Les Paul / Noiseless Strat Emulation in a Superstrat, Completed

[Sascha Franck]

I think that it goes the other way: it is faster and less complicated to tweak EQ blocks than to rewire your guitar and conduct all the experimentation combining different components.

No. It'd only be faster initially. In the long run it's incredibly cumbersome because you would have to program pickup scenarios into each preset.

 

[Piing]

You really can't reproduce the load on a passive pickup with an active EQ; at least I haven't figured out how to make them sound the same. In this case, where I get an unlistenable pick attack I've tried to EQ that out, but I couldn't figure out a way without just getting rid of the high end altogether. I've tried every kind of Q and cut depth, but it just sounded awful.

What I'm doing here is a different thing altogether; I'm actually shifting the resonant peak of the pickup itself, getting it to act like a different pickup. It's the basic character of the pickup that changes. You can move the resonant peak up or down just by placing a cap in series or parallel, respectively. You lower the peak with a resistor. The effect is truly like a pickup swap, although with no change in coil wind; when I finally did it correctly, realizing parallel meant one leg of the cap goes to the hot lead and the other to ground, that was like a revelation to me.

An EQ can't change the resonant peak. You can try a version of this just by going though the different input impedances of the Axe-FX III input block plugging in to the front input. You'll hear how the different values load your pickup. I actually created a wishlist for the next hardware version to allow for a fine control of this feature to load the guitar not for recreating the input impedances of gear, but to change the character of the guitar itself.

It's what Hendrix did by using an extra long cable, which lowered the resonant peak of his pickups with a bunch of capacitance, I assume to get rid of bridge ice pick tones.

Then we shall dream with Cliff adopting Roland V-Guitar modeling technology, so we can swap pickups as easily as we swap CAB IRs

 

[State of Epicicity]

Then we shall dream with Cliff adopting Roland V-Guitar modeling technology, so we can swap pickups as easily as we swap CAB IRs

This is the wishlist thread, for what it's worth:

Wish - Axe-FX IV Feature: Variable Pickup Loading from Input

Okay, I know the use of volume and tone knobs on the guitar becomes less necessary when you have pedals that can control so much; however, there is a wonderful effect from the way pickups are loaded by different pot and cap values. What I purpose is from there to be a way, at the very input of...

forum.fractalaudio.com

 

[State of Epicicity]

I've now wired in the two humbucker tones with their resonant peak shifts. I'll now reroute the wiring so that I can go between three tones: the downshifted bridge and neck, and the neck unaltered. The neck unaltered in this context means the hot lead from the neck in series just loaded by a trimpot. I'll measure the actual dual gang that I want to use in the end and get the trimpot itself to be close the dual gang's value. Anyway, the raw signal is going to be part of the unkown for me; I'll use it to figure out what kind of EQ would sound best, that is, I'm going to dial in very basic mid scoops in the PEQ block of the Axe-FX III with a boosted peak at the top to figure out what my target frequencies are.

But, I ride my volume knobs a lot, especially for single coil type tones, so I need to make sure that I have a treble bleed I like for this testing, so the next step is to take the neck humbucker hot lead in series, with no peak shifting at all, and test for the treble bleed I like best with it. That takes a different diagram:

I'll then let ChatGPT know my neck pickup's inductance and resitance, as well as the values of all the inductors (the audio signal transformers) I have, and I'll ask what would be the best ones to try, with what value caps, as a ballpark value to start testing. Then I'll start mid scoop testing!

Man, this is taking fucking forever, but the tonal results are fucking worth it so far. I obsess so much over tone I can't get past it when a guitar sounds like shit. To me the point of guitar playing is to communicate good tone in an artistic way! So every bit of analysis and real world testing I do pays off, even if all I want to do is plug in a fucking play, and I'm losing my mind waiting to do just that!

 

[State of Epicicity]

Oops, forgot to add the loading trimpot for the unshifted neck:

 

[State of Epicicity]

This is getting to be a lot of trimpots haha! Thank God they exist. What a space saver, and what a way to be able to dial in exactly what the fuck you need. I'll tell you this; I know part of what you pay for with high end makers like Anderson, people in those leagues, is a guitar that will just sound great off the bat. I'm sure those shops are picking out wood for whatever it is that makes a guitar resonant in the right ways, so you can just plug in and you have something great off the bat. But that's not what I get. It's a lottery, as everyone reading this I'm sure knows all too well. When I bought my Epiphone Les Paul in the aughts I tried about 30 of them, Gibson and Epiphone, until I found one in the lottery of wood that just sang naturally. It was a thing of beauty to behold its tone. But here I chose this guitar because it felt great and had the features I wanted at the time. I didn't do extensive tone testing, and that was a mistake. But one big feature I wanted at that time was stainless steel frets, because I wear down nickel silver too damn quickly, and there was almost no one making them affordably at that time, so this was the best option. Now there so incredibly more common, I would just drive to Milwaukee or Chicago and try dozens of guitars in person until one hit me just right.

