I finished installing my Vintage MKII in my 2017 Les Paul tonight. It sounds better than it ever has. It was originally a Trad Pro IV and I hated the pickups and the complex wiring setup. I bought Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates and had them installed at a local guitar shop and I hated the way they wired it; could not use the volume controls or mix them the way I wanted. Ripped it all out and the Obsidian sounds rich and full, amazing, this is the sound I've been looking for since I bought the guitar. The sound is clean and full. Highly recommend! But, they are right: easy, not instant.
The types of pots you use also have an affect on the circuit, and how the guitar sounds. To my ear, it sounds like that guitar has a logarithmic (A) taper for the volume control. Personally, I like vintage wiring, cause it makes the tone controls feel more useful. When I wire it, though, I use a linear (B) taper on the volume and A tapers on the tone. I just checked my guitars and they don't have that treble roll off you were demonstrating -- either that, or it's much less noticeable. But still, nice video and cool wiring kit.
50's wiring act as a trebble booster. You play at lower setting, then crank the vol when soloing. You got the boost and more highs to go trough the mix. It's the best to play without pedal on a crunchy amp.
Is the small ceramic cap and resistor next to the .022uf tone caps a treble bleed circuit? If so, are the cap and resistor connected in series (Kinman) or parallel (Duncan). Cap and resistor vales?
I would say the whole point of a volume control is to roll back volume :). The 50s wiring does allow a slight amount of treble roll off (Less than current Gibson wiring which gets muddy fast). Our 60s Plus setup retains treble at lower volumes.
Mine arrives weds can’t wait. I consider these kits to be an upgrade to fender custom shop wiring. Best quality and opens up a new world of being able to quickly swap out pickups. Don’t need as many strats/teles when I can swap out pickups in 10mins. The components are highest level and the sound quality is incredible
POS product- total scam. If it's not soldered it's not gig-worthy. Tried two of these in a row and followed the instructions exactly... sound cut out completely in the middle of TWO GIGS IN A ROW! Plain & simple solder-less connections cannot stand up to the rigors of regular playing. Save your money and get real (aka soldered) electronics.
Hey there - we do get this request a lot but unfortunately can't get the parts we'd need for this just at the moment. We hope to be able to find a solution in the future but cannot be sure when this would be.
Hi. Did you had to do any modification to be able to fit the PCB in the cavity? I am looking to upgrade my Epiphone Les Paul Modern and was wondering if will be a perfect fit! Thanks
Stop buying these prewire expensive harnesses !! One can buy 4 Bourns pots with 2x .022 caps and 2x treble bleeds for about $30 ! 50s wiring but reverse volume connections for independent controls, and 2x mini switches for wiring pickups parallel/series if feasible !! This dude makes excellent noise !! Distortion crap !!
so i wired it up just like you showed as i followed along the after i get finalyy in there you tell us you did it wrong? so now i have to re do it? wtf
Well, the most complex part of this install is where exactly to plug which wires into the the 10-port panel. Might not be rocket science, but I'm looking for guidance & this video is "some guy likes his new pickups, had no probs installing them, here's a split second view of the product, now back to this guy jamming us to near sleep". I could've mentioned the fact the video quality is worse than the backup camera in my 6yr old Subaru, but hey, why trip a dwarf... I bought the same Obsidian kit (7-way), and I'm installing it on a Fender American Performer HSS. I'm installing a Shawbucker 2 bridge pickup to replace the double-tap humbucker that came with it. I'm not interested in retaining coil splitting anyway, so good riddance to the pots that were in there. All wires prepped, ready to install. According to the instructions, I'm using the guide for "Custom HSS / HSS 7-Way" config, per the included instructions. Output Jack: white wire hot, pos.#2, black wire ground, pos.#1. Neck Pickup: white wire hot, pos #4. black wire ground, pos #3. Middle Pickup: yellow wire hot, pos.#6. black wire ground, pos. #5. So far so good, now we come to the Humbucker. This 'Shawbucker 2' bridge humbucker has 5 wires: Bare ground wire, red, green, white, black. Printed Instructions with the Obsidian kit: Pos.#7 is "Grnd (S.Start)" Pos.#8 is "Hot (N.Start)" Pos.#9 is "Series (S.Finish)" Pos.#10 is "Series (N.Finish)" Same instructions on Obsidian website: Pos.#7 is "Bridge Ground" Pos.#8 is "Bridge Hot" Pos.#9 is "Bridge Series 1" Pos.#10 is "Bridge Series 2"
Hi There, Flick us a message at service@obsidianwire.com. We will be happy to help. We also have an install demo here ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Vygy5vCBjiw.html plus plenty of help on our site here nz.obsidianwire.com/blogs/product-support/strat-install
