Question for owners of '85-'87 PRS Customs (re: bridge pickup tone)

[jdel77]

I'm lucky enough to own four PRS from the Annapolis Factory, an '87 in Emerald Green, an '88 in Vintage Yellow, an '89 in Grey Black and a '90 in Whale Blue.
Love these guitars, they're the ones in my avatar.

My question relates to the pickup wiring of the '87 Emerald Green.
The bridge pickup on this one has always sounded a little different to the other three guitars. The '88, '89 and '90 have that classic I guess more modern full throated, full bodied Les Paul humbucker sound.
The '87 is much more your "Telecaster on Steroids" type sound.
I've Googled up wiring diagrams for vintage PRS, and yes, the wiring and the pickups are subtly different from '85 to '87 compared to from '88 onwards, at least what I can see on the diagrams.

I've also seen a few demo's of '85 - '87 PRS, and the humbucker bridge sound is more that beefy Tele tone in humbucking mode, with the most pronounced single coil "stringy" sound with the Sweet Switch down, and the fatter tone with the Sweet Switch up. This is what my '87 is like.
This is somewhat different to my '88, '89, and '90 Sweet Switch function, in that on those guitars, Sweet Switch down is your classic humbucker, full gain tone, whereas the Switch up brings in a very noticeable midboost, almost like a Rangemaster/Treblebooster/cocked wah sound.

This is really interesting for me - is this what Paul was after in the early PRS years? More of a classic 50's vintage Humbucker/beefy Tele tone, like the very early Les Pauls?

I really thought I was going around the twist with this, and I pulled out the rotary selector on both my '87 and the '88, and they are subtly different. I've compared the wiring ad nauseum, even flipped the black/white leads on the bridge pickup in case they were out of phase, and nope, sounds better as is, but still there's that different sound on the '87 bridge pickup, and I honestly do prefer the setup on the '88 guitars forward, I'm not really after that vintage "Tele on Steroids" tone with the '87.

Should I rewire the rotary selector or replace that bridge pickup?

Through the right amp that '87 will get absolutely monstrous (any amp with a depth knob or extended bass range), but through my old '64 AC30 or my '80 JMP2203, the thinner "Fat Tele"/almost P90 tone is there, and it's kinda bugging me.

If anyone here owns an '85-'87 PRS and can compare to later model PRS, I'd love to know if this is how my '87 is meant to be!
Many thanks.

 

[Birdsofprey]

Great collection there, I can’t comment or compare on the 87 as I don’t own one however my brother does. I do have a 90 (sweet switch) and 98 CU24. I also have an 18 CU24-08. On the earlier models I have changed out both bridge pickups with Duncan Pearly Gates and just love the balance and sound these guitars now produce. So the 18 CU24-08 is also amazing however it really does have a different feel/sound. Not in any way lesser than the older models just different and I cringe to use the term modern. I’m a huge fan of the PRS CU-24 and all there variations over the years. Sorry I didn’t answer your exact questions but maybe a pickup change would help. It goes without saying that I’ve always kept the original pickups or parts to always be able to return my guitars to stock just something I do. Good luck and I hope someone else hear chimes in.

 

[Collywobbles]

I’ve owned a four 85s, three 86s plus a couple of 88s but never anything from 87… However I’ve probably played 20 to 30 sweet-switch guitars from all the years they were offered. In general, I think the T and B guitars all have a broadly similar powerful / treble-biased sound, so I’d expect your guitars to sound broadly similar if they all have the same pickups fitted.

Re wiring changes – there are three basic versions 85 through to 91-ish when the sweet-switch is dropped, with the first change happening circa mid-87. Custom wiring options were also offered as an extra – e.g. Ed King multi-tap.

Re standard wiring - all that changes is position 9 ( the power-out-of-phase wiring) and position 8 (originally both pickups together like a Les Paul in the middle). So the wiring of the treble or bass pickups on their own doesn’t change.

I wonder three things –

1) What pickups are in your guitars – an ’87 will almost certainly (but just possibly not) have Standard Treble and Standard Bass pickups. As you move forward in time there were more options for different factory-fit pickups.

2) More likely, your ’87 has a pre-warming-mod Standard Treble pickup. To explain, the Standard Treble design changes fractionally mid-87 to have what is known as a warming-mod to reduce the amount of treble / brightness. Specifically, they moved from using magnetic non-adjust slugs to using non-magnetic slugs for the high E and B (the other slugs remained magnetic). You can identify this by seeing if the Treble E and B non-adjust slugs have a trademark circular milling, which gives them a different look and texture compared to the other pole pieces.

3) The wiring might be wrong – it’s a fairly complex switch so its possible a wire was put on incorrectly (or changed later). A quick test is to read the resistance of the pickup – I would be looking for around 11K on a Standard T. If you plug in a normal guitar lead you can read the pickup resistance across the free end jack– it’ll give you a good indication and saves poking around in the PU cavity (you need the volume control turned full on to do this). If all your guitars read circa 11K T then they're probably all fitted with a Standard T.

Pickup specs below in case they help.

 

[jdel77]

Some excellent information there, many thanks! I shall digest it.

 

[gush]

I had an 89 cu24 but now have an 86 cu24. I didn't own them at the same time so it's hard to be 100% sure but I didn't think there was much difference between the two.

My 89 did have stickered T an B with bridge pickup having the different B and E slugs.

 

[jdel77]

Ok, I need to pull the bridge pickup and see exactly what I've got in there.
In reference to my first post, I'm not exactly sure I'd describe it as "Tele on steroids". It's more like the first VH record where you can really hear that bite and stringyness in Eddie's sound. The Green '87 is more along those lines, while my other '88, '89 and '90 are more your classic fat, traditional humbucker sound.
It's a cool sound, and definitely handles high gain, and I'm not averse to putting something else in there just to try it, more just curious as to the tonal variation in this '87 compared to the others.