P-Rails wiring help?

Marantz said:
lol. Ouch.

The soldering gun or pencil, whatever it is I ordered, is obviously cheap Chinese junk, but you know what, it worked, it comes with 6 different sized tips. It's rated at 60 watts, will the little button with the different numbers adjust the heat? Also I thought the solder was a little thick? I put a triangle tortex pick behind it for contrast.
View attachment 106425

I'm going to order the multimeter right now.
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The 720°F I use on my station is about 382°C. Seems an optimal temperature for guitar wiring. HTH!
 
Marantz said:
Don't know what that means, I'll watch a video now. Thanks again!
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Tinning something means soldering the thing before assembly of the connection. It helps make the connection more quickly (thus less likely to overheat it) if the wire is pre-tinned, as the solder flows more readily into the joint (and less solder is needed to make the joint itself, which also speeds making the connection)....
 
Joe Bfstplk said:
Tinning something means soldering the thing before assembly of the connection. It helps make the connection more quickly (thus less likely to overheat it) if the wire is pre-tinned, as the solder flows more readily into the joint (and less solder is needed to make the joint itself, which also speeds making the connection)....
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Here is 'tinning a wire" ..

 
Dang. All this wiring discussion. I might get off my butt tomorrow and take care of a couple ideas I’ve been scheming on.

One is my 2 knob PRS where I want to lower the neck output. The idea being to put a resistor in series with the neck. Right now my tone control is a fixed roll off on a pull switch, and the tone is now a neck volume. I want my tone control back. I feel this is legit on this thread because it has P-rails in it. I have a concentric pot. Hate the look though, so haven’t installed it.

The other is the .047 cap in series on the neck on another guitar I have. Too hot and muddy. Seems to be a problem with most guitars I have played. Necks are wound too hot unless your playing low gain or cleanish.

Always interested in ideas if anyone has one.
 
skolacki said:
Dang. All this wiring discussion. I might get off my butt tomorrow and take care of a couple ideas I’ve been scheming on.

One is my 2 knob PRS where I want to lower the neck output. The idea being to put a resistor in series with the neck. Right now my tone control is a fixed roll off on a pull switch, and the tone is now a neck volume. I want my tone control back. I feel this is legit on this thread because it has P-rails in it. I have a concentric pot. Hate the look though, so haven’t installed it.

The other is the .047 cap in series on the neck on another guitar I have. Too hot and muddy. Seems to be a problem with most guitars I have played. Necks are wound too hot unless your playing low gain or cleanish.

Always interested in ideas if anyone has one.
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For neck pickup mud, look into the Reverend bass cut control. Check with @Joe Bfstplk about that.
 
skolacki said:
Dang. All this wiring discussion. I might get off my butt tomorrow and take care of a couple ideas I’ve been scheming on.

One is my 2 knob PRS where I want to lower the neck output. The idea being to put a resistor in series with the neck. Right now my tone control is a fixed roll off on a pull switch, and the tone is now a neck volume. I want my tone control back. I feel this is legit on this thread because it has P-rails in it. I have a concentric pot. Hate the look though, so haven’t installed it.

The other is the .047 cap in series on the neck on another guitar I have. Too hot and muddy. Seems to be a problem with most guitars I have played. Necks are wound too hot unless your playing low gain or cleanish.

Always interested in ideas if anyone has one.
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If you have all 4 wires, try a s/p switch. Parallel cleans up, brightens, and lowers output by about 6dB. I use it all the time on guitars that have all 4 wires on a neck 'bucker....
 
Joe Bfstplk said:
If you have all 4 wires, try a s/p switch. Parallel cleans up, brightens, and lowers output by about 6dB. I use it all the time on guitars that have all 4 wires on a neck 'bucker....
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Both together with the neck in parallel mode gives some of the telecaster loading effect that makes the plain G string twangy and almost mimic the German ö (oe) vowel....
 
These arrived today. I got the third hand helper thingamajiggy, I'm an older dude so my eyesight was struggling with that mini toggle soldering. Now to learn how to use a Multimeter.

I just read Joe's post above about about parallel cleaning up, brightening and cutting some DB, that is exactly what is happening with the mini toggle, any pickup with 4 wires can be a humbucker, in other words series, or parallel, or single coil.

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So after a couple of weeks with the P-Rails I have to say I don't like it in the Ibanez Jem Jr I have. I'm going to put the stock Ibanez pickup back in. Seems Ibanez might know what they're doing. The P-Rails gives off a sound ( like a wah stuck at a certain position ) that I cannot EQ out, even with the Ax3's incredible EQs.

Also, I've been monitoring with headphones for a year now and yesterday I finally monitored using the Yamaha HS8's I recently purchased. WOW...all the presets I made with headphones sounded horrible. I started over and built a preset from scratch with the HS8s, I was praying that it would translate to my headphones and earbuds, it did!!!! So, the big lesson here is

Don't monitor with headphones

A friend of mine who is a superb mixer was telling this all along, even he can't get a good mix that translates well out of headphones.

The monitors were even more sensitive to the guitars and pickups I have than headphones, which surprised me. With the HS8's I cut 4db ( thank God they have this option on them ) as they are pretty bassy for an apartment.
 
Marantz said:
So after a couple of weeks with the P-Rails I have to say I don't like it in the Ibanez Jem Jr I have. I'm going to put the stock Ibanez pickup back in. Seems Ibanez might know what they're doing. The P-Rails gives off a sound ( like a wah stuck at a certain position ) that I cannot EQ out, even with the Ax3's incredible EQs.
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That’s strange. I have 3 of them and haven’t heard anything like that. Definitely not a normal thing from those pickups.

