tonefiend.com

Month: May 2012

  • The Pagey Project, Phase 2:An INSANELY Versatile Les Paul

    The Pagey Project, Phase 2:
    An INSANELY Versatile Les Paul

    Just how many colors can you coax from one guitar?

    This post is about a guitar wiring scheme that only geeks and tweakers could love.

    I think you’ll dig it. :satansmoking:

    In Phase 1 of this project, I recreated the original Page wiring scheme using an ’82 Paul, a pair of Duncan ’59 model pickups, and four push-pull pots. The result was a great-sounding, almost absurdly versatile guitar, though the sheer number of options was downright bewildering.

    So naturally, the only way forward was to make the instrument even more bewildering by adding additional sonic options. This version offers all the sound of the Phase 1 model, and a buttload more. Several buttloads, actually — and I’m not talking about those skimpy metric buttloads!

    I gutted all the Phase 1 electronics. (Man, that hurt!) Next, using the same pickups, I added a pair of Duncan Triple Shot Mounting Rings. These provide four settings per pickup: humbucker, inner coil split, outer coil split, and both coils in parallel. (The Phase 1 plan offers only one split-coil setting per pickups. While you can configure the two pickups in parallel, you can’t do so with the individual coils in each pickup like you can here in Phase 2.) Here’s the wiring diagram I worked from, which for some reason is no longer posted on the Duncan site.

    Since the Triple Shots add four new switches, the Phase 2 wiring requires only two push/pull pots. I wan’t about to let that real estate go unused! I installed a homemade germanium overdrive circuit (similar to the one we made in DIY Club) inside the guitar. My third push/pull pot activates it, and the fourth selects between two input caps, so I get a choice between a fat, Sabbath-style drive and a brighter, thinner Bluesbreakers-type tone.

    Check out the demo video:
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  • A Modern Vari-Tone Alternative…

    Looks like a pot — but it's not!

    In the comments on my post on the Mongrel Strat with the Obsessive-Compulsive Tone Control, reader Dave mentioned a related product: The Stellartone ToneStyler. I ordered one and popped in into my dual-humbucker Hamer 20th Anniversary guitar (which still boasts the Seymour Duncan Joe Bonamassa pickup set I demoed here.)

    (Quick memory refresher: The Vari-Tone appeared in several historic Gibson guitars, notably the ES-345. It uses a half-dozen different-sized capacitors to alter the voicing of the tone pot. It also adds an inductor, which preserves lows while the capacitors remove highs. Result: the rolled-off settings have a somewhat piercing, nasal character, as opposed to the usual dark, wooly sound of a rolled-off tone pot.)

    Like some cool DIY versions of the project, the ToneStyler omits the inductor. And while it looks like a conventional tone pot,it’s actually a 16-position switch that selects between stepped capacitors, all of them smaller than in a conventional tone control. Result: rolled-off tones that maintain more volume and impact than in a conventional tone control.

    Have a listen:

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