They are pricey but so is buying several different paf clones to try and get the sound then caving in and buying these. There are other potential pickups to use, but then you have to start modifying pickups the make the adjustments. There are a very specific set of alloys in the metal parts of these that can be duplicated if you know what they are … but thro back has done all of the hard work… I worked out the alloys and have parts to convert any paf clone, I use motor city black belts with some parts swapped
This kind of test is useless. Between inconsistent stumming, cap values new could be 20% apart, old caps can drift, then using ears where placebo enters in. Just put in any type of the value you prefer and go play.
@@patfurlan Yea, just saw it and was fresh in my mind from debating someone else. Actually farads are what determine freq. Cycles are a measure of time and so are farads. How fast it charges vs how many times polarity changes. Not that complicated really. Still interesting to watch these kinds of comparisons.
@@bradt.3555 as primitive as this test was the different behaviour of the signal was obvious at the time. Obvious enough to suggest I install old pio in a couple of test guitars and just go and play… imho the right cap is more important than the right pickup, and the wrong cap will choke any decent pickup back to mediocre…
@@patfurlan Ah, really it's placebo. Different material caps especially as they function in a guitar has no effect. Many, many, people have actually done blind tests and the results were no difference. You have to remember also if your hearing is sensitve to tone as I've developed mine over many years, what you notice is the very minute differences in value not material. Almost all people won't even be able to tell a .022 cap from an .047 with the guitar tone on 10.
I'm looking for "low friction" speed pots, you know so I can do volume swells...are these DiMarzio like that? EVH low friction are my fav but they only make them in solid shaft, and I need these for a strat.
The EVH pots are terrible… low friction but they fall apart ! I like the sound of the dimarzio and the taper but I don’t think they spin as quick as the EVH
I picked up a studio mate for 100 bucks last year. Someone cut.it down , crudely , to a head. It was stock. I tried a couple furlan mods and changed the v1a cathode to .68uf and 2.7k. Im going to try a couple more mods outlined in your repairing trashed amps video, And i may put an nfb pot in. Also MIEC makes a 40uf axial still !
In another black and white video, George had his cab mic'd at the center of the speaker but there was a cloth face that had a 3" circle of wood? backing support for the grill cloth covering the center of the speaker. The narrator explained that the treble high end sound would travel to the outer rim of the speaker, breaking up the harshness of the high end treble, blending it into the rest of the sound into the mic placed about a foot to 16" away. . To emulate that setup, i made a round cardboard cover attached with tape to do the same with the mic as he did. Blend the treble to the outer edge instead of straight into the mic. I have the cover on even playing without the mic and its not so peaky in the high end in an open room. Also, i made a cardboard cover that brings the sound out the front in a half open back amp. So my mid bass is present in the front instead of into the walls behind the amp. And cardboard does resonate different than a masonite panel would. I play a Tele thinline and i enjoy the open sound. I even use elixir phos. bronze strings to get a string sound while i play mostly clean tones. Sometimes a pinch of overdrive or distortion, depending on how i ramp up my pick attack or where i play over the pickups or not. My amp is a Mustang LT25 on superclean digital (zero 60cycle hum) into a Crate cab with a G12k 100 Celestion speaker. That crate amp died so, i have a great Studio setup. I use Behringer acoustic DI to preamp my signal and the tone is so full with that 25 watt Fender amp. About that cardboard circle...i need tremble to get the high frequency tone from my wound strings and covering the center of the speaker cone as it doesnt let the treble dominate that tone right off what the mic can pickup. One cannot calibrate that electronically, so ya gotta do it physically with a circle of cardboard. Thanks George Harrison ! hahahaha I love your videos, sir.... I enjoy messing with stuff as you do. Very informative videos, thank you ! My next experiment is to mic 10' away from my amp, mic facing into a corner wall with a cone around the mic barrel to draw the sound in. The room is about 20' x 20' carpeted with two couches to absorb some reverberant sounds. I desire a large, natural sounding room. We'll see. Also, my Yamaha finger drum kit will run thru that Celestion and i desire to make a big room sound, in real time. I record with a Zoom R12. Works great$$
I like the 160 p best ! That definitely sounds like an old Marshall 50 watt jmp ! Is it ? Great video but I would have loved to hear the vintage mustard cap made by mullard along with those others .
