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Tried it on my Brunetti Singleman. It works! I started out with my usual settings and playing for a while. It sounded so nice that I couldn’t imagine it getting any better. When I went for 0 10 0 at first it felt somewhat flat and one dimensional. The more I played it, the more I liked it. When I went back to my usual settings, at first that sounded a little hyped. Then my ears got used to that again and it sounded as beautiful as before.
Originally Posted by pauln
At home, at low volume, I think I like my normal settings best. When things get louder, or when I can’t get a guitar to sound right on a given day, then this is a great alternative!
I’m mostly using thinlines BTW. That, and a GB10. The larger the jazzbox gets, the better 0 10 0 sounds in my opinion. It just takes the natural sound of the guitar and makes it louder.
Great tip!
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12-20-2024 09:19 AM
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0 10 0 or 1 10 1, do I get it right that this is basically the reverse of the sound profile (B)RW back and sides are supposed to give to acoustic guitar?
If so, I'm not surprised. While that sounds nice in a closely-mic'ed recording it also sounds hyped, dosed in monoglutamate and boomy in a room with good acoustics.
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This is an example that sounds really woody to me. And not just the bass strings but pretty much all the strings. (Actually what I meant when I started this topic isn’t that obvious here, just trying to illustrate ‘woody’). Most of the metallic zzzzing is gone that arises from spanning a thin steel wire between a steel tuning post and a steel tailpiece (over a steel or wooden bridge). This sound reminds of the cello but translated to an archtop guitar. There are no metal parts on a cello as far as I know. Originally Posted by Herbie
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That's not what I call woody (unless we're talking about the double bass). It's more or less the buttery smooth, well-rounded and not-too-hifi sound an e-guitar should have for me. But woody is one of the sound signature labels I find the hardest to understand in instruments that ought to be made of wood. At best it evokes the sound difference between a clarinet and sax for me, or better yet, between a modern and a baroque/romantic flute (= made of some more or less precious alloy vs. wood).
With a proper nut the material of the tuning pegs shouldn't have any effect on sound AFAICT, and I find it hard to believe that a metal and a non-metal tailpiece of comparable hardness and mass would give an audibly different sound.
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That's a bit of an over-generalization IMHO. I have two Martins, both nice vintage ones, a D28 and a 00028, and both with lovely Brazilian rosewood back and sides. The D28, being long scale and larger body, does exhibit what you are talking about, a kind of "smiley curve" sound, big bass and treble. And it has that sound when recorded, not necessarily a bad thing but something to watch. That's one reason that Nashville studio players generally prefer D18's for recording. On the D28 I usually roll off a bit of bass, and a compressor works great with it (for strumming). Originally Posted by RJVB
The 000 being short scale and smaller bodied has perfect balance and a lot of mids. BTW engineers have always asked me what I'm playing when I bring that out, it is an incredible recording guitar.
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Getting back to the OP, that video is obviously a really nice vintage ES335, with nice clear pickups. BTW I can't really hear on that video the wound strings. His kind of technique with those pickups, I'll bet they sound warm but clear.
For many years my main gigging guitar was a 1960 ES335. In my mind, the challenge with ES guitars is that they can sound muddy. The one I owned had two strong original PAF's, and I was always looking to get more clarity out of it (as I usually am with most Gibsons). On that guitar, the unwound strings sounded great, fat and full but still clear. But I struggled with the wound strings.
I don't know what "woody" means, but to me the best ES sounds have clear but full wound strings and fat but clear unwound. That is not always so easy to find.
BTW this may sound crazy, take a look at the angle that your pick hits the strings. I happened to notice lately that I pick at an angle on the high strings, and it sounds nice and full. As my hand comes around to the bass strings, the pick gets more parallel to the strings and sounds a bit brighter and clearer. That helps to flip the script on the issue you're talking about, for me anyway, though I'm not sure it is what you would call pristine technique!
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^^^^ What he said. Specially about the picking.
I have a brand new Gibson 335 that I am "wrangling in". I wish I could afford a vintage (early 60's) model, but hey, they have issues too. I have friends with them.
What BlueJayBill says is absolutely true, and it has been my exp. too - always the dull sounding wound strings!
Wish I knew back then what I know now.
So today, I have raised the Polepieces on the wound strings on my 2023 335, raised and lowered the bass side of the pickups, and the whole p/ups. my best response was with the P/ups very hi and close to the strings. Lowering them produces a lackluster presence. Not what I expected, it goes against everythING ONE READS! So you DO have to experiment. Get out those screwdrivers.
The p/ups are the newer T-tops from Gibson, so your p/ups could be different. I then installed a FABER ABR bridge. I like it. It got me closer to the early 60's tone with its brass saddles. I played my friend's early 60's 335 and fell in love, so I am determined! Next I want to try some Titanium saddles on the wound strings with the Faber bridge.
I will be posting about it.
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P90's in a 330.