I do most of my mixing on phones. I don’t use any correction but I have a good idea of how it translates to speakers. When I do fire it up with a speaker it’s usually minor tweaks to dial in from there. Volume is the key. Anyhow I’m glad you got your stuff sorted out.
 
skolacki said:
That’s strange. I have 3 of them and haven’t heard anything like that. Definitely not a normal thing from those pickups.

I do most of my mixing on phones. I don’t use any correction but I have a good idea of how it translates to speakers. When I do fire it up with a speaker it’s usually minor tweaks to dial in from there. Volume is the key. Anyhow I’m glad you got your stuff sorted out.
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You know, I wonder if I wired the mini-toggle wrong? I got a little bit of that hi-mid "quack" from my other Seymour Duncan pickup also, the Ibanez pickup seems to be made for this Jem Jr I have ... go figure.

I was trying to get a good guitar sound today using vsts and bypassing the Ax3 amps. There's a smear that I cannot stand with the amp models, another user was frustrated with this also, we both like Paul Gilberts ultra-tight, ultra responsive attack he gets from a JCM 900, which has solid state components in it. I really want that for a solo sound. It's funny because when I picked up the Ax3 I expected the usual from amp modellers, good hi-gain tones, some good clean tones and pretty average on-the-verge-of-beakup tones. Turns out it does those just-breaking-up tones really well, there's a lot of mojo coming from the tube sag and 100 other things in the amps, however, I haven't come across one amp yet that does a super-fast attack for clean shredding a la Paul Gilbert. So today I tried something, a Tomato Preamp ( amazing thing, I'd love to see that in the Axe ) before a Nalex Boogie sim ( sounds great, very natural ) and end that off with a VST called a Power Box from Nalez again, then into the AX3 for a cab, reverb and delay.

https://nalexsoft.blogspot.com/search?q=powerbox - is there anything like this on the Axe3?

This thing is amazing, you can shape and define your highs, tighten, loosen, widen with the Bias and Symmetry knob. There's been quite a few complaints about fizz and sizzle and some lack of definition, this will do the job.

About mixing on phones, I actually do think it's possible with the right phones, I noticed today how a lot of the tweaking I was doing was coming from a place of a more educated ear ... this is the huge learning curve I'm in right now. I have ATX r70xs, cost about $600, way too smooth, great for listening to music to though.
 
Marantz said:
You know, I wonder if I wired the mini-toggle wrong? I got a little bit of that hi-mid "quack" from my other Seymour Duncan pickup also, the Ibanez pickup seems to be made for this Jem Jr I have ... go figure.
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High mid quack screams out-of-phase. Did you use a SD wiring diagram? Not all humbuckers use the same wire color codes, so you have to be careful to make sure the switches are wired right if mixing brands....
 
Marantz said:
You know, I wonder if I wired the mini-toggle wrong? I got a little bit of that hi-mid "quack" from my other Seymour Duncan pickup also, the Ibanez pickup seems to be made for this Jem Jr I have ... go figure.
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My guess is they weren’t wired correctly. They should sound like normal pickups in their respective modes. If you do try it again just buy the right switch. Which can give you 3 modes. For heavier styles you only need the series bucker and the P90. Ideal would be series, parallel, and P90. The single by itself I could live without although I occasionally use it on the neck.
 
Joe Bfstplk said:
High mid quack screams out-of-phase. Did you use a SD wiring diagram? Not all humbuckers use the same wire color codes, so you have to be careful to make sure the switches are wired right if mixing brands....
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I'll have to look at the SD wiring diagram again, the stock Ibanez punches in just the right way, I'm wondering if pickups are built to account for something like a floating bridge where there's little contact with the body? Maybe it's the wiring? It's not an over-the-top quack, it's kind of mixed into the humbucker in series tone, but it's there. Oddly, that was with all of the Ax3 amps, todays use of vst amp sims didn't produce the problem .. ???

p.s. is it me, or does the back instrument input have a little more something than the front instrument input? Axe 3 mk 2 turbo here. It was very subtle, but I'm sure I heard it, a tiny little something extra.
 
Marantz said:
I'll have to look at the SD wiring diagram again, the stock Ibanez punches in just the right way, I'm wondering if pickups are built to account for something like a floating bridge where there's little contact with the body? Maybe it's the wiring? It's not an over-the-top quack, it's kind of mixed into the humbucker in series tone, but it's there. Oddly, that was with all of the Ax3 amps, todays use of vst amp sims didn't produce the problem .. ???

p.s. is it me, or does the back instrument input have a little more something than the front instrument input? Axe 3 mk 2 turbo here. It was very subtle, but I'm sure I heard it, a tiny little something extra.
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If I'm not mistaken, the rear input doesn't have the dynamic impedance change circuitry that the front input has. There may be other differences too, I'm not sure.
 
Dave Merrill said:
If I'm not mistaken, the rear input doesn't have the dynamic impedance change circuitry that the front input has. There may be other differences too, I'm not sure.
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I checked back and forth about six times, I wanted to make sure it wasn't a placebo effect, now I'm almost sure it's not, I'll be plugging in the back from now on.
 
Marantz said:
I checked back and forth about six times, I wanted to make sure it wasn't a placebo effect, now I'm almost sure it's not, I'll be plugging in the back from now on.
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Most people, myself included, use the front input, because they want the input impedance to change depending on the input impedance of the first enabled block.

I'm afraid I don't remember why you don't want that from way back earlier in the thread, but plugging into the back input is one way to avoid it. You can also set input impedance to a fixed value in the input block so it doesn't track the first enabled block, but you'd have to do that in every preset.

Make sense?
 
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