Optimal Les Paul setup tips

One of the common issues i see on LPs is that some players are obsessed with screwing the stop bar down tight to the top, whilst it might look cool and put extra tension on the strings, it can also cause probs with mostly the E and B strings contacting the back of the bridge, always worth a check. I'm on the fence as to whether hard tailing the stop bar increases sustain.
 
Chewie5150 said:
thought about a new thread but figure just add to this one: POTS. so my Tribute has 300k pots. I'm planning on installing something like a Suhr Aldrich or BKP Rebel Yell ,or other in that sound family, in the bridge. I'd rather not change the pots just yet...down the road may yank out the PBC /wiring and upgrade to 50's wiring and 500CTS pots with orange drops. Figure 300K pots will still be fine with a hotter bridge pup?
I also am trying to confirm if my original pickups on this Tribute have chrome or nickel covers. online specs say 'nickel hardware' so i'm assuming nickel but they are quite shiny
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A 300k pot all the way up is about the same resistance as a vintage pot on 8ish or a random modern 500k 30% audio taper pot on like 7ish. It's not as big of a difference as some people might claim, but it is different. Chris Buck did a video about it several months ago that might be worth checking out.
 
marsonic said:
A 300k pot all the way up is about the same resistance as a vintage pot on 8ish or a random modern 500k 30% audio taper pot on like 7ish. It's not as big of a difference as some people might claim, but it is different. Chris Buck did a video about it several months ago that might be worth checking out.
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Actually, the difference is in the resistive load put on the pickup. More loading (300k) damps the peak in the trebles and makes the sound duller. Less loading (500k) allows the peak to be peakier, giving brighter sound.

Knob position has nothing to do with it once turned off maximum, as it is an interaction between the capacitance to ground between hot and shield in your guitar cable and the series resistance in the 'top' half of the voltage divider formed by the volume pot wiper's position along the resistive trace in the pot. This causes a low pass filter, yielding another source of tone dulling. A small cap bridging the 'top' of the volume pot voltage divider helps keep the trebles (and can even increase them) as you back the volume pot off. PRS seems to have nailed it with the 180pF cap on their guitars' 500k volume pots, and this is the cap I use also for those. On 250k pots, I use 390pF....
 
Joe Bfstplk said:
Actually, the difference is in the resistive load put on the pickup. More loading (300k) damps the peak in the trebles and makes the sound duller. Less loading (500k) allows the peak to be peakier, giving brighter sound.

Knob position has nothing to do with it once turned off maximum, as it is an interaction between the capacitance to ground between hot and shield in your guitar cable and the series resistance in the 'top' half of the voltage divider formed by the volume pot wiper's position along the resistive trace in the pot. This causes a low pass filter, yielding another source of tone dulling. A small cap bridging the 'top' of the volume pot voltage divider helps keep the trebles (and can even increase them) as you back the volume pot off. PRS seems to have nailed it with the 180pF cap on their guitars' 500k volume pots, and this is the cap I use also for those. On 250k pots, I use 390pF....
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Is 390pF what PRS uses on the Silver Sky? No resistor? I assume it has 250k pots, since those are single coils.
 
Dave Merrill said:
Is 390pF what PRS uses on the Silver Sky? No resistor? I assume it has 250k pots, since those are single coils.
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No clue what us in the Silver Sky, as I have never seen one in person. I simply doubled the 180pF value used on the 500k pots and picked a convenient standard value near that....
 
Joe Bfstplk said:
Actually, the difference is in the resistive load put on the pickup. More loading (300k) damps the peak in the trebles and makes the sound duller. Less loading (500k) allows the peak to be peakier, giving brighter sound.

Knob position has nothing to do with it once turned off maximum, as it is an interaction between the capacitance to ground between hot and shield in your guitar cable and the series resistance in the 'top' half of the voltage divider formed by the volume pot wiper's position along the resistive trace in the pot. This causes a low pass filter, yielding another source of tone dulling. A small cap bridging the 'top' of the volume pot voltage divider helps keep the trebles (and can even increase them) as you back the volume pot off. PRS seems to have nailed it with the 180pF cap on their guitars' 500k volume pots, and this is the cap I use also for those. On 250k pots, I use 390pF....
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The low pass filter happens regardless, but yes...that's right. It's not as drastic of a difference as your description seems to imply. A resonant peak develops and starts shifting as soon as you turn down either volume or tone controls, or depending on the cable. Also, I did say "about".

But, it still might just be preference. FWIW, I think treble bleeds are the devil, and if I ever have to buy a guitar with one, it's got a date with wire cutters as soon as it gets home. I've never heard one that improved the sound. My McCarty 594 didn't come with one, though there was a cap involved in the coil split. If it splits and adds a treble bleed somehow, that might have something to do with why I hated the tap sound (and why those parts are in the trash).
 
marsonic said:
The low pass filter happens regardless, but yes...that's right. It's not as drastic of a difference as your description seems to imply. A resonant peak develops and starts shifting as soon as you turn down either volume or tone controls, or depending on the cable. Also, I did say "about".

