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NGD Agile 3200MCC Gold P90

seekir

New member
Joined
Sep 14, 2019
Messages
3
So I took delivery of one of these today, a Gibson-based Korean built Agile 3200MCC Gold P90 guitar. Seems like a great guitar so far, but I've never owned an LP-style guitar with dual volume and tone controls. This one also has push-pull tone pots to tap the coils. I had the impression that with the switch in the middle position with guitars wired this way, one could balance the two pickup volumes to taste, and this seems to work as long as the neck volume on this guitar is not down too far: if the neck volume is very low or completely off with the selector in the middle position, there is no sound regardless of the bridge pickup volume setting. In the middle position I thought I would be able to minimize or even completely roll off the neck pickup volume, turn up the bridge volume, and still get sound through the bridge pickup? I get signal in the middle position with the bridge pickup volume completely rolled off and the neck volume on, but not vice versa. Is this normal with Gibsons too? It's not a big deal since there is sound as long as there is a little signal coming from the bridge pot, but I wonder if this is the way it's intended to work. The electronics work as expected in the bridge and neck (Treble and rhythm) positions.

Anyway, can anyone school me on the four-knob guitar thing?

ad3200mccgoldp901.jpg
 
Last edited:

somebodyelseuk

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 10, 2020
Messages
454
So I took delivery of one of these today, a Gibson-based Korean built Agile 3200MCC Gold P90 guitar. Seems like a great guitar so far, but I've never owned an LP-style guitar with dual volume and tone controls. This one also has push-pull tone pots to tap the coils. I had the impression that with the switch in the middle position with guitars wired this way, one could balance the two pickup volumes to taste, and this seems to work as long as the neck volume on this guitar is not down too far: if the neck volume is very low or completely off with the selector in the middle position, there is no sound regardless of the bridge pickup volume setting. In the middle position I thought I would be able to minimize or even completely roll off the neck pickup volume, turn up the bridge volume, and still get sound through the bridge pickup? I get signal in the middle position with the bridge pickup volume completely rolled off and the neck volume on, but not vice versa. Is this normal with Gibsons too? It's not a big deal since there is sound as long as there is a little signal coming from the bridge pot, but I wonder if this is the way it's intended to work. The electronics work as expected in the bridge and neck (Treble and rhythm) positions.

Anyway, can anyone school me on the four-knob guitar thing?
Usually, this style of guitar - Gibson based - are wired so that in the middle turning down one pickup to 0 kills the signal. They can be wired so that doing the same just cuts the respective pickup, but I forget how.. I have a Vintage Lemondrop that used to be wired that way. I think it's a case of wiring the pickups to the centre volume tags and the switch to the outer tags, but don't quote me on that.
The 50s/modern wiring thing is just about whether you bleed tone before or after the volume pots.
 

seekir

New member
Joined
Sep 14, 2019
Messages
3
Appreciate the help somebodyelseuk. I gather there's nothing unusual about this guitar's wiring and performance. A member on another forum said something similar and gave me this link:

https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/21106-mod-garage-decouple-your-les-pauls-volume-controls

But I'm thinking that the wiring in these four pot Gibson-style guitars, especially ones like this Agile that are also equipped with coil taps/splitters, is a bit too complex for me to tinker with. And thanks to the two of you I know that there probably isn't anything with the guitar wiring that needs correcting.
 
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