Jack here, jbf music and guitar lessons this video is about guitar mods and if you’re
just interested in the mods in particular, I’ll either leave a timestamp to them in
the description and the comments or do a separate video on each of the mods with I’ll link
to up there. The mods will be a kill switch, a kind of different pickup configuration and
a treble bleed mod. So, the guitar I’m going to be modifying is this one here, it is an
Ibanez RG 50 DX, 350 DX, sorry.
So, I used to gig with this guitar with a bit, I initially got it as a backup to my
Ibanez prestige, but I got another RG that I modified very heavily and this to some extent
has been, em, gathering dust. I was never too happy witht eh whammy, you can tell I’ve
kind of gutted it already, em, so I’m replacing that. I just got a kind of cheap one, so I’m
not too sure if it will be much of an improvement. And the other thing I’m going to do is change
the pickups, I think these were infinity pickups, so I don’t remember them being particularly
bad or particularly good, I think they were just sort of OK. But to give the guitar something
a bit different I’m going to change them. I have thought about scalloing the fretboard;
I’m not going to do it in this video, but I might attempt it in another one.
So, what I’m going to do is put some P90s in here, ‘cause I don’t have any guitar
with P90s, the models I’ve gone for are the warman humbucker sized p90s, I’ll put
one in the neck and the bridge, I’ll link to a sound clip up there if you just want
to hear them, and then in the middle I’ve manged to find a lipstick pickup; you know
the ones you get in Dan Electro guitars, and kind of surf music, of the middle, that’s
Start sized, so hopefully I’ll be able to get some interesting tonal variations.
And because I was going to change the pickups, I though well, I might as well just put some
mods in here as well. So what I’m gonna do is put in a killswitch, probably going
to drill a hole in-between the volume and the tone, around there. And it will just be
an on, off, so a kill switch just turns the guitar signal off and brings it back on. So,
something like, eh the intro to know your enemy or Buckethead’s Jordan spring to mind
for me. And then I thought, if I’m going to kind of gut it and do stuff, I might as
well add some other mods. I don’t fancy drilling too many holes. So what I’m going
to do is, put, eh, change these pots, so you get these things called push pull pots, which
you might have come across is you’ve got a humbucker with coil taps. The problem I
think with them is you can’t really do them on the fly you kind of have to just do it
before, so before, during a song, it’s not particularly convenient to pull it up. I’d
always hoped that these existed and they do! It’s a bit like a pen, it’s a push, pu,
puh pu, I’ll try that again, Push push pot. So, you push it down and you push it down
and it changes between the kind of terminals there. So what I’m gonna do is put one of
these in the volume, when it’s down it’s gonna be normal, when it’s up it’s going
to activate the treble bleed mod. So the treble bleed, what it basically does it lets some
treble “bleed” out to the output, so that when you roll your volume down the highs stay
in there. Now, I also like the sound of when you roll the volume down it gets warmer and
more muffled, I like that as well as the treble bleed. So that’s why I’m going to have
it when it’s up the treble bleed is active and when it’s down it’s normal. And the
treble bleed itself is really simple, its just putting a capacitor and a resistor kind
of in the way, of the, eh, volume. I did used to have a whole set of capacitors and resistors,
which I’ve since completely misplaced. So I bought a little kit online for like a pound
or something like that it was quite cheap. The other thing I’ve gone for here is, eh,
linear pots rather than logarithmic, which might be a terrible, terrible decision, but
I’ve never used them before so thought I might be worth trying out. So it will affect
the way the volume will roll in, on and off will be a bit different, and then the tone,
I’m gonna put a push pull in here as well. Originally, what I was going to do was just
have, the middle pickup kind of come out of the circuit, so I can have the two humbuckers
together. But I found a wiring diagram that will let me do that, but then let me have
all of them on at the same time as well, and I thought, well, that’s and extra sound,
so I might as well go for that. So the way I’ve gone about doing this; I’s been a
long time since I’ve done any electrical mods, so the information I had gathered has
more or less dissipated. But he way I did before was just the same I here I started
by looking on Seymour duncan’s website it’s pretty good and I think there’s one call
guitar electronics, guitar electrics. And they’ve got a whole, whole selection of
loads of different or weird and wonderful mods you can do, so from those I’ve kind
of like gone in to paint and just put together a basic circuit that I think will work combing
these different modifications. I do need to test it out to make sure, so if it all goes
wrong I’ll have to do a massive edit here and change that I think.
Future Jack here, so this has turned in to perhaps a more how NOT to mod a guitar video
than anything else. Mainly due to a few things that could have easily been avoided, had I
just done a little bit more preparation. But, we’ll come to those in due course, anyway,
back to pat Jack.
The way I’m leaving it, I’ll pop it up on the screen now, the way I’m leaving it
is just a kind of picture, so it’s much easier to visually understand what’s going
on. If you’re more in to this you’d be much better off using a proper circuit. But
it’s a long time since I’ve done this as I say, so I’d prefer to keep things as
simple for myself as I can. So yeah, lets just get to it!
