Warm neck pickup Trebly bridge, how to balance the sound?

paulnb57

The Tele Coodercaster elswhere hereabouts has a Soapbar P90 at the neck and a Lap Steel at the bridge.
The Lap pickup is bright and trebly like a Tele bridge and sounds great with the tone pot at about halfway, however this then makes the P 90 too dark, is there any way to permanently add a bit of tone roll off to the bridge pickup?
Tele controls through a Mojo loom and three way superswitch

paulnb57

Gut feeling is to take the tone out of the Neck pickup circuit, no idea how!....

ICBM

Yes. You can add an extra tone cap and a resistor (find the value by measuring the tone pot resistance at your preferred setting) to the bridge pickup connection.

paulnb57

Thanks @ICBM do I measure the resistance with eveything still connected? What size tone cap? Same as already there?

ICBM

paulnb57 said:

Thanks @ICBM do I measure the resistance with eveything still connected? What size tone cap? Same as already there?

Yes, if you like the sound of it. It's fine to measure the resistance with the pot connected because the cap will isolate it from the rest of the circuit. Just set it to where you like it and measure the resistance between the two terminals that are connected. If you like it best around halfway and it's a 250K Log pot, you should find about 25-50K depending on the exact taper.

paulnb57

Thanks!

Jimbro66

An alternative approach, although possibly not one you'd choose for the Coodercaster, is to use dual concentric pots and knobs. It then gives the option of one volume / two tones or two volumes / two tones whilst still occupying the space of single volume and tone controls. Handy for a Tele.

Control knobs might look like this

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dual-Concentric-Control-Knob-For-Electric-and-Bass-Guitars-/142133374536

In this sort of setup I like neck vol/tone in place of the standard volume control and bridge vol/tone in place of the standard tone control. Circuit diagrams can be found on the Phostenix web site.

koneguitarist

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7440801/Guitar Wiring/TeleBridgeTone1.jpg

This is should work ok. 

paulnb57

Thanks @koneguitarist the issue is with the bridge pickup as it is not like a Standard Humbucker, using the missle positin on a Threeway Tele switch gives an out of phase situation, which is why I used the MOJO loom, which routs everything through a Superswitch....
I think my main issue is that the neck P90 is significantly more powerful than the low output Lap pickup.
A couple of potential solutions are the resistor/cap mod suggested above
Replace the P90 and scratchlate the use a Stamdard Tele neck pockup which is mich lower output
Sack the expensive MOJO loom and start again....

koneguitarist

paulnb57 said:

Thanks @koneguitarist the issue is with the bridge pickup as it is not like a Standard Humbucker, using the missle positin on a Threeway Tele switch gives an out of phase situation, which is why I used the MOJO loom, which routs everything through a Superswitch....
I think my main issue is that the neck P90 is significantly more powerful than the low output Lap pickup.
A couple of potential solutions are the resistor/cap mod suggested above
Replace the P90 and scratchlate the use a Stamdard Tele neck pockup which is mich lower output
Sack the expensive MOJO loom and start again....

Just swap wires on P90 to sort phase out. Could just rewire the loom if you want, why did you get a super switch? 

paulnb57

koneguitarist said

Just swap wires on P90 to sort phase out. Could just rewire the loom if you want, why did you get a super switch? 

I didn't, it's what was supplied in the MOJO harness to combat any out of phase issues....except the neck pickup is too muddy with the tone rolled off and the bridge it too bright without.....I emailed Marc at MOJO asking how to remove the tone control from the neck pickup circuit and this is apparently not possible, with the way it is wired, my biggest issue really is, I am clueless in the art of wiring, I just don't understand how it works!
I can follow a diagram and wire it up, but have no idea what is happening!
If I could wire it through a three way switch with the bridge selecting the bridge with the tone and the neck position selecting the neck without the tone and nothing in the middle switch position that would probably do me......

ICBM

You can easily do it if you simply move the tone control connection to the bridge pickup.

paulnb57

@ICBM might bin the superswitch and follow @koneguitarist diagram....

impmann

Why not speak to Marc at Mojo to see what he suggests...

paulnb57

impmann said:

Why not speak to Marc at Mojo to see what he suggests...

Already have.......
Response was
that the P90 is too powerful for the low output Lap pickup
Try lowering the P90 - done
I cant rewire to have tone only on the bridge with the current harness....

