Something else: 50s vintage wiring vs modern and caps

[harmaes]

I'm playing a Yamaha SA2200 (ES-335 like) and currently have modern wiring in there. I've used that in all my guitars (strats, tele, LP etc) and I always include a switch or push-pull to be able to add/remove treble bleeds on the volumes.

I've never tried 50s vintage wiring, from what I read is that it makes the volume and tone more interactive and rolling down the volume should work better with less loss of highs? I'm not satisfied how the treble bleed on the volume pots works in the SA2200 so I'm considering 50s vintage wiring. What's your experience with vintage and modern wiring in LP, SG and ES guitars?

Another heavily debated discussion is the use of expensive caps in guitars for their tone controls. In contrast to using pedals with low(er) cost caps.
AFAIKT I've never been able to hear a difference and what's used in pedals should be good enough for guitar. What's your opinion on this?

 

[MichaelW]

I'm playing a Yamaha SA2200 (ES-335 like) and currently have modern wiring in there. I've used that in all my guitars (strats, tele, LP etc) and I always include a switch or push-pull to be able to add/remove treble bleeds on the volumes.

I've never tried 50s vintage wiring, from what I read is that it makes the volume and tone more interactive and rolling down the volume should work better with less loss of highs? I'm not satisfied how the treble bleed on the volume pots works in the SA2200 so I'm considering 50s vintage wiring. What's your experience with vintage and modern wiring in LP, SG and ES guitars?

Another heavily debated discussion is the use of expensive caps in guitars for their tone controls. In contrast to using pedals with low(er) cost caps.
AFAIKT I've never been able to hear a difference and what's used in pedals should be good enough for guitar. What's your opinion on this?

I tend to go with the 50's vintage style wiring for any Gibson-esque guitars with 4 controls. Which at the moment is just my Eastman TM185 and my PRS 594. The PRS uses stock modern wiring with a treble bleed. I have not touched it as it seems to work well for this guitar. The Eastman, I've re-wired with 50's wiring and no treble bleed. (and Vitamin Q caps). Regarding the wiring, my personal opinion is that there is no BETTER way, they just make the controls work a little differently. (Eg: signal goes thru the tone to the vol or thru the vol to the tone) With the 50's wiring the tone control setting can impact volume and vice versa, so yes more interactive. How practical is this? Well it depends on the application. For me, since I don't play live and I can sit around a fiddle until I get the tone I want before laying down a track, it's all fine. But I'm not so sure I'd be doing all that fiddling in a live situation. I'd probably just find a usable tone setting and set/forget and control everything else from the vol pot.

With the 50's wiring, you don't need the treble cap as it functions similarly that when you back off the volume it (somewhat) retains the highs. Not as effectively as a treble bleed circuit but it does work. Having said that, it's probably the "effectiveness" of the treble bleed that you're not satisfied with. It can "thin" the tone out as you back off the vol. Hence, this is why you hear all the rhetoric from some pickup makers that insist "modern wiring" with a treble bleed "SUCKS THE TONE" out of your guitar. I don't completely agree, but hey, it's the interwebz ya know?

Re: tone caps, this is a huge can of worms with as much mythology and general BS as Klon circuits. The performance of tone caps in a guitar circuit is definitely in the realm of "cork sniffery". Having said that, I tend to use NOS Russian PIO caps mostly if I can get them at a reasonable price. the KY series of PIO caps can usually be had for $7-8. Still lot more than the tried and true Sprague Orange Drops. Tonally I can't tell the difference between PIO and film caps. Playing around with the value of the caps will have a bigger impact on how the tone control works.

You've got a killer guitar in the SA2200. I've been lusting after one of those since I was about 17 years old I'd give the 50's wiring a shot, and while your at it, upgrade the potentiometers, the output jack and the wiring itself. And if you're doing all that, might as well try some PIO caps as well. Are you planning to do this yourself? If you've not done a wiring swap on a semi-hollow before be prepared for some choice expletives coming out of your mouth. Some of the things I said when I did my Eastman shocked me..........it's a serious pain in the ass and take some practice.

