Barry Greene’s Benedetto Bravo Sound

[Paulie2]

Those Benedetto pickups are, IMO, about the best humbuckers available for a jazz tone. They're very hot, high resistance, and designed to be played with the volume rolled back. The Benedetto wiring is also different from the typical Gibson-style, and that also affects the tone, not rolling off the treble much as the volume is decreased. My favorite pickup is the DeArmond Rhythm Chief, but for a set humbucker, I don't think the Benedetto can be beat by anything I've ever heard.

Interesting, i did not know they were designed to have the volume rolled back, but i have definitely found that i like turning my amp up a bit more, rolling the volume down to 7-ish and tone to taste.

[frankhond]

Interesting, i did not know they were designed to have the volume rolled back, but i have definitely found that i like turning my amp up a bit more, rolling the volume down to 7-ish and tone to taste.

Do you also feel that volume drops very fast? 7 for me is already like 50%.

[Paulie2]

Do you also feel that volume drops very fast? 7 for me is already like 50%.

No, I feel like I have a pretty smooth and even taper on my volume. I have a single pickup, A6. No clue what pots but assuming just the stock ones. It is an older model with the coil tap

[lawson-stone]

Before doing surgery, try lowering the bass end of the pickup, and turning the pole screw down low. I find more and more that I can get the shades of adjustment I want by simply setting up the pickup more carefully.

[frankhond]

Before doing surgery, try lowering the bass end of the pickup, and turning the pole screw down low. I find more and more that I can get the shades of adjustment I want by simply setting up the pickup more carefully.

I tried having it both low and high. This is Benedetto B6, there are no pole screws. And it has a thick layer of plastic casing above the molded-in rails to ensure the magnets won’t be too close to the strings.

Double checked grounding after getting response from SD support, everything seems ok. They actually recommend audio taper pots. Got an alternative schematic that’s basically same.

I’ll probably take out the harness next string change and double check everything and measure the pots. It could be that everything is as intended and it’s just me being sensitive.

[sgosnell]

I have the Benedetto pickups with adjustable polepieces, I think A6, in a Benedetto Bambino Deluxe and in a Wu. I have no problem with volume dropping too fast, nor with the tone killing the volume. It could be bad pots, or more likely miswired. 250k pots will give a very dark sound, standard for humbuckers is 500k so not so much of the treble is sent to ground.

The wiring in the photo is wrong. The selector switch only goes to the neck volume control. If you're using dual controls you need to look at that type wiring. There are many diagrams on the internet.
Modern wiring
2 Humbuckers/3-Way Toggle Switch/2 Volumes/2 Tones

Vintage
2 Humbuckers/3-Way Lever Switch/2 Volumes/2 Tones

Note that the Bambino diagram I posted early on uses only one volume and one tone, not one set for each pickup. Another way of wiring it is to take the pickup outputs directly to the switch, and from the switch to each tone/volume set. Several methods are possible, but the one you posted with the cardboard template won't work well.

[frankhond]

“The wiring in the photo is wrong. The selector switch only goes to the neck volume control.”

Now I wish I made a better photo with details of each pot. The wire from the switch that connects bridge pu is connected to the cable with braided shield and the braid provides ground. You can kind of see the wire emerge at the bridge tone, but it’s obscured.

The wiring should follow the included diagram minus the coil split switches, see post #9 in this thread.

And bridge is definitely connected, one of the best tones I’m getting is both pu’s with bridge tone at 0 and neck fully open. Dark but very punchy.

But I’ll definitely double check, mistakes are possible if course.

Edit: looking at the links @sgosnell kindly posted, comparing it to the one I got from SD support https://www.seymourduncan.com/images...H_3G_2V_2T.jpg and the benedetto diagram in post #9, what we have here is basically the same “50s wiring” with the capacitor connected to the base of tone pot. Some googling reveals that a bug/feature of 50s wiring is that tone affects volume. This is a tradeoff to have constant tone when volume is brought down.

Not sure why 250k pots are specified in the benedetto diagram.

[sgosnell]

I may be confused about which wires go where in the photo. It's hard to tell exactly where the connections are. I thought you had the wipers of the volume and tone connected in each set, but that may not be the case. It's just too hard to see where there is a connection and where wires just come close. If it works for you, good enough.

[frankhond]

I may be confused about which wires go where in the photo. It's hard to tell exactly where the connections are. I thought you had the wipers of the volume and tone connected in each set, but that may not be the case. It's just too hard to see where there is a connection and where wires just come close. If it works for you, good enough.

Thanks for looking! I wish I had made a better photo.

[frankhond]

Well I found this link CTS Vs Bourns Explained — GUNSTREET- A New Approach to the Guitar Wiring Market which shows that bourns pots have a different taper. So CTS drops faster. Which is kind of what I experience.

So I'll see if I can get some bourns pots, doublecheck the witring, and then we'll see.

After that, I think I owe you guys some recordings as thanks for hanging on to this monster thread.

[frankhond]

Ok, a year later, here is the next installment in this saga - it's a contininuing learning experience, so I post it in the hope that it will be useful to someone else considering these very interesting B6 pickups.

The guitar was sounding pretty darn good... I just left tone open, dialed volume to around 9 which corresponds to like 6-7 in the corrected setup, and got a convincing "Gibson archtop with some Barry Greene bell tone mixed in" thing going. So no real incentive to change things, until recently the input jack started to flake on me.

Being in the EU with the covid shipping situation, the options to get parts are limited. I ended up ordering a ES175 kit with 4x CTS vintage taper 500k pots, and Switchcraft parts from a German site called Tube Amp Doctor. This ended up cheaper than getting just the pots and jacks separately, and I have a switch, capacitors and nice vintage style wire left over.

Replaced the pots and the jack into the harness I show earlier in this thread. And corrected the jumper wire between tone and volume, as per the instructions I got from Benedetto support (thanks Damon). I'm thoroughly confused by now, but I *think* the changed jumper makes this "modern" wiring instead of "50s" wiring. Whatever. See the corrected diagram below.

The resulting change is surprising - I thought it would be subtle but it's like a new guitar.
- Volume now has useable range
- Tone doesn't affect volume
- First half of tone sweep doesn't do that much (here an regular audio taper pot would probably be better)
- Overall tone has become much more clear and "hifi", even more towards the Barry Greene bell tone.

The last point is interesting, "hifi" is what several people wrote when describing the B6 tone, and this is what I hear now. Previously, there was a certain resonance in the mids that I would describe as gibson-ish... in combination with a thinner pick it was very nice. I can't quite get this now, no matter how I turn the tone pot. OTOH the new bell like clarity is fantastic, I just plug in and there is a great base tone right away. I *think* this is due to the volume pot change to 500k, since the volume pot value is supposed to manipulate resonant frequency of the whole system, but who knows.

So it's even less PAF now, but a very nice bell like jazz tone. Will stick with this for the foreseeable future. Here's the corrected diagram.

[oceanslider]

Thanks for this thread. I also think Barry’s tone is great. I also like Jocelyn Gould’s Benedetto tone to.