@@ObsidianWire Appreciate the reply. Infuriatingly, there are so many vague references, most of them from Fender, but some from that wee booklet from Obsidian. Everyone's got a schema, a PDF, not so much as a tiny tab on each wire to tell you what the wire does. I'm not skilled in electronics, but I can solder a wire & insert a wire into a pinch-port, so why not give it a try. Shawbucker 2 --> American Performer Strat (2018, HSS) Since the default 'double-tap' humbucker is really awful, and after trying & failing to install a 'Free-Way 10-way switch' properly on this guitar, I was inspired by (convinced I was dumb enough to need) the solderless approach. Why the Obsidian solderless system isn't the defacto for all electric guitars, I can only assume is because the old days of 5lbs of solder & a hundred wires has become tradition, a fetish, or a general distaste for humanity... The complexities in an HSS with coil splitting is ridiculous. If I knew what I need to do every step, I could do it. I could have dumped it with a tech. I'm not cheap, I just want to learn how to do this stuff on my own. Without the Obsidian system, I wouldn't have been able to do it. Fender is mostly to blame here. They simply can't have a page for this humbucker with a path to the schema - it has to be a schema referring to a series, which has changed its wire colors with the season. For someone unskilled, installing a Shawbucker2 into the Obsidian system can be frustrating. I'm assuming the overall intent & design of this product is to make things easier, obvious & specific. "Out" (Why not say 'Output Jack'?) "N Start"? Just say 'North Start'! Maybe even tell us what that even is? "Series 1". What series? There are 4 wires. Anything other than "Red Wire, Green Wire..." is, as simple as it may be to you, an industry term. "Bridge Hot"? The entire humbucker is the bridge pickup. I thought 'Red' means hot. To Fender, it's 'Green'. These are the correct ports for the 4 humbucker wires: Port 7 - 'Ground, South Start': [translation: RED wire] Port 8 - 'Hot, N Start, Bridge Hot': [translation: GREEN wire Port 9 - 'Bridge Series 1, South Finish': [translation: BLACK wire Port 10 - 'Bridge Series 2, North Finish': [translation: WHITE wire Result: It works great, albeit a tiny crackle when changing switch positions, but that's likely shoddy grounding on my part.
I have some amazing pickups from Jim Wagner Pickups in my Knaggs Steve Stevens model and the neck is pretty much an exact copy of Clayton’s Cream era guitar. Now I also have coil split abilities on my pickups. It’s all wired in a 50’s style. So what happens when I split the coils (independently from one another) is the guitar suddenly sounds very much like a vintage Strat. All with rolling the volume down! I dig it more than a clean with a coil split. It has more character to the tones
You got it backward buddy. 50’s is high pass filter and trims bass out of the signal first when turning down the volume, not treble. Modern wiring is low pass filter and trims highs first. This is where the 50’s wiring is cleaning the signal up with the volume knob. Bass frequencies overdrive the signal first. This is why the 50’s wiring cleans up better. Modern wiring gets darker when you turn down the volume. I’ve made and installed several hundred 50’s harnesses over the years.
Hey There, We do our wiring a little different. Our modern harness includes a treble bleed so it stays crisp right the way through the volume control range.
I also came here to say this. You don't need a treble bleed with 50's wiring the configuration of cap and volume is pretty much a built in treble bleed. The difference is a 50's configuration will give you more interactive volume and tone. Rolling down the tone on a 50's wired guitar will also affect volume. With modern wiring this doesn't happen but you do get high tone loss with volume as a result.
@@type197 try a treble bleed with 50's wiring you'll surprise yourself. I used the mythos variable treble bleed with the 50's wiring and it still had helped brighten it on lower volume.
@@ObsidianWire just to clarify, the 2 wires both go into the PCB screw ground (both bridge and cavity) and that's all I need to do for the grounding of the system?
@@lordseph Hi There, You need to ground all metal parts to the harness (rather than grounding the harness to the guitar). For most setups this would be bridge and any cavity shielding. The screw connector can handle all of these. I hope this helps.
I feel you skipped a major issue(bullet point) with the wiring - The middle selector. I want to be able to blend the Neck and Bridge pickups with as much or as little Tone and Volume as I want, without the sound completely cutting off when one is turned down a bit. My 2008 Les Paul Standard faded does this and I can't stand it. Which wiring gives the option to blend volume and tone independently when in middle position, or is that a completely different wiring from these?
Hi There, You can turn the volume to almost zero with out the sound cutting out in the middle position, but at complete zero, the sound will cut. If you would like one pickup turned to zero (OFF), it is best to switch to the other pickup with the switch.
This 'Landon Bailey' demo is handy, just bought a Les Paul that needs this. If Gibson can do PCBs stock from factory so can we, and banish annoying solder. I have the 2012 dual blade mini humbuckers they're really hot, will this be good enough? What about the "fat tap".
Im only a minute in and gotta split, but FYI this might confuse people because you have it backwards. 50s wiring RETAINS highs and 60s wiring ROLLS them off. Ask your rnr dr if you have any more questions.
@@ObsidianWire Treble bleed circuits are not classical 60's wiring. That's pretty confusing and you definitely should talk about that in the video. Because people will think the 60's option would be what most of the single cut guitars will have in them.
@@johanneschristopherstahle3395you are right, he keeps saying we do it differently as if that changes the common explanation for what a 50's or 60's or treble bleed means, in fact he's making blanket statements that are incorrect
Actually, 60s wiring is like 50s but the tone cap goes into the volume pot's input. Unlike modern wiring, where the tone cap is soldered to the tone pot's wiper and into the volume pot's input. The wiper on 50s and 60s tone pot are grounded.
Hi There, It is the connection at the volume control end that makes a functional difference. We use our own 60s wiring which is a bit of an upgrade on standard as well