 

[Harry Klippton]

If using paper in oil caps, or any other part for that matter, makes you happy then go for it! At the very least, they work as good as ceramic or film caps or whatever, and if you find it exciting that they like look cool, or have vintage mojo or whatever, then that will have a positive effect in how you feel about the guitar or making you want to pick it up and play. That's a win and they're not all that expensive

 

[giovanni]

I’ve been wanting to look into this for a while so I finally did. I found this article that explains the difference and I sketched out a schematic. With modern wiring, your tone circuit and volume pot are in parallel, which you can think as if the tone comes “before” the volume. With 50s wiring, tone circuit is “after” the volume, i.e., after that voltage divider. In modern wiring, the frequency response of the tone pot is not affected by the volume pot. The opposite is true for 50s wiring. I haven’t figured out exactly how yet.

 

[harmaes]

If using paper in oil caps, or any other part for that matter, makes you happy then go for it! At the very least, they work as good as ceramic or film caps or whatever, and if you find it exciting that they like look cool, or have vintage mojo or whatever, then that will have a positive effect in how you feel about the guitar or making you want to pick it up and play. That's a win and they're not all that expensive

I've used different caps before (different PIOs etc) and found it practically to not be of a big influence "tone" wise. It can indeed make you feel good and it looks cooler with such big caps in your guitar. Bumblebee caps are 20 euros (20$) here now and that's quite steep.
I do think that in an ES or LP guitar 15nf for neck and 22nf for bridge works best to keep the neck a little more open sounding.

 

[harmaes]

I’ve been wanting to look into this for a while so I finally did. I found this article that explains the difference and I sketched out a schematic. With modern wiring, your tone circuit and volume pot are in parallel, which you can think as if the tone comes “before” the volume. With 50s wiring, tone circuit is “after” the volume, i.e., after that voltage divider. In modern wiring, the frequency response of the tone pot is not affected by the volume pot. The opposite is true for 50s wiring. I haven’t figured out exactly how yet.

Thanks for providing this link. I will check it out to understand it better.

 

[harmaes]

I tend to go with the 50's vintage style wiring for any Gibson-esque guitars with 4 controls. Which at the moment is just my Eastman TM185 and my PRS 594. The PRS uses stock modern wiring with a treble bleed. I have not touched it as it seems to work well for this guitar. The Eastman, I've re-wired with 50's wiring and no treble bleed. (and Vitamin Q caps). Regarding the wiring, my personal opinion is that there is no BETTER way, they just make the controls work a little differently. (Eg: signal goes thru the tone to the vol or thru the vol to the tone) With the 50's wiring the tone control setting can impact volume and vice versa, so yes more interactive. How practical is this? Well it depends on the application. For me, since I don't play live and I can sit around a fiddle until I get the tone I want before laying down a track, it's all fine. But I'm not so sure I'd be doing all that fiddling in a live situation. I'd probably just find a usable tone setting and set/forget and control everything else from the vol pot.

With the 50's wiring, you don't need the treble cap as it functions similarly that when you back off the volume it (somewhat) retains the highs. Not as effectively as a treble bleed circuit but it does work. Having said that, it's probably the "effectiveness" of the treble bleed that you're not satisfied with. It can "thin" the tone out as you back off the vol. Hence, this is why you hear all the rhetoric from some pickup makers that insist "modern wiring" with a treble bleed "SUCKS THE TONE" out of your guitar. I don't completely agree, but hey, it's the interwebz ya know?

Re: tone caps, this is a huge can of worms with as much mythology and general BS as Klon circuits. The performance of tone caps in a guitar circuit is definitely in the realm of "cork sniffery". Having said that, I tend to use NOS Russian PIO caps mostly if I can get them at a reasonable price. the KY series of PIO caps can usually be had for $7-8. Still lot more than the tried and true Sprague Orange Drops. Tonally I can't tell the difference between PIO and film caps. Playing around with the value of the caps will have a bigger impact on how the tone control works.