But, I'll tell you, to me, resonant peak shifting is the next best thing. I love, love, love the way my guitar feels, and shifting the resonant peak downward mitigates 95% of what I don't like, and the rest I can cover with careful playing technique. That's fine.

And in for a penny, in for a pound. If I'm already doing all this shit, I may as well try to accomplish my longtime dream of getting Les Paul and noiseless Strat tones out of the same guitar. I think I may be able to do this, if I can just keep going with my testing. Wish me luck!

 

[State of Epicicity]

Nope, I was right the first time! The diagram in post #64 is right. The 250 log pot is the proper load for that pickup! Man, you know when you just get in the way of your ideas?

 

[State of Epicicity]

For some reason the treble bleed resistor pot just wouldn't work, so I cried uncle and installed 270K||470K, which roughly equals 150K. I then tested by ear and ended up with 820pF||150K, exactly what I used to use haha! So I was glad know I got it right the first time. I had read that that combo is best for maintaining the same frequency response at low volume knob levels, and the info was in this epic treble bleed analysis thread:

A better treble bleed circuit | GuitarNutz 2

At maximum volume, a guitar pickup interacts with the impedances of the pots and other components, the cord capacitance and the amp input to give a characteristic response which includes a resonant

guitarnuts2.proboards.com

John Hewitt's work on this is extraordinary.

Now to the mid cut! I knew that right away I'd want to use a Plexi preset of mine to get a good simple mid cut with the PEQ block on the Axe-FX III, of course placed right after the input block. Very quickly I found that 851Hz dipped by 12.61dB with a Q of .831 gave me a nice scoop.

I then asked ChatGPT, with the inductance and capacitance of my neck pickup, this target mid scoop, and the inductance values of the various audio signal transformers I bought, what combination get me close to that? It right away suggested a couple of good options.

Next I'll test the actual measured inductance of these ASTs and redo the query, then I'll wire it and test! This is fucking exciting.

 

[State of Epicicity]

Okay, here's a snippet of ChatGPT calculating the midscoop for me:

And here's option two wired for testing:

 

[State of Epicicity]

My God, It's Alive! Holy Fucking Shit, it worked! Dude, this is fucking amazing. This is my first mid scoop, and it just worked. Okay, now I know how this works, and as long as I can isolate a simple eq with a parametric, I can do this. It sounds amazing, every bit as Stratty as I wanted! And the treble bleed was great for both the Les Paul and Strat tones, so I don't need the dual gang pot! I'll switch to the Dunlop Super Pots I love so much now. Next I'll wire to test the unshifted bridge humbucker in series, find the scoop I want from the parametric, get the values, then I can wire the whole damn guitar the way I want. I cannot at all tell you how awesome this is. I've been losing my mind in the very rare moments I've had to play guitar recently just working on wiring instead of actually playing, but I'm sooo glad I did all this.

The great thing here is, I kind of just created my own custom single coil tone. The big compromise with a coil split, besides the noise, is that you also have massive drop in output. There is a drop here, but it's not anything I even notice with the volume knob at 10. I can notice it with the knob lower, and who cares then?

Anyway, I feel like this is the biggest, most personally important learning period I've had in my tone history: first learning about resonant peak shifting, then implementing my own mid scoop. I can't properly express how big of a deal this is to me.

 

[Sascha Franck]

So, as I wondered before: Do these circuits raise noise? Because all the ones I ever used did just that.

 

[State of Epicicity]

I thought about the difference in output between the Les Paul and Strat neck tones at full volume and rolled back, how they are similar at full volume but pretty different on rollback. I think the difference comes down to the way the taper of the pot is changed by the components. On one hand you have an RC network shifting the resonant peak to get a thick Les Paul neck tone, and on the other hand you have an RLC network with massively higher cap values from the peak shift, and of course the influence of the inductor, which lowers the overall inductance, therefore the overall output.

