So the magnets arrived today!!!
This is the first guitar for mods, a 2011 Primer Grey (formerly Antique White) SE Singlecut. Bought it for $200 at a Guitar Center here in Texas with a cracked neck. Three weeks after I bought the guitar it fell off its stand and the neck split cleanly from the body. It was easy enough to reset the neck and move on, but the break left a nasty scar. I planned on refinishing it, but a mishap during the final primer coat damaged the headstock (I repaired this too) so I said, "F--- it," and left it be. It now matches my brother's project 1981 Camaro. Still plays quite nicely. I replaced the stock tuners with Gotoh oval button tuners after one of the stock buttons broke off during the fall. Bridge was also replaced with a Gotoh 510UB, which ain't too shabby.
Some tips I can offer while wiring up this setup:
1) If you bought the PRS rotary, then you probably know what to do. But if you bought an aftermarket switch, DON'T use the diagrams offered by StewMac, or most of what you see online. They don't work like a PRS rotary is supposed to.
Use this diagram provided by Seymour Duncan forumite BriGuy1968, who was so kind to draw this up just for me:
I opted to not use a tone control, instead wiring in a DPDT on-off switch in its place. This is easy to do, if you need a schematic they're all over the internet.
2) Make sure the wiring of your pickups are correct. Most of the stock G&B pickups on the SEs only have 1-conductor cables, with the hot going to the screw (outer) coil and the slug (inner) coil going to ground. You MUST have a dedicated conductor for the slug coil. I went ahead and used standard 4-conductor wire and wired to Duncan colors:
Slug Coil
Series Link
Screw Coil
3) G&B pickups are polarized so that the screw coil is oriented South and the slug coil is North, on both pickups. For this wiring you must reverse the magnet in one of the pickups (I flipped the bridge magnet). Otherwise positions 2-4 will not be humcanceling.
4) If you chose to buy the PRS rotary, which I may do in the future with my other SEs, don't worry about this. Otherwise, make sure you wrap the aftermarket rotary switch with electrical tape to avoid shorting out the connections on the shielding paint inside the cavity. It is a VERY tight fit, and you will have to bend a couple tabs to make it work.
That should get you going on the wiring aspect.
The next part I want to talk about is swapping the slugs in for rod magnets. Now, most of you probably have no interest in doing this. I did it out of curiosity and liked the results. It's not a night-and-day difference in the least but it's something you should still hear. For me, it actually refined the tone a bit. I feel like it gave me more crisp highs and more bite, yet smoothed out the tone at the same time. It's more articulate to me this way.
So the first thing you should do is get something to push the slugs out. I used a precision screwdriver and a small Allen wrench. It helps to use a soft surface with a lot of give so you can really bear down and put some pressure on the slugs to force them out. It will take some effort because the wax potting is effectively working like glue here. I did this on my bed after replacing the leads, so the pickups were still out of the guitar, and I could do this without damaging the guitar or the pickup. I then put the slugs back in to reassemble the guitar and test the wiring, before swapping them out and showing you. If you have the stock G&B pickups, GREAT, because you can access the slugs with the baseplate still attached and without disassembly. A lot of pickups don't have these holes in their baseplates, and if that's the boat you're in, then your job just got harder.
Since I put the slugs back in after I broke them loose, I have to take the pickup out again. Since the wax has been broken around the slugs, all I have to do is gently push on the slug to get it to come out the top.
Once that's done, your pickup should look like this:
Now, the slugs measured .187" diameter x .500" length. You need to find a rod magnet with dimensions similar to this. I bought mine from
Tone Kraft. The closest I could find was a vintage bevel Alnico V rod that was the same diameter and .531" in length. They'll even magnetize them for you in the orientation of your choosing. This is important, in case you want the bevel facing up. I ordered 12 oriented North up, and 12 South up.
When installing these, it is imperative that whatever polarity that coil is matches which pole is facing up on the magnet when you push it in the bobbin. For example, if the screw coil is North and the slug coil is South, then South should face up on these rod magnets. To ensure this, a polarity tester is highly recommended. Then, it's really as simple as pushing them into the holes. They'll stick up above the bobbin about the diameter of a G or D string, but no more than that.
Here is the finished look of the rod magnets in the humbucker. There are still bits of wax on top of the bobbin here but 1) that shouldn't hurt anything, and 2) it's easy enough to clean up:
OH WAIT...well how does it sound??
I recorded a clip of the finished product. The before clip got lost in the shuffle somewhere, but this should effectively demonstrate the big picture. In this I go from clean to dirty, and cycle through all the pickup positions, starting with the bridge pickup and working my way to the neck, in order. Note the significant volume drop in positions 2 and 4. Click the link below.
https://soundcloud.com/david-h-kennedy-782434002/prs-rod-magnet-mod-demo
THE VERDICT:
I think this is a better alternative to the standard SE coil split. I'm not too thrilled by the volume drop in the split positions, but that is the nature of the beast and there are ways around it (i.e. using a clean boost in conjunction with it). Overall, the versatility of this setup is ridiculous in an SE, and I plan on doing this again to my other guitars.
That said, I feel the neck pickup is too bassy for me, and am wondering if switching to an Alnico II bar magnet would help lower the bass and bring out the mids in this position?