Jimbro66

I guess you had a good reason to put in a P90 but if it is too powerful and causing such problems of imbalance have you considered changing it to a Mojo Teisco-style gold foil that others have used successfully with the Mojo lap steel pup?

 If you really prefer to keep the P90, turning down the tone of the bridge pickup just accentuates the imbalance problem. The concentric controls I mentioned would enable you to control volume and tone of each pickup to restore balance.

paulnb57

Jimbro66 said:

I guess you had a good reason to put in a P90 but if it is too powerful and causing such problems of imbalance have you considered changing it to a Mojo Teisco-style gold foil that others have used successfully with the Mojo lap steel pup?

 If you really prefer to keep the P90, turning down the tone of the bridge pickup just accentuates the imbalance problem. The concentric controls I mentioned would enable you to control volume and tone of each pickup to restore balance.

The P90 got fitted because I like them and because the big chrome cover fitted with the Lap pickup in the looks dept, Marc at MOJO suggested a lower wind custom P90......I have a cheap Tele scratchplate on the way to try a Standard Tele neck pickup which is less out put, to see how that pans out, then I think I will consider a rewire and sack the Superswitch......a master volume and dual concentric tones is a possibility...... 

ICBM

paulnb57 said:

I cant rewire to have tone only on the bridge with the current harness....

Why not? All you have to do is disconnect the tone control from the volume control and connect it to the bridge pickup instead. It doesn't matter how the switch is wired.

If it won't reach because it's the cap which connects the two controls together, reverse it so the cap is between the tone control and ground, and connect the tone to the switch with a wire.

Jimbro66

paulnb57 said:

Jimbro66 said:

I guess you had a good reason to put in a P90 but if it is too powerful and causing such problems of imbalance have you considered changing it to a Mojo Teisco-style gold foil that others have used successfully with the Mojo lap steel pup?

 If you really prefer to keep the P90, turning down the tone of the bridge pickup just accentuates the imbalance problem. The concentric controls I mentioned would enable you to control volume and tone of each pickup to restore balance.

The P90 got fitted because I like them and because the big chrome cover fitted with the Lap pickup in the looks dept, Marc at MOJO suggested a lower wind custom P90......I have a cheap Tele scratchplate on the way to try a Standard Tele neck pickup which is less out put, to see how that pans out, then I think I will consider a rewire and sack the Superswitch......a master volume and dual concentric tones is a possibility...... 

I have to agree that the chromed P90 does complement the lap steel bridge pu looks-wise so maybe a low-wind Mojo version is the answer? A lower wind might also make the P90 a little brighter, which could help the tonal balance.

paulnb57

ICBM said:

paulnb57 said:

I cant rewire to have tone only on the bridge with the current harness....

Why not? All you have to do is disconnect the tone control from the volume control and connect it to the bridge pickup instead. It doesn't matter how the switch is wired.

If it won't reach because it's the cap which connects the two controls together, reverse it so the cap is between the tone control and ground, and connect the tone to the switch with a wire.

Why not? Honestly I don't know, but I think part of the issue is that way the Lap Pickup is made its unlike a "normal" humbucker I believe..........I think the Lap pickups is wired so each coil is wired to a different part of the super switch to combat out of phase or similar in the both pickups together switching, I don't know or understand the issue........I bought a read wired harness from MOJO and just had to solder the pickups to the switch, but I will scan the instruction sheet to see if anyone can offer any advice.......

paulnb57

This is from the Lollar site, same pickup.....

"This pickup has two coils – one under the bottom three strings and one under the top three. The coils are wound so they dramatically reduce 60 cycle hum (humbucking) however the pickup still sounds like a single coil. In order for the pickup to work correctly and get good volume balance between the strings the coils are out of phase with each other- if we arranged the magnets so the coils were in phase with each other the pickup would give you bad string volume balance- some strings would be much louder than others so it’s the nature of the design that it works best with the coils out of phase with each other but because each coil senses different strings their phase doesn’t matter. HOWEVER this DOES present a problem if you install this pickup into a guitar with more than one pickup. If you combine this pickup (typically installed in the bridge position)  with a neck pickup or any other pickup in any position and you use both at once in combination half of the strings will be in phase and half will be out of phase. This is only a problem if you run two pickups at once."