Bought a red Blues 90 previously owned and gigged by Texas band The Vanished. It's gnarly in there!

[welshtoast]

It's a Blues 90 with serial #CL002281 (any of you boffins know how to get data based on this serial?) and I knew when I bought it that it had been well-played and gigged. It's still lovely in spite of all the road rash:





The frets were shagged, so I carefully re-crowned them and it plays a lot nicer now. However, it sounded like crap plugged in... super distorted, woody, thin, just awful. I measured the impedance of the pickups:

• Neck: 56.6k
• Bridge: 66k

Well that's clearly not right! I popped off the rear cover to reveal:



Goodness me, did it take a bath in sea water? I may have to replace those pots...

 

[Teleguy61]

One has to wonder what the heck The Vanished were up to.

 

[Default]

Probably from the tour with Bermuda Trianglez.

 

[welshtoast]

One has to wonder what the heck The Vanished were up to.

Groupie juice.

 

[GGJaguar]

Congrats on the nice looking Blues 90! I hope you get it sorted out.

 

[Guildedagain]

Salty

 

[SFIV1967]

It's a Blues 90 with serial #CL002281 (any of you boffins know how to get data based on this serial?)

That is a year 2000 serial number. The two orange capacitors are not stock, they are already better replacements.

Ralf

 

[welshtoast]

That is a year 2000 serial number. The two orange capacitors are not stock, they are already better replacements.

Ralf

Yeah the bridge pickup has been replaced with a high output one and those caps are 47nF, which seems a little high - I'd expect 22nF. Do you know what comes fitted from the factory?

 

[GGJaguar]

the bridge pickup has been replaced with a high output one

I wonder why because the factory stock pickup is already pretty hot - the Duncan Hot P-90 (11.8K-ohm).

 

[mushroom]

I'd expect 22nF. Do you know what comes fitted from the factory?

Here is a picture of the inside of mine.
A zoom in is 203 M.

Hope this helps.

 

[Guilderland21]

Another datapoint from a slightly different model: The inside of my 1997 Bluesbird looks very similar to mushroom's picture; it's hard to read the capacitor stamp on the picture I took when I had it open a few weeks ago but I think it also says 203M (which I gather is 20nF).

 

[Hobbesickles]

Another datapoint from a slightly different model: The inside of my 1997 Bluesbird looks very similar to mushroom's picture; it's hard to read the capacitor stamp on the picture I took when I had it open a few weeks ago but I think it also says 203M (which I gather is 20nF).

And to add another datapoint, I just did the Peter Green mod to my '97 Bluesbird and replaced the neck capacitor with a .022 µF PIO. The original capacitor sitting in front of me also says 203M.

 

[welshtoast]

Great stuff, thanks guys. I’ll post pics of the surgery as it happens!

 

[welshtoast]

And to add another datapoint, I just did the Peter Green mod to my '97 Bluesbird and replaced the neck capacitor with a .022 µF PIO. The original capacitor sitting in front of me also says 203M.

Interesting! What is the Peter green mod?

 

[Hobbesickles]

Interesting! What is the Peter green mod?

A post on the Les Paul Forum from 2002 sums it best:
"The mod is to take one of the pickups (only one) and flip the magnet over. That changes its polarity relative to the coils. It doesn't matter which pickup you do it to. You won't notice a difference when you're using the pickup by itself. The difference shows when you put the pickups in parallel. You get an "out of phase" sound that you can vary by playing with the volume controls."

I did it to the neck pickup on mine and I happened to have a high quality capacitor on hand left over from a build several years ago. It's a fun mod but I wouldn't have done it if that particular guitar was in better shape.

 

[Hobbesickles]

Anyways, here are pics of my 2000 Blues 90 serial number CL001999. Only modifications are the control knobs, switch tip, and tuner knobs. I have all the original parts but thought this guitar needed a little more flash or contrast.

 

[welshtoast]

Thanks all!

I had some time to work on it this weekend. I'm pretty sure the neck pickup (around 12k) is stock:


The bridge measured a whopping 32k and appears to by a high output Seymour Duncan:



The original pots were a mess and I tossed them in the trash:





Before tossing them I made sure to document the wiring properly!

 

[welshtoast]

Goodies!



Matte cream covers:



These are 50s wind P90s from Lollar:



They measure 7.2k (neck) and 7.3k (bridge) at DC and they sure do look nicely made:



So far so good. Next up: assembling the electronics.

 

[welshtoast]

I made a template for the initial wiring because it's easier than working in a guitar cut-out:



I ordered some 22nF orange drops for this build, but in the end I robbed the bits box for some really nice10nF polystryene foils (2x in parallel) and a 1nF Vishay 1813 polypropylene to create a compound 21nF tone cap.



I use sensible star grounding on all my builds (amps, pedals, guitars, you name it), so in this guitar there is a single common ground spot: the neck pickup pot:



Don't worry about the oceans of flux, that's what isopropyl is for

The cable ends were a bit scraggly after its previous surgeries, so I tidied them up a bit:



It's not factory standard, but I like it:

 

[welshtoast]

Up and running... sorry about the potato quality photos, I'll take some better ones tomorrow.





There's a couple of setup things I'll change - like lowering the nut a smidge and flattening out the relief, oh and I need to shim the bridge pickup a little, it's too low and is quieter than then neck when both are dimed - but boy do I like this guitar now that it doesn't sound like a swarm of angry bees in a cement mixer.

Somehow throughout my whole life I'd never played amplified P90s until now. I just raw-dogged it straight into my amp (with the reverb up, i don't play dry like an animal) and wow, when you dime the guitar those P90s are filthy things. Brilliant. Love 'em. But they clean up real sweet, too, and I found myself turning the guitar down and noodling in the sparlky, reverb-y sounds.

I opted for the 50s style P90s because I'm a single coil guy at heart and the 50s seemed (in youtube videos, lol) to generally be a more open and bright sound than "normal" P90s. Having spent some time playing them, I tend to agree with the videos and these pickups seem to have the parts I like most about both single coils and humbuckers: they've got the girthy, fat sound of a humbucker, much fatter than my strat or tele, but they're not as squishy as my les paul... they've got the janglyness, brightness, the cut and clarity of single coils... but with the room-filling richness, dirt, and sustain of humbuckers. Really really cool. Total keeper.