An upgrade of my LP

[LarryUK]

I'm not being patronising, but this thread is quite humbling. I remember as a kid, fiddling with guitars and improving them. Kids now will probably never do it as they're so cheap over here.

[Marshall Paul]

Exactly. My first electric guitars I was given when I was 8 years old. A Jaguar and a Jazz Master, both didn't work and were beat up. I didn't know bugger all but I figured it out and got them working eventually. And that's where my fasination with tinkering and modifying them came from. Not from some-one telling me what to do, it came from within. Just seems like kids these days are more interested in getting the gel in their hair right than getting their set-up right. We could be a dying breed.

[Valeriy]

Marshall Paul, I with pleasure read your post mixed with Russian dialect, thanks. It's amazing that you're far away from Russia, in Australia, and are familiar with Russian.

 

Yea, I have had some experience with pickups wired in out of phase (in antiphase), though as well-known brand this is Peter Green pups. But in my case that were two single-coil pickups (middle and neck positions) on one of my Strat guitars. Also I used the same active electronics with the two differential inputs for these pickups, and the middle pickup was wound in the opposite direction. And I remember that the guitar sound from them was very interesting and it was unlike the sound of my other guitars. Now I regret that I sold that Strat, although in the future I'm going to repeat this sound in another Strat.

 

As for why I do that? <_< Well… at first I wanted to correct only the bridge humbucker, as I said, there was a defect in sound, I'm tired that I never use this bridge pickup (some unknown to me industrial pickup with name Feelinger) and finally I decided to replace it. I remember also that the former owner of this guitar already tried to correct this defect, also by means of pickup replacing, but without success. I.e., that is obviously some rare feature of this guitar and it would be useless to choose pickups among the industrial. So, I decided to make a new humbucker by homemade unlike the usual standard humbuckers.

 

But it turned out, this my new humbucker (from two single-coil pickups) has begun to sound perfectly in Neck positions, better than the previous pickup, so I left it here.

 

Besides, I specialize in active humbuckers and it was interesting to test coils from single-coil pickups where the number of turns dramatically more.

Later, maybe, today I will show you one song where, in fact, I rescued our record at studio thanks to one of my active guitars that was added at home later. All three guitars at studio were recorded unsuccessfully.

[Valeriy]

I took one song Calico Skies (Paul McCartney) from our double cover-clip, earlier I already showed it here.

 

But there is one secret in this record. In reality, none of the guitars worked well on the record at studio. I'm honestly embarrassed to admit that we with my guitar player were not ready to this song when we were at studio. The arrival of the singer and guitarist from NY Jan Britten to our St.-Petersburg was unexpected for us, and our group has never played this song. But Jan wanted this song to record and we decided to agree with him. I.e. we with my guitar player just move our hands for visibility in this video .

 

In turn Jans guitar wasn't successful too, more precisely, its sound was unsuccessfully adjusted, probably, because of haste, because we were only an hour and a half at studio, Jan has performed another concert elsewhere the same evening. So, in this thing very much there were no guitars and the aura of music was absent .

 

Finally, later at home I learned this song and recorded one guitar track and mixed it to the studio track of Jans guitar by my home computer. And a music aura began to be felt :

 

Of course, active humbuckers helped out here with the same active electronics as in the photo above. No guitar amp and microphones I did not have.

Later, Jan asked me that I should make the same active guitar for him :) .

[4Hayden]

Whatever next? Monica Lewinsky trumpet (work it out)?

I like that