Gold foils with 50s wiring?

[David Dvorin]

Ok, a little outside of the jazz realm...I have a 1959 Harmony Jupiter H49 that I adore and gig with often. It has beautiful sounding DeArmond gold foils that drive the tube amp nicely.

Strangely enough for a 50s guitar it seems that they are wired in the more “modern” way wherein you roll the volume down and they loose quite a bit of treble almost immediately. I’m interested in trying out “50s wiring” using the other pot lugs so I don’t loose so much treble when I adjust the volume during the set. Just not sure if this works well due to the nature of gold foils...they interact with the overdrive in a totally different way than other pickups, like say my p90s in my 50s Gibson. The gold foils won’t clean up the sound when reducing volume until they hit a low threshold...

Anyone have any experience with this? I’d ultimately love to retain treble when I reduce volume, but also it would be great to have them dynamically interact with the tube amp. Just don’t want to loose their magical sound if I rewire!

Thanks in advance!

[Little Jay]

Try it I'd say! If you don't like it just put it back. No magic in there, just post, caps, wires and solder ;-)I wire all my guitars 50ies style, I like it. But a bit of a waring: it works different. The pots are very interactive: turning up the tone also rises volume. So I find myself adjusting both pots all the time instead of just turning tone up or down. But I find you can get the 'sweet spot' at any volume.

[neatomic]

dearmond gold foils are great pups...they are wound with thin wire and therefore can display a rather high resistance value (10k) but they are clean and loud!! lovely pups..and not to be confused with the now very chic teisco gold foils...they are 2 different items!!

why not use a treble bleed circuit...plenty info about online...here's a start

https://www.fender.com/articles/tech...fect-your-tone

cheers

[David Dvorin]

Wow never looked into treble bleed before. That looks like it might do the trick! Thanks for forwarding the Fender Tone Saver info. If that would work with my guitar, that looks easy. I’ve got some experience with soldering, but I’m new to this...So, I’m not sure how the values of the cap and resistor match up to the pots in the Jupiter. Here is the link with wiring info that I’ve been looking at:

Harmony Jupiter wiring

Thanks everyone for help with this!

[neatomic]

google- treble bleed circuit for one meg pots


here's some good info

Treble bleed for 1meg pots | Telecaster Guitar Forum

the treble bleed does exactly what you want..maintains the highs tone while you roll back the volume...and not that complicated...however the jupiter circuit is rather complicated to begin with!!! gotta love those old harmony/danelectro circuits..always well shielded, and much more forward thinking than they get credit for nowadays!!..i love those old guitars and pups and circuits!!


luck

cheers

[David Dvorin]

Thanks for al the great info, neatomic!!! Lots to check out!

[Grez]

What you're describing is just how GF's work. All my Mendocinos ship with 500k pots and vintage wiring but still they loose high end when you back off the volume. And yes, as you describe, they don't clean up the same way as more common pickups. But they do cleanup some. I don't see the treble change as bad, but some do, no right or wrong answer here, but if you fall on the wanting more treble side, as has been mentioned, a treble bleed on the volume should help. As for GF pickups being outside the jazz realm, I think they work surprisingly well in this genre and deserve more attention!

[David Dvorin]

Thanks, Grez. Btw, I’ve played the Mendocino both baritone and regular and absolutely loved them both. Something similar to my Jupiter going on there with the gold foils and chambered body, but of course the Mendocino is much more high class and well made! I agree that GF pickups sound great for jazz too, giving a bit of high end string articulation that p90s and the like don’t have.

I don’t mind some treble loss, but what I’m experiencing is pretty dramatic, a large amount as soon as you touch any volume pot. Makes me think that it is not “vintage wiring”, but I may be reading the schematics wrong because I’m new to this.

I might try the treble bleed first on the neck pickup. Kinda tricky for me as the original pots are really small in size...