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86 Les Paul Custom too dark - brighten? or embrace the darkness?

lifebreath

New member
Joined
May 18, 2017
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10
* I think most of the noticeable improvement is probably due to the wiring harness. I measured the original, old pots removed from the guitar and the tone pots were 85k & 86k. The volume pots were 261k and 349k. In hindsight, I believe this was almost entirely the cause for the dark sound.

This, especially the 100k tone pots, which allow a lot of treble loss off the bat. Figure its like having your 500k tone knob turned down to about 4. I just posted about my experience rewiring my recently acquired '83 Custom. It had 300K (measured 350) volume pots and 100k tone pots. It was definitely dark and wooly. I put in 500k pots, which actually were too much for the volume control, as they boosted the resonant peak amplitude to the point of sounding shrill. I went back to 300k on the volume and 500k tone. The 500k tone pots made all the difference.

Here's my post, for anyone interested: https://www.lespaulforum.com/forum/showthread.php?212302-Tim-Shaw-humbuckers-500K-pots-too-shrill
 
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