Johan Allard
New Member
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2015
- Messages
- 154
Nothing like starting the weekend with a bit of a guitar mod, is there 
. I've been thinking about this mod for a while and really happy that I took the time to do it. Before started my PRS journey, I played mostly Les Pauls and always liked the dual volume configuration. I've been eyeing the David Grissom model with the Volume, Volume and Master tone control and thought that with the two pots on my Custom 22, I'd rather have two volume pots than the current master volume and master tone if I could pick, I never really change the tone pot a great deal. On my Les Paul what I always do is to leave the neck tone on 10 and bring the bridge tone down to about 6-7 and then never really change.
So, a multimeter on my current tone pot reveals that the max resistance on 10 is 450kOhm and on 7 the resistance is about 220kOhm. That means that I can hardwire the tone to 7 by connecting a 220kOhm resistor in series with the capacitor. With modern wiring that I prefer that would then connect one end to ground and one to the hot output of the bridge pickup and I have achieved my typical Les Paul setup. Neck tone on 10 and Bridge tone on 7, and freeing up a volume pot.
First mod I did a while back was to replace the rotary knob with a switchcraft (short) 3 way switch.
Also, in this guitar I'm using Bare Knuckle 4 conductor pickups. A Crawler in the Bridge and a VHII in the neck. One thing that 4 conductor wiring does enables is series/parallel wiring with a push/pull pot, or in my case a push/push pot.
So the wiring I've completed now is separate bridge and neck volume, with separate push/push pots on each to enable individual series/parallel configuration on each of the pickups. This will give all the same different 8 options that's on a 408 (Neck Series, Neck Parallel, Neck Series + Bridge series, Neck Series + Bridge parallel, Neck Parallel + Bridge Series, Neck Parallel + Bridge Parallel, Bridge Series and Bridge Parallel). Not that I'm really using all of those, but it's very nice being able to go from Bridge Series to Neck Parallel rolled off slightly and just switch with my 3 way pickup selector.
I'm very, very happy with this setup. It's very, very flexible and very easy to operate at the same time. And it doesn't change the visual apperance of the guitar at all.
Wiring Diagrams:
I basically combined two wiring diagrams. This first one:
https://bareknucklepickups.co.uk/ma...buckers/2_hum__2_vol__4_con__3_way_toggle.pdf
Explains the basic layout with the dual volume and 3 way switch. And then I added the series parallel wiring as outlined in this diagram:
https://bareknucklepickups.co.uk/ma...um__4_con_pushpull_pot-series_or_parallel.pdf
Now Pictures:
This is half-way through the wiring. You can see the three way switch in the back, the cap and resistor connected to the hot output of the bridge pickup. You can see some of the series parallel wiring as well for the bridge pickup.
And here it is completed. You can see the neck push/push pot in the left, the bridge push/push pot in the middle and the switchcraft 3 way in the top right.
And here's the completed result. Not that you can really see anything different - which is sort of the point to being with
If you want to do anything similar yourself. The pickups, push/push 500k pots and the PIO cap is available at the Bare Knuckle site. The switch is a short 3 way switchcraft switch.
Enjoy!
. I've been thinking about this mod for a while and really happy that I took the time to do it. Before started my PRS journey, I played mostly Les Pauls and always liked the dual volume configuration. I've been eyeing the David Grissom model with the Volume, Volume and Master tone control and thought that with the two pots on my Custom 22, I'd rather have two volume pots than the current master volume and master tone if I could pick, I never really change the tone pot a great deal. On my Les Paul what I always do is to leave the neck tone on 10 and bring the bridge tone down to about 6-7 and then never really change.So, a multimeter on my current tone pot reveals that the max resistance on 10 is 450kOhm and on 7 the resistance is about 220kOhm. That means that I can hardwire the tone to 7 by connecting a 220kOhm resistor in series with the capacitor. With modern wiring that I prefer that would then connect one end to ground and one to the hot output of the bridge pickup and I have achieved my typical Les Paul setup. Neck tone on 10 and Bridge tone on 7, and freeing up a volume pot.
First mod I did a while back was to replace the rotary knob with a switchcraft (short) 3 way switch.
Also, in this guitar I'm using Bare Knuckle 4 conductor pickups. A Crawler in the Bridge and a VHII in the neck. One thing that 4 conductor wiring does enables is series/parallel wiring with a push/pull pot, or in my case a push/push pot.
So the wiring I've completed now is separate bridge and neck volume, with separate push/push pots on each to enable individual series/parallel configuration on each of the pickups. This will give all the same different 8 options that's on a 408 (Neck Series, Neck Parallel, Neck Series + Bridge series, Neck Series + Bridge parallel, Neck Parallel + Bridge Series, Neck Parallel + Bridge Parallel, Bridge Series and Bridge Parallel). Not that I'm really using all of those, but it's very nice being able to go from Bridge Series to Neck Parallel rolled off slightly and just switch with my 3 way pickup selector.
I'm very, very happy with this setup. It's very, very flexible and very easy to operate at the same time. And it doesn't change the visual apperance of the guitar at all.
Wiring Diagrams:
I basically combined two wiring diagrams. This first one:
https://bareknucklepickups.co.uk/ma...buckers/2_hum__2_vol__4_con__3_way_toggle.pdf
Explains the basic layout with the dual volume and 3 way switch. And then I added the series parallel wiring as outlined in this diagram:
https://bareknucklepickups.co.uk/ma...um__4_con_pushpull_pot-series_or_parallel.pdf
Now Pictures:
This is half-way through the wiring. You can see the three way switch in the back, the cap and resistor connected to the hot output of the bridge pickup. You can see some of the series parallel wiring as well for the bridge pickup.
And here it is completed. You can see the neck push/push pot in the left, the bridge push/push pot in the middle and the switchcraft 3 way in the top right.
And here's the completed result. Not that you can really see anything different - which is sort of the point to being with
If you want to do anything similar yourself. The pickups, push/push 500k pots and the PIO cap is available at the Bare Knuckle site. The switch is a short 3 way switchcraft switch.
Enjoy!
