Modifying the sound of an SD JB

funtoosh

so i've got a leftover JB that i took out of my main guitar last year, because i didn't like it's sound

AnotherTool

Use a bassier sounding capacitor.

AnotherTool

Well, i don't mean bassier sounding, but a cap that will take away some of the highs.

tragictravisty

there are a few things you could do. if its going in the bridge, put the screw coil closer to the neck. youll problably have to switch the ground+hot wires around to make it in phase though if you do that. (not bare) you could also buy a low value capacitator from smallbearelec.com and with that from the JB's hot to ground, which would act as a tonecut only when the JB is on. thats what i would do. maybe .003uf as a starting point.

funtoosh

so that would be the capacitor-way

jellybelly

coil tap it...

funtoosh

yes, there is this 3way parallel/series/coil-tap switch diagram @ seymour duncan's, i think i

Fran

A cover will do nothing. Jimmy Page stripped his due to feedback but sonically it wont change the tone.

You can either change the cap like the guys said or rewire it as a humbucker. That is it really. You wont get a vintage sound because it was'nt designed for that and the magnets are'nt up to it. Swapping pups round can change the polarity, you could try this. With some pups it makes no difference but with others it is dramatic, more so in the inbetween positions because things go out of phase.

tragictravisty

you could have it rewound. And supposedly covers do make some sonic difference, since they alter the magnetic field, but it will be barely audible, and certainly wont make it sound 'vintage'. the only reason for a cover is like ran said, feedback.

funtoosh

apropos caps, there is this thing by bill lawrence called q-filter that is specifically targeted at high-output-pickups, it

Spitfire

I have an Alden Vox Phantom guitar that now has a JBjr in the bridge position. I built a custom tone control for it which is basically a push/pull pot to select one of two capacitors, an inductor coil and a 500k pot to blend the effect. I would have built in a full varitone but there wasn't room in the cavity so I picked the two caps that sounded best and built them into this. It gives the pickup 1) a "woman" tone and 2) A middly tone a bit like the sweet spot on a colorsound wah pedal, great with high gain for a hendrixy feel.

funtoosh

spitfire, can you explain the "inductor coil" part a little more?

Spitfire

it's a high inductance choke coil, the only way I can describe the effect it has is to 'focus' the tone cut at the selected frequency. Gibson use a 1.5H choke in their varitones, this is quite a high value and means the physical size is quite large (about the size of a zippo in an old gibson 345 and routed into a cavity under the bridge pickup). I've tried many values of choke and for my money the higher the value the better they sound, too low and the cut is too broad (muddy). Smaller ones tend to look like 1cm transformers, larger ones are typically round and potted into epoxy, Vintage gibson ones are oblong and probably made for them. It's difficult to get larger values so I generally scrounge them from electrical shops or second hand audio gear.

funtoosh

thx, i did not even know the varitone uses a coil, i thought it was all caps (as some cheaper copies are).

okay, so that seems to be similar to the above mentioned q-filter coil ...

... ahm somewhat similar, at least:

http://guitarsbyfender.yuku.com/forum/viewtopic/id/3293

http://guitarsbyfender.yuku.com/topic/2992/t/Q-filter-What-does-it-do-exactly.html

i think that