New lingerie for this sexy little number

[guitarslinger]

Project underway. Sadly I'm out of time today. More later when it's done.

 

[GAD]

Now that looks downright sexy!

 

[guitarslinger]

All done. But, is it better you may well ask. Hell yes! Nothing wrong with the Duncan's (They're going in a PRS SE Zach Myers.). But this is much, much more of the sound I want out of this guitar. So, that makes it better in my book.

 

[guitarslinger]

PS Many thanks to GAD for his excellent review of this guitar. Had it not been for that I mightn't have tried the HB1s. I'm glad I did.

 

[GAD]

Very cool! How did you manage the wood-screw holes?

 

[guitarslinger]

I filled the holes with wood glue and inserted miniature doweling (toothpicks), then, trimmed to the top with nippers. A little smoothing and touch up color. Absolutely necessary to plug because the new drill points don't match up, but, are VERY close to the old holes.

 

[GAD]

I filled the holes with wood glue and inserted miniature doweling (toothpicks), then, trimmed to the top with nippers. A little smoothing and touch up color. Absolutely necessary to plug because the new drill points don't match up, but, are VERY close to the old holes.

Very nice. Looks fantastic - well done!

 

[dbirchett]

Are you still able to split the coils? How do the HB-1s sound when you split them?

 

[GAD]

The new HB1s I got from Guilds don't have four leads so you can't split them.

Also, my NS Bluesbird did not have coil-split, regardless of what the website says.

 

[Quantum Strummer]

Also, my NS Bluesbird did not have coil-split, regardless of what the website says.

That's weird. There's a video overview of the guitar on YT from Guitarist magazine in the UK, and the coil-splitting feature is shown (and heard).

https://youtu.be/Kh-TyK-HJU8

-Dave-

 

[dbirchett]

Any chance we can get a more detailed report of the difference in the sound of the modified vs. the original?

 

[SFIV1967]

Also, my NS Bluesbird did not have coil-split, regardless of what the website says.

You need to pull the knobs on the tone pots !!!! Both are push-pull tone pots! Have you really checked the wires on the pickups? The pickups whould have them.

EDIT: Sorry, I didn't notice the pot cavity pictures you posted, so obviously you guitar has standard pots built in...

Ralf

 

[GAD]

That's weird. There's a video overview of the guitar on YT from Guitarist magazine in the UK, and the coil-splitting feature is shown (and heard).

https://youtu.be/Kh-TyK-HJU8

-Dave-

I just double checked and ended up pulling the knob off trying to pull it.

I wonder if there are two versions of this guitar out there and mine is an early model. I think coil split would be a fantastic feature on this guitar!

Here's the cavity on mine. As you can see, those are not push/pull pots. You can even see the red/white wires from the SD pickups tied together.

 

[GAD]

I've emailed Guild asking what's up. We'll see what they say.

 

[guitarslinger]

I just double checked and ended up pulling the knob off trying to pull it.

I wonder if there are two versions of this guitar out there and mine is an early model. I think coil split would be a fantastic feature on this guitar!

Here's the cavity on mine. As you can see, those are not push/pull pots. You can even see the red/white wires from the SD pickups tied together.

Same here. No push-pull. Red and white leads of the pickups twisted together.

 

[GAD]

You need to pull the knobs on the tone pots !!!! Both are push-pull tone pots! Have you really checked the wires on the pickups? The pickups whould have them.
Ralf

See my other posts. I know how push/pull pots work.

 

[GAD]

Pics of my new HB1s, both of which have only two leads.

 

[guitarslinger]

Any chance we can get a more detailed report of the difference in the sound of the modified vs. the original?