I’ve installed 3 sets for people they are as magical as any set of authentic pafs I’ve played … throw all your pedals in the garbage and do it all with an old school tube amp !
Sounds great! I’m surprised at how nice the 2 pickups sound together considering how much hotter the neck pickup is. I’m curious how the neck pickup sounds on its own especially overdriven. I would think it might be a bit too dark or muddy sounding just cause that’s what I have found with hotter output neck pickups but your demo of these sound great. Do you still have this set of pickups in the guitar?
Great tutorial. I looked into doing this for some bassy/flubby Alnico II Pickups, but I was able to buy the same pickup with Alnico V for the same amount of money. I'll try this when I have more time.
Sg I run 525 to 550 volume and tone neck, 400 to 450 for volume and tone bridge .seams to take a little ice pick / harshness off the bridge pickup .nice work and information
Thank you Pat. What is the purpose of the resistor?...and please don't say "to resist" lol. Is it to modify the sweep of the pot? How do different values effect the sound?
The resistor acts as a bypass around the resistive element of the pot … making the pickup seem way more touch sensitive at midway up… if your volume chokes out when turned half way down .. the resistor is the cure
Except OP amps contribute almost nothing to the tone of pedal. Go watch that vid on here where a studio in Nashville got a bunch of session players together to listen to examples of a tube Screamer pedal while they swapped OP amps. Then they asked which sounded better and they were all over the map. They started with a 4558 that everyone says it has to have to sound right and there was basically no discernable difference between them. They even tested a chip that wasn't even an OP amp and it was basically the same, as well. It was done by Truetone that makes the 1 Spot, etc... It's called OP-amp myth buster #2
I fully agree with your idea of how a wah should sound - I had SOLA sound wah as my first wah and it was excellent, mechanically weak, but had the right vocal quality, now many years later I've have found on in Germany that is on its way, looking forward to that 😁
Changing the cathode resistor does not change gain, it does change the operating point instead. Using a higher value, such as 10K, turns the stage into a cold clipper like the overdrive stage of a master volume Marshall 2203 or 2204. Changing that plate resistor to 330K will let you get into heavy metal territory.
I was just watching Psionic he's an amp repair some of you might be familiar with. He says capacitors "sound exactly the same". Would these caps behave anything like this under high voltage in a guitar amp?
Lots of other videos showing only the cap value matters. All .02 uF caps sound the same. If it was .022, or .018 uF it sounds different. Also, surprising they all had a sound when "wide open" unless you are using a no-load pot. The wide-open tone varied more than if the pot was rolled off (then they all sound the same).
This is study in confirmation bias. The conclusions of the tester are utter nonsense. For his favourite caps he hits the strings harder than the ones he has decided he doesnt like and even fumbles fingering on them and says the tone has died. Sustain is a result of the string vibrating not tone capacitors
That MXR sounded better imo Typically the D+ works better with humbuckers (like the Les Paul in the vid) and a DOD 250 is better with single coil pickups.
Thanks, Pat ! I just scored a studio mate that was chopped down to a head for 100 bucks. Pretty much stock. I just clipped the presence cap and put in the same mallory. .01uf. I read that 22uf filter caps give it a bit more gain. I may try it and see
Not gain …. More of a pleasant compression curve… if filters are too big any amp can be too stiff …and amplify things you don’t want like the extreme top and bottom… when the filters are sized right they emphasize the good midrange… it’s the same idea as fuzz face pedals sounding terrible with a power adapter vs a crappy old battery… you want the envelope of the note to be musical
I suppose you could … not sure how uniformly you could do the process that way … sometimes you just have to push down your fear to learn new things … however if you regularly break stuff and can’t operate a screwdriver… then go with your idea …I’m not being insulting… I just know people who know they should avoid tools and know their limitations…
@@patfurlan yeah. Its not that I dont know how to don it. Its just that its such a hassle to remove the top sitting on the cab and then demount the speakers do the thing and then put it all back together. I guess i could try the aceton process on some speakers i have lying around before i take the cab apart lol
Hey Pat,are you still modding amps.Great info on some less explored amps,especially Traynor amps(I'm a Canukn who owns several models).are you still playing live? what model is the Hammond transformer.Cheers