You've got a killer guitar in the SA2200. I've been lusting after one of those since I was about 17 years old I'd give the 50's wiring a shot, and while your at it, upgrade the potentiometers, the output jack and the wiring itself. And if you're doing all that, might as well try some PIO caps as well. Are you planning to do this yourself? If you've not done a wiring swap on a semi-hollow before be prepared for some choice expletives coming out of your mouth. Some of the things I said when I did my Eastman shocked me..........it's a serious pain in the ass and take some practice.

Hey Michael,

Thanks for your lengthy reply! Did you already build the Heavy Hand v2? Hopefully this PCB is available soon. Not sure in the current situation how long shipping (by air?) takes from the US to the Netherlands.

I've never tried 50s wiring so I think it's good to give it a try. I've worked in ES style guitars before and it's indeed a pain in the ass. Especially to get the volume jack back into place. So to experiment with 50s wiring in this guitar might not be the best idea because I will have to do it twice if I don't like it. The fact that I don't need the treble bleed is a good thing. I've experimented with treble bleeds a lot and found a balance between cap and resistor value that works for me, only not in the SA2200.

Do you know if Gibson still wires their ES and LP with 50s wiring or are they using modern wiring?

The SA2200 is a great sounding and nicely build guitar in the Yamaha Japan factory. I've replaced the pickups with Duncan 59 with Alnico II magnet in the neck and a Suhr Thornbucker in the bridge. Both without covers to get the most open sound.

I'm currently also not playing live so I don't have to worry about quickly dialing in vol/tone settings. I do use vol/tone a lot in all my guitars to influence the sound.

I'm now considering a 5-way rotary because the 3-ways always tend to behave badly somehow for me and also to avoid push/pull or push/push pots. I now have 2 push/push pots that are not working well anymore. These are for split Neck/Bridge and series/parallel Neck.
The additional advantage of the 5-way rotary is that I can use 550k CTS pots for the volumes and tones which probably improve the behavior of the pot travel. As mentioned I use treble bleeds in all guitars (with a switch for on/off) and what I notice is that it also affects the travel of the Volume pot often making it more gradually.

For the SA2200 I'm going to remove the split because I've never liked the sound of it in an ES type guitar. I do have the Dave Grissom way of splitting in there which sounds best IMO.
Series/Parallel is very usefull on the neck pickup. So I might end up with a 5-way switch that will have: Neck series - Neck parallel - Neck/Bridge series - Neck/Bridge inner split and Bridge series.

Concerning caps I've also used the KY and other Russian types as well and they work well. This morning I added a treble bleed switch to my Haar stratocaster and I noticed I used orange drops and an Alpha 250k pot for volume which both work very well in this guitar.
I haven't figured out why things work sometimes, experimentation is sometimes necessary.
I had Haar install a dummy coil from Ilitch underneath the pickguard and this works extremely well to make the Lollar Blackface pickups silent while presence the most of the tone.

 

[Big Monk]

I’ve got garden variety Tayda film box caps in my Les Paul right now. Absolutely no difference from the Sprague PIO caps I had in before.

I have mine wired with the G&L Passive treble and Bass controls. The Treble control is a normal, 50s wired tone control and the Bass is a bass cut.

Also, both humbuckers are on push pulls for series/parallel.

 

[harmaes]

I’ve got garden variety Tayda film box caps in my Les Paul right now. Absolutely no difference from the Sprague PIO caps I had in before.

I have mine wired with the G&L Passive treble and Bass controls. The Treble control is a normal, 50s wired tone control and the Bass is a bass cut.

Also, both humbuckers are on push pulls for series/parallel.

Do you have a schematic for the G&L passive treble and bass controls? Would be interested to see how it works.

Nice to know you're also a fan of series/parallel!

In an ES style guitar I think that the Bourns push/pull pots are the best? Or DiMarzio or other brands?
The CTS and Mojotone push/pull pots with the black plastic fitting and PCB won't go through the key holes I guess.

 

[harmaes]

Oh BTW, I mostly use the Kinman treble bleed with a 1nf cap (Silver Mica) and 150k resistor in series.

 

[giovanni]

I have a G&L S500 with PTB as well (diagram) and a Reverend with bass contour which is probably the same. I love both, although it’s way more useful on the Reverend since I don’t usually feel the need to roll off bass on the single coils.