 

[State of Epicicity]

Okay, I'm going to try a compromise, going for something in which I can use my favorite Dunlop SuperPots. I've just ordered some Bourns PDB182-GTR01-254A2 dual gangs, which have a lower rotational torque than the Alphas I'm trying now, so I'll those soon enough if this doesn't work. The compromise here is for the Les Paul tones to share a single gang pot, meaning they'll share the same resonant peak downshift and treble bleed. The Strat tones will share their own pot too, meaning they'll share the same mid scoop and treble bleed.

I found my preferred 820pF||150K treble bleed still to have too much output on the Les Paul tones when the knob is at 3, so I asked ChatGPT how I could fix this while still keeping the same frequency response. One answer was to try 370pF||330K. The trick is to increase the resistance to make it quieter at that point on the rollback, but also to decrease the capacitance to keep the same response as 820pF||150K. Sometimes the KISS (keep it simple, stupid) method works best, so I'll try this and see how it works.

 

[State of Epicicity]

Okay, I'm finally finished! This is the thing I've dreamt of for years, finally come to fruition. I finally have, to my ears and fingers, a completely convincing setup of Les Paul and Strat tones in one guitar, all hum free, without some massive output jump between the types of tones.

To recap, here’s what it is:

Position 1: Les Paul Bridge
Position 2: Strat Bridge
Position 3: Strat Quack
Position 4: Strat Neck
Position 5: Les Paul Neck

And the thing is, they’re all good! They’re all inspiring to me, feeding the amp just right. It has taken sooo long and so much testing to get this right, but it was 100% worth it. God bless, and may your tonal dreams come true too.

A final tweak:

I altered the bridge position volume pot wiring, controlling my "Les Paul" bridge and neck tones, so the resonant peak shift does not recede as I roll the volume back. In my testing this time around, it had just been going too bright as I rolled back no matter how I tried to darken the treble bleed, so this time I just went from the hot lead directly to ground for those components, so the tone didn’t really get brighter with rolling back; it now just sounds balanced.

I also do not know the actual value of the resistance of the resonant peak shift for the bridge, but I know it’s somewhere around 450K. In all those spots where you see a resistor in the diagram, I used a trimpot instead!

Here’s the final diagram:

 

[Progressive_disclosure]

Congrats! That’s quite the journey.

Does anyone know if the mid scoop and tweaks here share any similarities with the ”third voicing” found on newer Fishman Fluence Moderns? The older ones have a simple coil split with loss of volume etc and the switching you’ve achieved sounds really nice. Does the newer Fishmans have mid-scoop EQ or something applied?

 

[State of Epicicity]

Congrats! That’s quite the journey.

Does anyone know if the mid scoop and tweaks here share any similarities with the ”third voicing” found on newer Fishman Fluence Moderns? The older ones have a simple coil split with loss of volume etc and the switching you’ve achieved sounds really nice. Does the newer Fishmans have mid-scoop EQ or something applied?

Thanks very much! I don't know about the new ones, but I called Fishman when the Fluence line was first released, and it was a rep there who warned me that the splits were not hum bucking. I was grateful for the warning, but it pisses me off that the company does not state that outright in their literature. What makes it more confusing is that they compete with EMG, who does offer a noiseless split with their dual mode and dual mode-x lines. I would assume if Fishman did start to offer a noiseless split they would advertise it loudly!

If you are interested in a noiseless split you can go with a Lace Dually, a Kinman Converge 3, a Humless-H out of Poland, the ZexCoil Tribucker, the JBE Two-Tone, the Ilitch air coil system, the Ulbrich air coil system, a Suhr guitar with their air coil system, or an Anderson with their recently released air coil system.

From what I've gleaned, for true single coil purists, ZexCoil creates the most authentic sound for a pickup solution; their six coil design is extremely innovative. I would imagine the other best option would be to use the Rio Grande Tallboy with the Ilitch or Ulbrich air coil systems.

The cheapest option is to do what I did: install an 820pF||150K treble bleed, run your humbucker into a parametric EQ and try to find a good frequency to cut that makes your humbucker sound like a single coil and note the frequency, dB of cut, and the Q of the cut (for me it was 851 Hz cut 12.61dB with a Q of .813, buy the cheapest LCR meter you can find and measure the inductance and resistance of your pickups with series wiring, order some very cheap audio signal transformers for Digi-Key with a high inductance, order a cheap box of electrolytic caps and another of various trimpots from Amazon, then enter your parametric EQ info, pickup measurements, the values of caps and the measured inductance of your audio signal transformers you have on hand to ChatGPT, and wire what it recommends in series from your pickup's hot lead to ground, putting the trimpot last so it doesn't dampen frequencies too much at the beginning of that part of the chain.

