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Post by Ronnie Camero on Mar 11, 2020 17:12:56 GMT
Hey, Everyone! I just stumbled across this board. Super cool!
I did a quick search on this and didn't find an answer. Real quick. Like, didn't search at all quick....
I got a SC-550 Tobacco Flame about 6 months ago and love it. Build quality is unbelievable for a price point 2 or 3 times of what we paid. Stays in tune (no joke, it was straight up and down in tune when I took it out of the box. From Germany to Kentucky, USA) and the feel and playability is great.
Mine has the Roswell pickups, which have a very vintage, dark tone. Perfect for certain applications, but, in my opinion, more limiting in an overall sense. I've tried some of those Ernie Ball Cobalt strings which are supposed to clarify and brighten your tone, and they probably work great on other rigs, but not so much on this one. I've tried to EQ them into another tone; somewhat doable, but an extra and time consuming step.
I like the general tone of the Roswells, and I don't necessarily want to replace them, I'd just like to brighten them a small bit.
So, HB Gang, do you all think upgrading the pots would get me there? The tone capacitor?(I know there are passionate supporters on both sides of the tone cap discussion.) I don't even know what pots are in my 550. I'm assuming 500k because of the humbuckers? So maybe going to 1 meg or no load pots? Has anyone out there tried this with a newer 550?
I'm usually not this wordy, I'm just excited to find some fellow HB lovers!
-Ronnie Camero
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Post by blindwilly3fingers on Mar 12, 2020 0:01:15 GMT
Do you play with pots fully open or are you talking about when you roll off vol? If you play with vol rolled off a treble bleed will help. Basically a cap and resistor fitted to the vol pots. There are plenty of videos on yt if you go this route.
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Post by LeoThunder on Mar 12, 2020 7:54:39 GMT
Changing the tone capacitor likely won't do anything but raising the value of the volume pot might. However, these are Roswell LAF pick-ups, emulating the old PAF sound. That's what they "want" to sound like. The Roswell HAF are sharper. You get those on the SC-550 Paradise Flame, by the way.
And yes, do check the difference between full volume and below. A treble bleed will compensate for the loss of high end when lowering the volume but won't improve the full sound.
The other thing people can underestimate is the impact of pick-up height. Take them down and see if you get happier. It takes a little patience because the volume drops together with the height but I found it the first and very necessary "modification" to make on nearly all my humbuckers.
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Post by MartinB on Mar 12, 2020 14:26:13 GMT
It was a noble effort DefJef , I know that I for one would like to have a bass contour knob on my guitar, maybe I can dig something up based on the G&L or Reverend circuits. Somebody must have looked into how they both do it.
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1,773 posts
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Post by MartinB on Mar 12, 2020 14:29:48 GMT
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Post by Ronnie Camero on Mar 12, 2020 17:52:18 GMT
You all are a wealth of knowledge. Thanks so much for the advice and to those of you taking bullets for the rest of us, ha. I pretty much play wide open on my 550, so perhaps I was heading down the wrong road. Though, it seems like only a matter of time before DefJef upends everything we thought we knew about electricity and particle physics and finds a solution, haha. Thanks for link, MartinB. Bunch of good stuff in that article. Thanks to all of you! Cheers!
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Post by LeoThunder on Mar 12, 2020 18:01:36 GMT
This guy has a few tricks to show: He first lowers the pick-ups, then he raises the pole pieces, then he takes them out! I don't understand the physics of it all but he demonstrates the effect. He then goes to wire a humbucker in parallel. This is something I did but on a push-pull switch so I could switch configuration at will. Last, he puts a capacitor in parallel to one coil, so as to create some sort of hybrid pick-up, working as a humbucker for the bass and mids, as a single coil for the highs. I wired my SC-450 Plus to have two series/parallel switches instead of two coil split. For the SC-550, you'd have to replace the simple volume pots with push-pull but the wiring would be as below:
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DefJef
THBC Moderator
Due to musical differences I've decided I can't work with myself any more.
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Post by DefJef on Mar 12, 2020 18:20:01 GMT
I did that, 'make your pickups sound like P90s' mod after seeing Scott Grove do it. Unscrewed one row of slugs on my Shine ES335. Out came the wax too! I didn't really care for it and put them back in again and applied some heat in the hope that they were rewaxed! . I'm happy with the humbuckers as they are and got a different guitar with P90s instead. It's a l-oooo-ng time since I watched a Scott Grove video. Is he still around and causing grief for people?
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Post by LeoThunder on Mar 12, 2020 18:26:30 GMT
It's a l-oooo-ng time since I watched a Scott Grove video. Is he still around and causing grief for people? Still there apparently. But he never was causing any grief…
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1,773 posts
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Post by MartinB on Mar 12, 2020 18:31:03 GMT
The “Ultra switch” 5 way common on ESP and LTD guitars has series and parallel options for humbuckers, I really like it.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 12, 2020 19:02:12 GMT
I'm happy with the humbuckers as they are and got a different guitar with P90s instead. Exactly! When in doubt, buying more guitars is always a good solution.
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Post by simontemplar on Mar 13, 2020 21:48:48 GMT
I'm happy with the humbuckers as they are and got a different guitar with P90s instead. Exactly! When in doubt, buying more guitars is always a good solution. True facts!
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