 

[Big Monk]

This is the diagram I used, although as a general preference, I flipped the bass control so turning the control up cuts bass:

 

[cdwillis]

I think 99% of the vintage cap use thing is just cork sniffing, but they sure do look cool. I like the orange drop caps, not because of some kind of tonal difference, but because they're large enough to handle/solder easily and relatively cheap. Also like 50s wiring because it does keep the guitar from losing all the high end when you back the volume off. I use the volume pots a million times more than the tone pots so the interaction between them doesn't bother me. If you have your tone rolled off and you roll your volume down it will bring in more high end with 50s wiring.

 

[giovanni]

In case you’re curious about modern vs 50’s, I made diagrams and did some math. In short, the cutoff frequency in the modern wiring depends only on the position of the tone pot. In 50’s wiring it depends on the positions of both volume and tone.

 

[MichaelW]

Hey Michael,

Thanks for your lengthy reply! Did you already build the Heavy Hand v2? Hopefully this PCB is available soon. Not sure in the current situation how long shipping (by air?) takes from the US to the Netherlands.

I've never tried 50s wiring so I think it's good to give it a try. I've worked in ES style guitars before and it's indeed a pain in the ass. Especially to get the volume jack back into place. So to experiment with 50s wiring in this guitar might not be the best idea because I will have to do it twice if I don't like it. The fact that I don't need the treble bleed is a good thing. I've experimented with treble bleeds a lot and found a balance between cap and resistor value that works for me, only not in the SA2200.

Do you know if Gibson still wires their ES and LP with 50s wiring or are they using modern wiring?

The SA2200 is a great sounding and nicely build guitar in the Yamaha Japan factory. I've replaced the pickups with Duncan 59 with Alnico II magnet in the neck and a Suhr Thornbucker in the bridge. Both without covers to get the most open sound.

I'm currently also not playing live so I don't have to worry about quickly dialing in vol/tone settings. I do use vol/tone a lot in all my guitars to influence the sound.

I'm now considering a 5-way rotary because the 3-ways always tend to behave badly somehow for me and also to avoid push/pull or push/push pots. I now have 2 push/push pots that are not working well anymore. These are for split Neck/Bridge and series/parallel Neck.
The additional advantage of the 5-way rotary is that I can use 550k CTS pots for the volumes and tones which probably improve the behavior of the pot travel. As mentioned I use treble bleeds in all guitars (with a switch for on/off) and what I notice is that it also affects the travel of the Volume pot often making it more gradually.

For the SA2200 I'm going to remove the split because I've never liked the sound of it in an ES type guitar. I do have the Dave Grissom way of splitting in there which sounds best IMO.
Series/Parallel is very usefull on the neck pickup. So I might end up with a 5-way switch that will have: Neck series - Neck parallel - Neck/Bridge series - Neck/Bridge inner split and Bridge series.

Concerning caps I've also used the KY and other Russian types as well and they work well. This morning I added a treble bleed switch to my Haar stratocaster and I noticed I used orange drops and an Alpha 250k pot for volume which both work very well in this guitar.
I haven't figured out why things work sometimes, experimentation is sometimes necessary.
I had Haar install a dummy coil from Ilitch underneath the pickguard and this works extremely well to make the Lollar Blackface pickups silent while presence the most of the tone.

I have the Kings Hand V2 on the bench right now. Running into some issues that I'm trying to work my way out of. Not the PCB but that fact that I'm trying to use it in a combo build in a 1590BB. Not recommended, this V2 board really needs a 125B (as I'm finding out). But since I already drilled my enclosure I'm determined to try to make it work, we'll see. Not sure when it will be officially released but @PedalPCB sent me one in advance. Part of the reason I love this place and prefer to give him my business whenever I can. Just a great customer centric business.