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Very true on both points. I had a magnificent 335 for about a year but as mentioned it sounded muddy and the pickups were unbalanced (if one sounded good, the other didn’t). But if you find a 335 that sounds the way you want it to then I’m sure its a lifer. Originally Posted by bluejaybill
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There are of course always exceptions, and evidently guitar size plays an important role too. But I'm almost willing to bet that you'd still hear that over-generalisation if you'd compare your small BRW to an otherwise identical model with mahogany B&S (an 00018 I guess?) Originally Posted by bluejaybill
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Do your ears think that Humbuckers are more muddy than P90's? Originally Posted by Oscar67
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Sometimes. Not always. Depends on the guitar they’re in, how good the pickup is, the amp, the strings, the player, etc. The buckers in my PRS guitars aren’t muddy at all. Some Gibson neck humbuckers really come alive if you use the amp’s bright switch and then they can sound magical. Best not to use the bridge pickup with the bright switch on though… Originally Posted by GuyBoden
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I'm grossly generalising, but the majority of Humbuckers sound more muddy than P90's to my ears. Originally Posted by GuyBoden
It's the price you pay for less noise (Hum), which I accept when I want less noise (Hum).
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Definitely a difference, as I mentioned with a D18 versus a D28. I have played quite a few mahogany body Martins and owned a small one for years. Mahogany to me sounds "dry", woody and with fuller midrange. So yes maybe a difference, but not necessarily better, just different. Originally Posted by RJVB
There are of course always exceptions, and evidently guitar size plays an important role too. But I'm almost willing to bet that you'd still hear that over-generalisation if you'd compare your small BRW to an otherwise identical model with mahogany B&S (an 00018 I guess?)
A BRW 000 guitar is beautifully balanced, with maybe a touch more sparkle. Probably the same in the bass, and bit bit shy there if you're used to a D size guitar. And still plenty of mids. Certainly nothing that's going to bother you in the room, and magic on tape, er, hard drive. Oh, and I love playing jazz (of a certain sort!) on it as well.
Where I really hear the mahogany difference is with a nice old Gibson flat top. They are large but with a short scale. Very distinctive warm woody sound, quite different than any Martin.
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Agreed, but I have read that when they developed the PAF, the objective was to get as close to the P90 sound as possible, without the hum. The P90 was a beloved pickup then in almost all genres of music. Originally Posted by GuyBoden
And in fact original PAF's are often very clear and bright sounding, as many folks often have said, a "tele on steroids" sound. While I would take that with a grain of salt, real PAF's can sound surprisingly bright, especially compared to the hum buckers that followed from the late '60's onward. Only fairly recently have pickup makers returned to that original recipe, probably because the pickups aren't really great for the types of music (metal, hard rock etc) that are popular. Fantastic for jazz and blues though (see Montgomery, Wes, or Bloomfield, Mike).
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I'll stick with my opinion that the nicest Martin I've heard to date is a certain maple B&S OM Originally Posted by bluejaybill
(and in the BRW I won't avoid the W doesn't stand for wood ?)
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Muddy neck with P90s vs humbuckers? It depends.
Many P90 powered Gibson LPs have muddy neck pu, but You can manage it by tweaking the height and the pole screws.
My LP R4 has so low neck pu cavity that I can’t get rid of its boominess by lowering it. I don’t want to get it routed deeper so I tried to swap magnets. Changed the Alnico 5 bars off and Alnico 4 bars instead. Goodbuy boominess, welcome even brightess!
But in my ES-175 Reissue 1954 the neck P90 has never been anything else but perfectness!
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I have a Vintage brand Mick Abrahams (Jethro Tull, Blodwyn Pig) sig 2 x p90 SG. Vintage make some very nice budget guitars. When I got it, it had SD stacked p90s. They were jammed into the cavities and couldn't be lowered because of the depth of the extra coil stack. Also each pup had the 2 coils wired in Edit SERIES (not parallel!) which gave a DCR for each pup of over 30K! Originally Posted by Herbie
The muddiest mud I've ever heard.
I changed them for Irongear Platinum 90s. It's now a great budget guitar.Last edited by garybaldy; 12-22-2024 at 11:01 AM.
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I have three ebony pickguards for my Green archtop, each with an attached floating pickup.
Using two screws, I can easily change to any of following pickups:
1.) P90 Kent Armstrong.
2.) Humbucker Kent armstrong.
3.) Johnny Smith type.
My ears know that the Humbucker is the muddiest pickup using my setup.
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I don’t have any experience with those pickups, but I do know a bit about electronics. Resistors wired in parallel have less resistance than either one alone. The combined resistance is the reciprocal of the sum of the reciprocals of all the resistors. So the combined resistance of two 8 Ohm loads in parallel is 1 / (1/8 + 1/8), which equals 4 Ohms. Originally Posted by garybaldy
So 30k suggests to me that the coils are wired in series, assuming you disconnected them from the pots etc before measuring. If you left them connected, you didn’t measure the coils in isolation and the value is not useful.
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Yes the regular coil and hum cancelling coil were wired in series. Sorry, did I say parallel? So in general terms, each of the 2 coils would be about 15k each. So in parallel each pickup would be around 7.5k. I could have re wired them but they really didn't fit in the guitar - wires pinched and guitar body not thick enough to deepen routs. And people say stacked p90s don't sound like p90s - IDK. Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
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