New Strat Build - Pickup Opinions

smitty_p said:
I had a JB and a Jazz in my Jackson. I agree; they are pretty bright. I removed them when I did my mega mod to my Jackson.

However, one thing I did that helped tame them was to use a 250 K Ohm volume pot. I stuck with a 500 k ohm tone pot with a .022 cap for the tone. This worked pretty well.

When I did my mod to the guitar, I ended up putting a Seymour Duncan Trembucker in the bridge and I put a Seymour Duncan ‘59 bridge pickup in the neck.

As for the question about setting your controls as V-T-T or V-V-T, I think I’d consider how often you try to blend pickups with a typical Gibson layout. If you find that you normally run both pickups wide open when you have them both selected, the V-T-T arrangement is probably best. But, if you find that you like to adjust the relative volume of each pickup when you blend them, then maybe the V-V-T setup is better.

I like to blend a lot, which was part of the reason behind the “Les Paul-ization” of my Jackson.
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ninjaking67 said:
Smitty,

If I go with separate volume pots I will use a 250kOhm for the bridge JB. That should help tame the bright bridge tone. I still think that I will go with the dual concentric pot to give 2 tones.
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The JB really does do best with a 250K volume IMO. Some like them with 500K in a Les Paul, but especially for 25½" scale guitars I've always felt 250 sweetens the high end a bit. After all, the original was made for Jeff Beck's "Tele-Gib," an HH Telecaster.

One of the things I miss when playing two-pickup Fenders (and PRSs, my longtime favorite) is the ability to balance pickups using separate volumes. It gives access to such a wider range of tones... I love that the DGT has two volumes, my only PRS which does. Makes a big difference.

Smitty, what kind of trembucker did you replace your JB with?
 
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eclecticsynergy said:
The JB really does do best with a 250K volume IMO. Some like them with 500K in a Les Paul, but especially for 25½" scale guitars I've always felt 250 sweetens the high end a bit. After all, the original was made for Jeff Beck's "Tele-Gib," an HH Telecaster.

One of the things I miss when playing two-pickup Fenders (and PRSs, my longtime favorite) is the ability to balance pickups using separate volumes. It gives access to such a wider range of tones... I love that the DGT has two volumes, my only PRS which does. Makes a big difference.

Smitty, what kind of trembucker did you replace your JB with?
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I honestly never knew that the "JB" was Jeff Beck! Thanks for the lesson Eclecticsynergy!
 
ninjaking67 said:
I think I will take Robert's advice and try a 0.015 uF in the bridge and a 0.01 uF in the neck.
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That's not a bad place to start. I started with .015 uF caps when I did my Jackson mods. However, with the JB and a Jazz pickups, I soon went to .022 uF caps, as they are fairly bright pickups. I found the .015 caps didn't allow me to adjust the tone as much as I needed.
 
ninjaking67 said:
Should I be considering a 250 kOhm pot for the neck as well? I still haven't decided on which pickup will be used though.
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That really depends on the pickups you'll be using. The rule of thumb is to use 500K Ohm pots for humbuckers. When I first installed a JB in the bridge and a Jazz in the neck on my Jackson, that is what I did. I used 500K for both.

However, the sound was too brittle on both pickups, so I ended up using a 250K volume pot for each pickup, which I liked better. When I researched things afterward, because this kind of bugged me, I discovered using 250K pots with those pickups is pretty common, Even though they are traditional-styled humbuckers. The bottom line is that you'll need to trust your ears!

I've learned to essentially double-order parts, unless I am 100% sure of what I want to use. For example, if I think I'll want to use a 500K pot, I'll also order a 250K pot. If I think I'll want to use a .015 uF cap, I'll also order a .022 uF cap. Of course, I've ended up with a small collection of parts, so I often have the alternative value on-hand, but you get the point.
 
smitty_p said:
That's not a bad place to start. I started with .015 uF caps when I did my Jackson mods. However, with the JB and a Jazz pickups, I soon went to .022 uF caps, as they are fairly bright pickups. I found the .015 caps didn't allow me to adjust the tone as much as I needed.
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You'll need to get it going and evaluate it. Not all JB's or M22SD's or SLE-101's will produce identical sonic results any more than all Les Paul's or Stratocasters will sound the same.

I have personally experienced several pickups in a batch that seemed to break all the rules. 300k pots are commonly used on bright pickups as well as the Bill Lawrence 220k ohm resistor in parallel with the bridge pickup's 'hot' lead.

I would also suggest consulting @Don O & @ivan H as we have all conducted exhaustive tone capacitor testing...
 
So I had originally planned on a roasted flamed maple neck with roasted flamed maple fretboard and was this close to pulling the trigger on a beautiful one from Warmoth but the shipping costs here to my little part of Canada are stupid high. It was going to be $74US just for shipping. That doesn’t even include the customs fees, etc that would also be added upon arrival. My inner Adrian took over and I just couldn’t do it.
As luck would have it a used Warmoth neck came up for sale locally. Not exactly what I had originally envisioned but the price was right and it is a beauty.
 
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