 

[State of Epicicity]

Oh, I forgot to mention I did extensive treble bleed testing and tweaking at the end. No matter what I found 820pF is the magic cap, and dialing in a trimpot to 150K or 220K is perfect. This originates with JohnH, John Hewitt, who posted extensive tests in his A Better Treble Bleed thread on the Guitar Nuts 2 forum.

And what actually allowed me to use single gang volume pots was the fact that the pickup set I installed was well matched from the get go, allowing me to me to use the same resonant peak shift for both neck and bridge, and the same mid scoop too. Dedicating one volume knob to the Les Paul peak shift and the other to the mid scoop made it at all much more efficient.

 

[Progressive_disclosure]

Thanks very much! I don't know about the new ones, but I called Fishman when the Fluence line was first released, and it was a rep there who warned me that the splits were not hum bucking. I was grateful for the warning, but it pisses me off that the company does not state that outright in their literature. What makes it more confusing is that they compete with EMG, who does offer a noiseless split with their dual mode and dual mode-x lines. I would assume if Fishman did start to offer a noiseless split they would advertise it loudly!

If you are interested in a noiseless split you can go with a Lace Dually, a Kinman Converge 3, a Humless-H out of Poland, the ZexCoil Tribucker, the JBE Two-Tone, the Ilitch air coil system, the Ulbrich air coil system, a Suhr guitar with their air coil system, or an Anderson with their recently released air coil system.

From what I've gleaned, for true single coil purists, ZexCoil creates the most authentic sound for a pickup solution; their six coil design is extremely innovative. I would imagine the other best option would be to use the Rio Grande Tallboy with the Ilitch or Ulbrich air coil systems.

The cheapest option is to do what I did: install an 820pF||150K treble bleed, run your humbucker into a parametric EQ and try to find a good frequency to cut that makes your humbucker sound like a single coil and note the frequency, dB of cut, and the Q of the cut (for me it was 851 Hz cut 12.61dB with a Q of .813, buy the cheapest LCR meter you can find and measure the inductance and resistance of your pickups with series wiring, order some very cheap audio signal transformers for Digi-Key with a high inductance, order a cheap box of electrolytic caps and another of various trimpots from Amazon, then enter your parametric EQ info, pickup measurements, the values of caps and the measured inductance of your audio signal transformers you have on hand to ChatGPT, and wire what it recommends in series from your pickup's hot lead to ground, putting the trimpot last so it doesn't dampen frequencies too much at the beginning of that part of the chain.

Thanks for the info! I have a Strandberg with Fluence Moderns and I’m not really getting along with the split tones on it. I were probably expecting too much from the marketing hype… Now I’m also thinking a bit on rewiring the toggle since having two push/pulls for the different voicings/split is a bit cumbersome.

Just last year I did my first pickup swap in my PRS, so baby steps for me before going as deep as you’ve done though!

 

[State of Epicicity]

Thanks for the info! I have a Strandberg with Fluence Moderns and I’m not really getting along with the split tones on it. I were probably expecting too much from the marketing hype… Now I’m also thinking a bit on rewiring the toggle since having two push/pulls for the different voicings/split is a bit cumbersome.

Just last year I did my first pickup swap in my PRS, so baby steps for me before going as deep as you’ve done though!

I think you can do passive mid cuts for active pickups too, but you just have to use very different capacitor values! Still very easy. I'd try first running your pickups in full humbucker mode into a parametric eq first to see if there's a simple scoop that sounds good to you. If so, then you just input that info to ChatGPT and let it know you're using Fluence Moderns, and it will calculate what component values would get you there. I could help. All the parts are really cheap, as I was saying. Pretty much, the only factor is if you can solder! Since you were able to do a pickup swap, you can do that, so you're all set!

Best of luck no matter what you end up doing.

 

[Progressive_disclosure]

I think you can do passive mid cuts for active pickups too, but you just have to use very different capacitor values! Still very easy. I'd try first running your pickups in full humbucker mode into a parametric eq first to see if there's a simple scoop that sounds good to you. If so, then you just input that info to ChatGPT and let it know you're using Fluence Moderns, and it will calculate what component values would get you there. I could help. All the parts are really cheap, as I was saying. Pretty much, the only factor is if you can solder! Since you were able to do a pickup swap, you can do that, so you're all set!

Best of luck no matter what you end up doing.

I’ll test around with a parametric EQ and A/B a bit with the SSS strat to see what I can find! I think I will learn a lot just by doing that.