To me the Duncan in the neck lacked top end clarity and upper mid sparkle. It's something that I refer to as "air". At 7.4k it is right where I typically like a neck humbucker to be. But, I kept reaching for the neck tone knob to see if it was all the way up. The Duncan in the bridge @ 16k was a screamer with drive pedals, but, was highly saturated dark and lacked articulation. It sounded good, but, it sounded like a lot of other guitars. If you read GAD's review he mentions that the Bluesbird sounds really lively and louder than expected when played sans amp. That was true of mine as well. The HB1's (7.0 neck/7.1 bridge) seem to retain more of the guitar's unique tonal qualities. The HB1 neck just sounds like someone pulled a blanket off the amp. Clear, articulate,very round tones. The bridge pickup overdriven is not as saturated and seems to retain more of the tonal characteristics of the guitar. Now, I grew up playing a Guild with mini-buckers through a Magnatone M10 or M15. So, for me clean is king. And I tend to like my overdriven sounds in the low to mid gain range.
It's difficult to describe sound so I'll try to record some sounds and post tomorrow if they turn out.

 

[chazmo]

Cool, 'slinger. That's really an excellent description. I really know very little about electric guitars, but even I can understand what you are saying.

So, I missed a little bit of the background here, and please forgive the ignorant questions. The HB1 pickups that you transplanted into this beast are the ones coming from the Newark Street line? Is that what GAD is showing above? What about the guitar itself? Is that a Newark Street, or is it an older US-built model?

Looks fantastic, by the way, but I realize that's irrelevant to making it sound great. Well, doing it "right," as you clearly have is a great thing.

Oh, and regarding coil split, I think you guys are saying that because there's only two wires on the new HB1 pickups that there can't be any when you're using these? With the Seymour Duncan's *could* there have been coil split (even if there were no switches for it)?

Oh, and by the way, apparently, I'm your sheriff!

 

[GAD]

Cool, 'slinger. That's really an excellent description. I really know very little about electric guitars, but even I can understand what you are saying.

So, I missed a little bit of the background here, and please forgive the ignorant questions. The HB1 pickups that you transplanted into this beast are the ones coming from the Newark Street line? Is that what GAD is showing above? What about the guitar itself? Is that a Newark Street, or is it an older US-built model?

Looks fantastic, by the way, but I realize that's irrelevant to making it sound great. Well, doing it "right," as you clearly have is a great thing.

Oh, and regarding coil split, I think you guys are saying that because there's only two wires on the new HB1 pickups that there can't be any when you're using these? With the Seymour Duncan's *could* there have been coil split (even if there were no switches for it)?

Oh, and by the way, apparently, I'm your sheriff!

Correct on all assumptions.

Humbuckers are essentially two single coil pickups wired together in reverse phase. They look like this under the covers:

The signal basically goes through one coil in one direction and through the other coil in the other direction. This causes the signal to be duplicated, but it's upside down in one coil (out of phase). This causes any noise signal (hum) to be canceled while the "real" signal is amplified due to physics. There is one wire at the beginning of each coil, and one at the end. They're technically the same wire, so we'll call them leads. When the leads are hard-wired together within the pickup, the only thing you get out of the assembly is the first lead in and the last lead out. Like this:

This kind of pickup would have only two leads available for the end user, which in this picture would be the green and the black (they're usually black or white and ground in a 2-wire pickup).

On a 4-wire pickup, you get access to all four of the wires which allows you to do all sorts of cool things like inverting the phase and just outright removing one of the coils from the circuit.

If you look at the first pickup image above, you'll see that the red and green wires are folded back into the shrink-wrap tubing. These two wires are twisted (and soldered) together which makes the pickup behave like a normal two-wire pickup. Now look at my Bluesbird cavity pic and you'll see the Seymour Duncan pickup white and red leads are twisted together and shrink-wrapped. Look over the bottom left pot in the cavity and you'll see them with the long black shrink-wrap right over the middle of the pot.

Additionally, push-pull pots generally look like the pot on the right in the following pic while regular pots are wide and flat like the one on the left. Push-pull pots are actually a variable potentiometer (the turning pot pot) *and* a switch (the push-pull action) and are much taller with six additional terminals on them.