But, it still might just be preference. FWIW, I think treble bleeds are the devil, and if I ever have to buy a guitar with one, it's got a date with wire cutters as soon as it gets home. I've never heard one that improved the sound. My McCarty 594 didn't come with one, though there was a cap involved in the coil split. If it splits and adds a treble bleed somehow, that might have something to do with why I hated the tap sound (and why those parts are in the trash).
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I'm the opposite. I tried to like both my current guitars (SSS and HHH) without a treble bleed. They're fine, until I turn the volume control down, then I hate it, moof city.
 
Dave Merrill said:
I'm the opposite. I tried to like both my current guitars (SSS and HHH) without a treble bleed. They're fine, until I turn the volume control down, then I hate it, moof city.
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Yeah....I really don't get that. I never have.

My clean tone is just the neck volume on about 3. Any time I've used a treble bleed, all the volume control seems to do is cut bass and make the guitar sound thin and weak. And, I'm often turning tone controls down (though not for that pure clean neck tone). And I use 20'+ "normal" (not low-cap) cables because shorter ones are too bright. It's actually pretty rare that I play with either volume on 10. There's this upper-mid (around 2k) thing that happens on every guitar with the volume on 10 that I just don't like. I normally top out at around 8 on the neck and 9 on the bridge (after some mods to make bridges usable for me).

There's just something about how I play that puts in way too much high end....always has been. I end up jumping through hoops to dump high end to ground. A few months ago, I ended up soldering a 47k resistor in parallel with my bridge tone pot (so, essentially, it won't go over about 5 on a standard one, along with a different taper, always 60s wiring because 50s wiring doesn't do enough above like 2), and I immediately started actually liking them. Before that, I don't think I ever turned a bridge tone control over about 2.5 and mostly didn't use them.

If I record my guitar tone (on pretty much any amp I set up, pretty much however I record) and compare it to isolated guitar tracks that I really love....mine tend a little loud below 200Hz and pretty soft over 4k or so. But....that works out well....a tube screamer (with the tone control all the way down) actually still adds high-end and brings everything roughly in-line with all of the classic blues/rock lead tones I really love.

It really is just something about how I play that squeezes all the high-end out of a guitar. Les Paul bridge pickups sound like tele twang until they're pretty gained up with the tone down (with my mods, around 3-5, or about 1-2 on a normal one unless you specifically want it super-bright). And, as far as I'm concerned, Strats might as well only have a neck pickup; the others are too bright even with the tone turned way down....at which point they go from too-bright to muddy basically all at once. Conversely, I honestly don't understand how people complain about neck pickups being muddy. Guitars just don't get muddy unless you go way out of your way to set the amp up to do it. Outside of things like turning bass up and treble all the way down, it just doesn't happen for me.

I really don't get what's so different about how I play, but I've at least found what I like.

I'm probably not a model to be followed. But, yeah...no treble bleeds for me. Ever.
 
marsonic said:
Yeah....I really don't get that. I never have.

My clean tone is just the neck volume on about 3. Any time I've used a treble bleed, all the volume control seems to do is cut bass and make the guitar sound thin and weak. And, I'm often turning tone controls down (though not for that pure clean neck tone). And I use 20'+ "normal" (not low-cap) cables because shorter ones are too bright. It's actually pretty rare that I play with either volume on 10. There's this upper-mid (around 2k) thing that happens on every guitar with the volume on 10 that I just don't like. I normally top out at around 8 on the neck and 9 on the bridge (after some mods to make bridges usable for me).

There's just something about how I play that puts in way too much high end....always has been. I end up jumping through hoops to dump high end to ground. A few months ago, I ended up soldering a 47k resistor in parallel with my bridge tone pot (so, essentially, it won't go over about 5 on a standard one, along with a different taper, always 60s wiring because 50s wiring doesn't do enough above like 2), and I immediately started actually liking them. Before that, I don't think I ever turned a bridge tone control over about 2.5 and mostly didn't use them.

If I record my guitar tone (on pretty much any amp I set up, pretty much however I record) and compare it to isolated guitar tracks that I really love....mine tend a little loud below 200Hz and pretty soft over 4k or so. But....that works out well....a tube screamer (with the tone control all the way down) actually still adds high-end and brings everything roughly in-line with all of the classic blues/rock lead tones I really love.

It really is just something about how I play that squeezes all the high-end out of a guitar. Les Paul bridge pickups sound like tele twang until they're pretty gained up with the tone down (with my mods, around 3-5, or about 1-2 on a normal one unless you specifically want it super-bright). And, as far as I'm concerned, Strats might as well only have a neck pickup; the others are too bright even with the tone turned way down....at which point they go from too-bright to muddy basically all at once. Conversely, I honestly don't understand how people complain about neck pickups being muddy. Guitars just don't get muddy unless you go way out of your way to set the amp up to do it. Outside of things like turning bass up and treble all the way down, it just doesn't happen for me.