Re: Gibson, it depends on what model. I know the R series Custom Shop LP's and ES's are all wired period correct depending what year it's supposed to be. Not sure about their off the rack LP Standards, if I were to guess I'd say no, not 50's wiring but "modern" wiring which seems to be the standard for most companies, PRS included. The Duncan 59 and Thornbucker combo sounds pretty awesome. The Duncan 59 probably my favorite "big brand" humbucker and I've heard so many people rave about the Thornbuckers. I'm a big fan of "vintage output" pickups. I remember reading about Pete Thorn influencing John Suhr when they were designing the pickup. All of Suhr's other HB's tend to be higher output. Pete's argument was that with all the boost and drive pedals, not to mention high gain amps, the handicap of a lower output pickup is moot. You can pretty much dial in just about any level of output you want. However, what you can't do with high output pickups is recover the "character" that's lost when it's wound too hot. I pretty much agree with that. The 58/15 Low Turn pickups in my PRS 594 follow this philosophy and are awesome sounding pickups. I have the Lollar Low Wind Imperials in my Semi hollow and they are also fantastic sounding to me.

I am not a huge fan of splitting coils on HB guitars as it's neither fish nor fowl to me. I never use the coil split sounds on my PRS. But I can also see the advantage of it for a gigging guitar and being able to get the most sounds out of the least amount of gear. But in my case and for my applications if I want a single coil sound I'd just pick up a Strat or Tele. I'm blessed to be able to have access to a lot of different guitars (and it's my standby excuse to convince my wife that I need yet another guitar....."but honey, it's a sound I don't have in my portfolio that I "need") I'm not familiar with the DGT wiring but I do occasionally lust after one. I don't care much for the jumbo frets but otherwise those are spectacular guitars.

Hmmm the dummy coil idea is interesting. I'm pretty sure Eric Johnson uses stacked Dimarzio single coil in the bridge position of his signature Strat guitar with one coil disabled. I generally don't have too much problem with single coil hum because I don't play at loud volumes and I usually ground the crap out of everything in my guitars. I've also recently started using shielding paint in the pickup cavities and really like the results. Here's a recent Tele build I just posted about yesterday. Super quiet guitar, I'm impressed. I just shielded the cavities and did not bother to run a dedicated ground wire to the jack. It's really quiet, I'm thinking about re-doing my other Tele's and Strats with it. It doesn't impact the tone like copper tape shielding does.

Re: experimenting with the 50's wiring. One idea is to make a cardboard template to hold the potentiometers out of the guitar. Then just use test leads to hook up the pickups and see how it sounds. You can try it both ways (50's and Modern) and mess with different caps before committing to solder (and crowbaring it all back into the guitar)

 

[MichaelW]

Do you have a schematic for the G&L passive treble and bass controls? Would be interested to see how it works.

Nice to know you're also a fan of series/parallel!

In an ES style guitar I think that the Bourns push/pull pots are the best? Or DiMarzio or other brands?
The CTS and Mojotone push/pull pots with the black plastic fitting and PCB won't go through the key holes I guess.

@harmaes I think that's going to be the issue with the semi hollow, finding a push pull that will fit through the F-holes. I have some CTS push pull pots on hand and I can measure them for you.

 

[MichaelW]

I have a G&L S500 with PTB as well (diagram) and a Reverend with bass contour which is probably the same. I love both, although it’s way more useful on the Reverend since I don’t usually feel the need to roll off bass on the single coils.

Which model Reverend do you have? I was gassing pretty hard for a Charger 290 before building my recent "90-Caster". I think I scratched that itch (for now.....)

 

[MichaelW]

In case you’re curious about modern vs 50’s, I made diagrams and did some math. In short, the cutoff frequency in the modern wiring depends only on the position of the tone pot. In 50’s wiring it depends on the positions of both volume and tone.

View attachment 28289

Too damn smart for me, I'm not even going to pretend I understand those formulas. Glad I have a smart friend that knows this stuff...... @giovanni

 

[giovanni]

Which model Reverend do you have? I was gassing pretty hard for a Charger 290 before building my recent "90-Caster". I think I scratched that itch (for now.....)

Club King RT. They are amazing guitars. I highly recommend them!

 

[Bricksnbeatles]

@harmaes I think that's going to be the issue with the semi hollow, finding a push pull that will fit through the F-holes. I have some CTS push pull pots on hand and I can measure them for you.

For a hollowbody I’d suggest a freeway switch instead of push pull pots. Much easier to get into the body through the f-holes