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Opinions on replacing a pcb with aftermarket


iluvcrap2000

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Im not anti PBC at all.. I have one in my 2010 standard and have no thoughts of changing it for anything.. While its all working ok...

 

If it ever stops working I will just put normal pots and stuff in cos its easier.. nothing else.

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Cos the one he is looking at is a Jimmy Page wiring setup one rather than a standard one.

no I was browsing reverb for parts. Stumbled upon this, thought about upgrading my pcb with a aftermarket harness as I really don't use the true bypass and the pots aren't as sensitive as I'd like. I can't tell the differance with the coil taps and the out of phase isn't as keen. Interesting someone is making a aftermarket pcb with these features, would like to see if it's any good. Looks like some quality work from the pictures and info. The manufacturer says it's a true drop in to Gibson les paul with no mods for it to work so that's a relief. Would like to hear the true differance between the burstbucker coil splits vs the taps. anyway thanks for the opinions.

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Just know what kind of wiring the harness has. For instance, those Jersey shore harnesses - they said something about how they are supposedly wired 50's style. Fifties style wiring is not very versatile. On some guitars it won't even find the sweet spot. So just know what you're getting into. [thumbup]

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that's insanely tidy looking. when i wire stuff, it looks like your hair might, when you wake up drunk

Edited by american cheez
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  • 3 weeks later...

ok, had to pull the trigger, ebay had a 20% off deal so I got one of their mk2 JPM2 Black boards, https://reverb.com/shop/scriniaengineering for $148. Very fash shipping(helps if your in same city as well). Got it today and decided to put it in. Read the included instructions to not damage your shafts. The old PCB came out pretty easy and the new one was effortless to put in. Noticed a Huge Difference in tone. The old Coil taps were out(I couldn't hear much of a differance), now their are splits and are more noticable. the old bypass is now a seris/parallel. otherwise think it's more flexible then it was.

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Do you just need to wire it up and it will have all the JP features?

Just plug all the plugs back into it, screw the ground wire down, that's it. Taking the speed knobs off and not yanking the shafts out as per their warning(on original board), was carefully done, otherwise it was fairly easy. no soldering required, no battery pack, done less then 10 minutes(had to adjust the pot nut base height to fit your own top width otherwise).

 

I have to dig my amp out and crack it to see how this thing reacts, running it through amplitube/headphones doesn't give me the full tone.

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  • 2 years later...

A bit late to this conversation, but I bought one of those Jimmy Page Mark 2 boards from Scrinia Engineering on Reverb, and I'm very pleased with it.

The feature I'm most pleased with is the treble bleed. My setup involves cranking the amp and controlling the distortion with the volume control, and before I added the new board there was a limit to how much I could roll it down before it got too muddy to be useful. I couldn't go lower than 7. Now I can take it down to 2 and it's a beautifully bright, perfectly clean tone. That's especially true when I use the coil taps, so now they're much more usable live. I can sound pretty close to a Telecaster if I want to.

I also like the series/parallel switch - in series and out of phase gives me a tolerable Brian May/Hubert Sumlin honk/screech, a hotter out of phase sound than the regular in-series Peter Green one. My pickups are magnetically out of phase (I reversed the magnet in the neck pickup long before I bought the circuit board), so middle position with both volume pots down is Peter Green, pop the neck volume for Brian May, or pop the bridge volume for the regular in-phase middle position. Both pots popped is in series and in phase, which is a bit too fat to be usable.

So if you want any of those sounds in your arsenal, I'd recommend it. Particularly the treble bleed - once you have that, you'll never want to go back to a regular tone circuit. It's a revelation, I've no idea why all guitars aren't wired that way.

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1 hour ago, paddybrown said:

...Particularly the treble bleed - once you have that, you'll never want to go back to a regular tone circuit. It's a revelation, I've no idea why all guitars aren't wired that way.

 

That used to be the first thing we would do with most guitars.  I think they've since made better pots and better circuits in general, it isn't as bad as it used to be.  I haven't capped a volume in a long time now.

rct

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Is it supposed to make you sound Ike Jimmy Page? Did it for the Poster who got them? 

I think there is a lot more going on than a PCB Board.. Page's '59 didn't have one or did the Amps he used.... Oh, Then, there's the Fingers..

 

Edited by Larsongs
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It doesn't make me sound like Jimmy Page, but then I'm not trying to, and as you say, it's in the fingers. I bought it because I was looking for more switching options - primarily the treble bleed, because I was frustrated with the treble roll-off when I rolled the volume down, I wanted to keep my coil taps and phase switch, and I hoped the series-parallel switch would give me something akin to Brian May's tone, which it does, satisfactorily enough to me.

It's based on the modifications Page made to the electronics on his Les Paul, adding coil taps, a phase switch and a series-parallel switch (although I think this board does that differently than Page did. Page, as far as I know, wanted to be able to play the two coils of one humbucker in parallel rather than in series, whereas this seems to put both humbuckers in series rather than in parallel), using push-pull pots. The Standard up to last year, and the Modern from last year, has the coil taps and phase switch, but loses treble when you roll the volume down. Last year's standard also had a dip switch giving you a treble bleed, but I'm not about to spend two and a half grand on another Les Paul just for that. This thing does all that, plus the series-parallel switch, and it costs about the same as I paid a local tech to upgrade the pots and caps and add a treble bleed and a phase switch to my Epiphone Dot.

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