I really don't get what's so different about how I play, but I've at least found what I like.

I'm probably not a model to be followed. But, yeah...no treble bleeds for me. Ever.
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Well actually, with bridge pickups, HB or S, I'm forever fighting to get the fullness I want. I've lived most of my life with bridge tone between 5 and 7 ish.

But even then, if the tone is nice with volume on 10 (which is my normal state btw), it's so muffled when I turn volume down that I hate it. Horses for courses I guess.


Big picture, none of my guitars sound how I like in all pickup positions with the same amp settings. Not sure if that's their fault, or a defect in my brain. Pickups are real mainstream - an EJ rosewood board strat w stock pickups, and a homemade bastard child with 3 very old Duncan '59s.

Lately I've been seeing how things work out if I adjust the amp to sound good on bridge pickup with tone on 10, then work out how to get the other pickup combos somewhere I'm comfortable from there. Jury's still out on that project.

Do you folks get tones you like out of all pickup combinations on your guitars, with the same amp settings? If your guitar has tone controls, where do you run them?
 
Dave Merrill said:
Do you folks get tones you like out of all pickup combinations on your guitars, with the same amp settings? If your guitar has tone controls, where do you run them?
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The Majesty is the first guitar I've owned in which I like most all the PU/tone combos it can get, on a single preset. Not all, for example the coil tap needs a different sound, but like, the other day I was messing with a jazzy tone, using just the neck PU, rolling the tone way back, and it gave me shivers. Not something I would normally do, but, wow!
It has the best neck PU tone of any guitar I've played, and I even accidentally had the Piezo blended in on a high-gain tone, and before I noticed it was on, I was like, that's sounds cool! I was like, did I do something different? Then I noticed the Piezo switch in the middle position. Again, something I wouldn't have sought out purposely.

Conversely, I have an old PRS with the sweet switch and 5-way rotary that I need to dial in different sounds for the different combinations, which I guess is a good thing, because it's near impossible to switch to a different sound on that guitar during a song. And most of those combinations I don't really care for.
There's a really unique tone where you turn the rotary knob one position back, that sounds like a cocked Wah. That one's pretty cool, but again, it usually merits a new sound.
 
Dave Merrill said:
Well actually, with bridge pickups, HB or S, I'm forever fighting to get the fullness I want. I've lived most of my life with bridge tone between 5 and 7 ish.

But even then, if the tone is nice with volume on 10 (which is my normal state btw), it's so muffled when I turn volume down that I hate it. Horses for courses I guess.


Big picture, none of my guitars sound how I like in all pickup positions with the same amp settings. Not sure if that's their fault, or a defect in my brain. Pickups are real mainstream - an EJ rosewood board strat w stock pickups, and a homemade bastard child with 3 very old Duncan '59s.

Lately I've been seeing how things work out if I adjust the amp to sound good on bridge pickup with tone on 10, then work out how to get the other pickup combos somewhere I'm comfortable from there. Jury's still out on that project.

Do you folks get tones you like out of all pickup combinations on your guitars, with the same amp settings? If your guitar has tone controls, where do you run them?
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Yes, on my Les Pauls and 594. After I jump through those hoops to tame the highs coming out of the bridges, all the switch positions work for what I want out of them. I don't play clean on the bridge ever, but I don't like that thin sound.

No on strats. I sold my last strat before I thought to try the parallel resistor on the bridge tone pot. So, that might be something I have to try at some point if I ever buy another one. But, I probably won't.

There's no way I could do it if I made it sound good on the bridge pickup with the tone on 10.
 
I say ditch the Strats!!!!

Kidding..... sort of. :)

At the very least, having a guitar that is NOT a Strat is helpful. Sometimes just that is enough to
make one appreciate what a Strat can do, and can't do, when you go back to it.


Vive la différence!! :)​

 
I don't want to turn this into an anti-Strat thread. They do seem to have a
very distinct voice (especially in SSS config) that I find has me sounding like
those iconic players who do the Strat thing way better than I do.

Those clean and edge of break up tones on the 2 and 4 positions are GLORIOUS!
 
la noise said:
I don't want to turn this into an anti-Strat thread. They do seem to have a
very distinct voice (especially in SSS config) that I find has me sounding like
those iconic players who do the Strat thing way better than I do.

Those clean and edge of break up tones on the 2 and 4 positions are GLORIOUS!
Click to expand...
There are players I really like who make them sound awesome. But, different things work for different people.
 
I've been listening a lot to Mark Knopfler's Privateering album this last week and keep looking at my Strat. I just have a hard time putting down my Les Paul.
 
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