one but will probably be tempted to butcher the cheapo single ply black one I have on now. No great loss if it doesn’t work out.

I've just treated myself to a Rocker 15 head and looking to sell my Orange Micro Terror. The Micro sounds fantastic, but I don't really need two Orange sounds in my tiny flat. Would anybody be interested in it, before I put it up elsewhere?

Just the head, with a choice of JJ or Tung Sol valves that the previous owner had put in. All in good condition, in the original box.

Tempting but to be honest I’m going to need more headroom I think.

Ooh! Pickguard arrived early.

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^ nice!

Pickup coming tomorrow. Can’t wait! Wondering if I can fit it myself. Apparently it might need the bridge pu polarity swapping to avoid the middle position being out of phase... i’m not great with a soldering iron.

A friend reminded me of an old band I was in, The Scoundrelles, decided to look for some stuff on YouTubez but there was only one track off a Toe Rag compilation... I decided to upload my favourite tune... My guitar opens this, my '58 Junior through the Solton head that @rickster sold me into a 2x10 cab another mate lent me... I think the fuzz pedal came out of The Guitar Magazine's cupboard, Roger Mayer Voodoo Fuzz? I never liked it... The tremolo was my leaving present from the magazine company I worked at with @rickster... Enjoy! I'm channelling Link Wray and Jeff Beck with my solo while Tony is launching stuff into outer space... With overdubs... Mine was one take... 😂

https://youtu.be/nLFxuVjOdIQ

Love it! Great riff dude! Killer sound too. I really dig this.

My pickup arrived btw. Think i’m Gonna have a crack at fitting it myself

I was watching an Old Grey Whistle Test compilation show last night and came up with a simple guitar based formula for whether a band on there are going to be any good. It is:

Firebird guitar = probably going to be widdley blooze shite.

Firebird bass = probably going to be cool.

You are welcome.

Hmm. This is going to require some drilling/routing to make the pickup fit. Not too worried about that. It's not exactly a '52' and it's already routed weirdly so I'll just drill two holes wide enough for the pickup legs to sit in. Only need sto be around 5-7mm deep.

I'm still a wiring dunce tho and am wary of fucking up. The new pickup has one single core wire with a plastic insulator and woven metallic shielding coming from it. The diagram shows that the wire connects to the first tab on the volume pot. Easy. But it also shows a connection coming at right angles from the wire to ground/earth. Would this be from the shielding? And how do I know what else is ground/earth?

Also the neck pickup i'm replacing has two wires, a black and a white one from each end of the coil which from my rudimentary understanding of electronic i'm assuming is the +ve/-ve. In which case, what do i do with the other one? Just pull then through and unsolder? How come the humbucker only has one wire?

I've been googling and had no luck funding the perfect idiot's guide yet. Can anyone link me up?

White is normally +ve (often called hot) and black is -ve/cold.

Like this:

Your new one will be plastic-coated wire +ve/hot and braided -ve/cold.

So replace white with wire and black with braid.

Both pickups need a ground connection, which is normally soldered to the back of a potentiometer (volume knob), as do all the potentiometers and there’ll be a wire coming from the bridge that goes to ground also. The mothership ground is the sleeve tab of the jack socket; every other ground should link to this.

The Seymour Duncan pages are great for all this stuff, you can enter pickup options and get the right diagram out:

https://www.seymourduncan.com/wiring-diagrams

Thanks dudes!

Ok looks quite straightforward then. Been reading about a few small mods that might make sense like bypassing the tone pot for the neck PU, which might be cool.

That way you can set the tone to the sweet spot for the bridge PU and more or less forget about it. Plus I'm a big fan of bridge PU with the tone rolled right off for fuzz lead tones. Having the neck hummer out of the tone circuit would mean I could play overdrove rhythm on the neck then flick to the bridge and kick in a for instant wooly fuzz lead goodies. Might give it a go. It's only one wire to move.

Gonna get stuck into it today

All done. Checked pickups were all working as expected prior to re-assembling and re-stinging but haven’t played it plugged in yet...

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Looking good! Pickup cover seems to match the finish on the bridge nicely too :)

If you fancied it, you might be able to calm the shinyness of the ring downs bit with some high grit (800 +?) sandpaper... Try on a small area first etc.

Must be satisfying. Looks good. Hope it sounds good too.

Not too fussed about the shiny ring (arf). It probably looks cleaner than it is because the pickguard is a matt finish which I hadn’t realised. Quite like it actually.

First impressions played through my practice amp are that the neck sounds great on its own but a combination of very bright bridge pu and no-load tone control thing (by-passes all controls when fully rotated) make the difference between pickups a little too pronounced to work with most amps settings. Think i’ll do the neck pu tone bypass thing for now and look at a less bright bridge pu in a few weeks. I already have my eye on the antiquity tele bridge

The main issue tho is that the in between position is properly out of phase. Not just nicely quacky like a strat in between but massive volume drop phase cancellation super thin screamy type out of phase. Could be useful if It were an “also” option, but really i’d Like both pickups on to sound like both pickups on. Had read this might be an issue. Not sure how to fix just yet...

Is the phase issue because of mixing Fender and Duncan and different windings? Only ever rewired humbuckers, so not had to worry about this.

Yeah, just a quirk of pickup manufacturing in that there’s no standard way of winding or polarity. Looks easy enough to rectify. Will have a go tomorrow.

Does mean removing the bridge which is a pain as I just restrung.

Sorry this is turning into a bit of a saga.

Basically, you can’t just reverse the wires on a standard tele bridge pu because they have a copper bass plate and there’s an link wire between the bass plate and ground so you need to add a new earth wire. Or something. Was all prepped to do that but when I removed the bridge (which involved cutting off the strings i’d only put on last night) it turns out my bridge pu doesn’t have a bass plate. In theory this means that I could just flip the wires. Did this and all worked as it should but I got a mad buzzing when touching the bridge plate which should in theory be totally isolated from the pu.?

Noticed there was an extra earth just held under the bridge plate (not soldered) and pulling this removed the buzz. I am getting a slight buzz that goes when I touch the bridge but nothing like what happens when the extra ground is attached. Tried every possible home for this extra earth and every place it was placed it either buzzed like fuck or shorted the signal altogether. Taped it off and screwed it all back together and popped out for some new strings.

Any ideas?