Bob!

mccreadyisgodmccreadyisgod Posts: 6,395
edited June 2008 in Musicians and Gearheads
I politely, but sternly, DEMAND some P-Rails reviews!



you promised...
...and if you don't like it, you can suck on an egg.
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • NovawindNovawind Posts: 836
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZhJXcSVnfs

    Pretty good official Seymour-Duncan demo. I'm tempted to pop one in the bridge of my Epi LP.
    If idle hands are the devil's workshop, he must not be very productive.

    7/9/06 LA 1
    7/10/06 LA 2
    10/21/06 Bridge 1
  • IDgotIIDgotI Posts: 262
    To quote Darth Vader: Impressive, most impressive.
  • Actually sort of suprised. Not bad.
    E. Lansing-98 Columbus-00,03,10 Detroit-00,03 (1&2),06, 14 Cleveland-03,06,10 Toledo-04, Grand Rapids-04,06 London-05, Toronto-05, Indianapolis 10, East Troy (1&2) 11, Chicago 13, Detroit 14

    https://www.facebook.com/aghostwritersapology/
  • mccreadyisgodmccreadyisgod Posts: 6,395
    Bump!
    ...and if you don't like it, you can suck on an egg.
  • who's_pearljam?who's_pearljam? Posts: 2,104
    I politely, but sternly, DEMAND some P-Rails reviews!



    you promised...


    :D


    I didn't say when!

    Ok, well:

    P-Rail reviews, by Bob.


    Haha,, sorry, I had a spate of busyness this week and didn’t have much chance to get back to you!

    I stuck them in a Les Paul Classic which is a great Paul and I got it cheap used. I don’t like the 500T bridge pup in those, though. Very brittle and harsh with the ceramic magnets

    So, through a Vibrochamp and a Fender Deluxe, outstanding! I also ran it through a Marshall combo that’s wired to Bluesbreaker standard and it brought the Marshall to life.

    In single coil mode, they sound really good. A bit Strat-like but you aren’t going to get true Strat sound without the longer string scale and springs, but it's good, and when you mix the two, it has a really good “in between” sound. That video above is pretty good, but on the Paul the single coil sound wasn’t that doinky, but it’s a usable tone and the bridge and neck combined sounds great.

    P-90 mode. Hahahahahahahah Excellent! They frigging rock at this! Mixing the two is a great sound, too. They’re really quiet, too. I shielded the cavities when I did the pickups so maybe that helped. I didn’t do the cleanest wiring job mostly because I was just seeing if they worked and was experimenting. Crappy wiring really contributes to hum, but they don’t hum much at all, which was a surprise. Now that I like the setup, I wish I planned the routes a bit better, but if I keep it like this I’ll rewire it to the Jimmy Page wiring specs. Two more push pull switches and more sounds that I’ll probably never use, but what the hell. :D

    Humbucker series mode - I measured them at 18,000 ohms which is as powerful a humbucker you can find and I was surprised that they didn’t sound too dark and not too overwhelming on the amps. I thought they would sound kind of like the 500T one that I took out, but no. They sound really good with the volume backed off, too, and clean up really well.
    I usually like to do a treble bleed resistor on a single coil pickup to keep the highs when you back off the volume. It'll be complicated to do on this one because of all the switching involved, but since the single coils are quieter than the other modes, they'll probably be on 10 all the time, anyway.

    Parallel Humbucker mode. It’s in between the humbucker and the p-90 mode and it sounds good, but it’s almost the same as the P-90 mode until you turn up the amp. With a loud tube amp it’s glorious! It drove the preamp channel nicely, but with the Marshall cranked to 7.5, every combination on these sounded great. The best being the p-90 mode and second best, Humbucker in series and in parallel modes/
    Really, to benefit from all this, you need your amp turned up high, otherwise, the differences will be a bit more subtle.
    Be bold! Turn that thing to eleven!

    My next step is to figure out what capacitors to put on these. Since you’re dealing with the combo of single coils, hot p-90 single coils, and humbuckers, it’s a bit of of a challenge to figure out what the best switching and capacitor arraignment works best.


    The victim:

    DSC04179.jpg


    Yanking out the 500T and 498 whatever the neck one is.
    DSC06696.jpg

    I sound best when I play this way!:
    DSC06697.jpg

    Clean stock Gibson wiring:
    http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v39/mynamehere/guitar%20building/DSC06691.jpg

    Copper foil shielding:
    DSC06701.jpg

    Mish Mash stock Who’s_pearljam?corp wiring :D
    I opted out of putting push pulls in the volume pots until I heard these in Seymour Duncan recommended wiring. I may do the Jimmy Page wiring set up for the hell of it, and play around with the capacitors and all, but I see what this does first and I’ll need a teeny dinky little soldering iron to get into all that stuff.
    :
    DSC06729.jpg


    DSC06964.jpg




    Next project:

    DSC06887.jpg

    Dude's a great player:
    http://jgguitars.com/frame.html Click on Signature at the bottom and Fuzeblaster. That's what he plays now.


    Dave Fiuczynski ROCKED on that guitar at the jazz festival here last week.
    Double neck with 6 string on the bottom, and a twelve string fretless but with only 6 strings on it on top. I was talking to him and having a beer after the show and I played it and now I want to yank the frets out of a Martin I have and make it a fretless.

    Future victim:
    DSC04166.jpg



    I also want to change the magnets on the 500T pickups from ceramic to alnico.

    Yeah,,,, I'll be right on that. ;) Maybe after my Master Brewer's school's out. :D
    Be kind, man
    Don't be mankind. ~Captain Beefheart
    __________________________________
  • mccreadyisgodmccreadyisgod Posts: 6,395
    Thank you!

    Sounds like I need to find me a mule...
    ...and if you don't like it, you can suck on an egg.
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