Mystery Caps Identified
In my tone cap material types comparison, there were a couple vintage caps which I couldn’t identify. I referred to them anonymously as the Yellow Cylinder and the Fat Gray Cylinder.
Today, a kind gentleman by the name of Bill Zumwalt was able to give me the clues I needed to track these old caps down and unmask their true identities. The search keywords I needed were CDE and Mustard! More
Winding and Potting Pickups
I was just looking up info on re-potting pickups to help a friend whose humbuckers are squealing.
I came across this great web page on making your own pickups, using parts from Stewart-MacDonald.
He’s got a nice pictorial, as well as a video showing the process, beginning to end.
He built his own winder out of an electric drill, with a modified calculator to count the windings.
He made another really nice winder with a vintage sewing machine. Sweet!
I’ve seen many web pages before about making pickups, but I just like this guy’s style, creativity and presentation. Well done!
Inspiring project. I gotta try this some day!
Update: Brainrender’s site seems to have gone, but the videos are still available on youtube.
Oh, For the Love of an AC15
Wow. Yesterday, I had a chance to play a session through a new Vox AC15C1. Really dynamic and responsive to play. Great character and presence, and a really nice break up when you dig in.
My usual session amp, a late-eighties solid-state Fender Stage 185, is increasingly unsatisfying to play- seems I can never find the right level of brightness in a band setting. Cranking up the presence, or tweaking the treble tends to make it harsh before it becomes pleasant. The clean channel is pretty nice, but the drive/boost channel tends to feel a bit fizzy.
Vox has just released a new hand-wired series, including the AC15HW1, pictured left. After my experience with the AC15C1, I’m anxious to hear whether the use of top-shelf components, hand wiring, tube rectifier, birch cabinet, ruby tubes, can make the already great sounding AC15 even better.
I also really like the ability to kick in extra gain with the new hot/cool foot switch, and the the OP mode switch to drop to 7.5W for nighttime playing.
The only things missing from the hand-wired series are the tremolo and reverb. One tune in yesterday’s session, Glen Phillips’ excellent laid back version of I Want A New Drug, calls for a bit of tremolo- but every time I tried kicking in the AC15C1’s trem, I just found it distracting and reached back to flick down the knob- perhaps I was just overdoing it, but I think I can probably live without it :) And while the AC15C1’s reverb is very warm, smooth and pleasant- I rarely use reverb. And I must say, if you turn the verb knob up over about 10%, it just sounds huuuuge, like you’re playing inside a water tower.
Warning- explicit photos follow:
Full disclosure- I work for Korg R&D, which owns Vox. So perhaps I’m a little biased towards Vox, over other alternatives (employee discount, woo-hoo!)
UPDATE 3/22/2011: I did eventually buy that AC15HW1, and it is a thing of beauty. I borrowed Chuck’s AC15C1 again and made a video comparing the two.
Humbucker Wiring
I often get asked how to decipher the colors on humbucker pickups, and how to wire them up. Different manufactures use different wire colors. Can’t we all just get along? 🙂
First, refer to this great color chart, courtesy of Seymour Duncan (at right). If your pickup manufacturer isn’t on this list, try this StewMac pickup color codes page, which includes Fralin, Barden, etc. Another option is this color code chart at Guitar Electronics.
If your pickup doesn’t seem to match any of these color code charts, you can use the techniques described in this FAQ by Tim Stanley on identifying the wires using a multimeter.
Once you know which wire is North Start and Finish, and South Start and Finish, then you can refer to the humbucker circuit diagrams at GuitarElectronics.com. They have every variation imaginable, with coil tapping, push pulls, series/parallel, 3-way levers, 5-way levers, etc.
Here’s a typical Gibson wiring with 2 volume, 2 tone and a 3-way toggle switch:
Understanding Circuit Diagrams
I know, circuit diagrams can get really confusing. This has all the answers:
Image courtesy of the comedic genius of xkcd