So I’ve pencilled in a mark rough half way between these, and I’m just doing to drill
a hole into it. So there it is. The other thing it that around
the screw holes it’s a bit dirty, or rusty, so I’ll give them a clean before I reassemble
the whole guitar. Here I need to disconnect the 5 way switch;
a great example of how not to solder! Not very safe, but was done for benefit of the
camera; again not recommended. This has been sped up, because it’s not the most thrilling
footage to say the least. Now I need to take the Jack off from the volume.
The live, and the earths as well. So the jack and earth to the bridge are now disconnected.
I’ve just taken the capacitor from my old tone pot and I’m soldering it on to my new
push pot; which will be acting as my tone. Getting it in place and solered.
For the treble bleed mod, I’ve shortened the legs on the resistor and capacitor, wound
them together in parallel (you can wire this in series as well I think, this is what I’ve
gone for) poked the legs from the resistor through terminals B and E. This will hold
them in place and make soldering a bit easier; again the pot should be secured; it’s moving
about; this is not good practice! Any other errors you spot, or any top tips please fire
them in the comments; hopefully we can save other inexperienced mod enthusiastic a bit
of greif! Terminal F to lug 2, C to lug 1. Which will
bring the capacitor and resistor in to the circuit when the push pot is up; activating
the treble bleed mod. When the push pot is down, obviously they are not part of the circuit.
And soldering F to lug 2; you’ll notice the clamp, here- a much better idea to keep
things a bit more stable. Another mistake; I’ve left the legs on the capacitor a bit
long not the end of the world, but would have been smarter to chop them down a bit more.
A while since I’ve done stuff like this, so a fair bit of common sense style relearning
going on. And C to lug 1.
I’ve got 3 wires that need to go to the volume, I’ve got one of these wires that’s
got two in it. I’ve got another one down there. I’m going to solder them together
and attach them to lug 1 of the volume. So, they’re soldered together and in to Lug
1 they go! So, slight issue the pots are too wide for
my scratch plate. Easy fix I’ve just taken a curved file and widened it a little, so
this one works. As you can see the one I’ve not done is a tad too tight.
So I’ve done all the wiring I can to each individual pot, I’ve put all my components
in the scratch plate to get a rough measure of the lengths of wire I need cut. So Cut
the lengths and strip them down and back to it.
Double oopise here! I’ve not framed the right pot in this clip, so you can’t see
even what’s going on! Secondly, the schematic I was working from was for a fender style
selector switch and foolishly, I didn’t double check how this translates to an Ibanez
one; see that diagram for a bit more clarity. And as a result make a meal of not only this
mod, but also putting in the pickups! The kill switch mod, I’ve just soldered
terminal’s A to D and C to F like in that diagram there and need to connect two wires;
C to the earth and B to the volume. I’ve got wires from my output jack, and
this earth need to go to terminal C and the live to terminal E. The way I was taught to
solder was to heart the component, in this case the terminal and allow the solder to
melt on to it for a stronger bond; rather than trying to melt the solder directly.
I’ve unscrewed the volume pot and selector, so I can get at them more easily. My kill
switch’s earth need to go to the earth on the back of the volume and the other one to
Lug 2 of the volume pot. So the kill switch, when active will stop the signal from getting
to the volume pot; cutting the sound entirely. Noob misakte here, I’ve not really given
myself my wiggle room, having cut the wires very neat, in regard to their lengths.
I’m putting the ground, from the bridge, to the back of the volume pot. Always a good
idea to double check the earths and good practice to do this sort of thing first; in case you
forget. Other noob fails; I hadn’t sized the pickups properly and needed to file the
scratch plate holes and well as file the wood in the body down to accommodate their slightly
bigger size. Not a huge issue, but Like future Jack said, a little bit more planning could
have easily averted this, or allowed me to assemble the guitar in a more streamlined
manner. Also, the wiring diagram I was working from, I had neglected to put the kill switch
in, so I had to go back and redo that.
So! I put together to find out I’d messed up the wiring; remember that selector switch
bit earlier? Yeah. I’ll un solder all of these and go at it systematically with my
revised schematic. Actually, the bridge pickup I correct, so that can be left. The rets must
go” The Bridge goes to the common. I think the
way this mod (pickup) works is the second half of the selector is activated by this
connection; however, it leads in to my tone push pot, which is a dead end for the circuit
when down. When the switch is up and active, the bridge pickup gets sent to the volume
and is therefore “on” when the neck pickup is selected; giving neck and bridge pickups
at the same time. Similarly, when the neck and middle are selected and the push pot is
on, because the neck is active the bridge pick is still sent to the volume; meaning
all pickups at the same time.
Here the middle pickup is getting soldered to the middle terminal; the pickups are already
earthed to the back to the volume pot, so no need to redo that. As you can see cutting
the wires a bit short like this has made things a tad trickier. Again, I don’t really know
what I’m doing, I’d highly recommend learning more before doing one of these projects.
And now, the neck, this white wire is going to the neck terminal on the selector switch.
The spare common terminal to Volume pot lug 1. And get that soldered.
I’ve put a couple of screws in to hold the scratch plate in place. Like I said I needed
to route the wood get these pickups to fit. This lipstick one was too big for the scratch
plate as well, I think I still need to take a bit more off; it looks like it’s stuck
and that way I won’t be able to adjust the height. But overall happy with how its looking.
Time to do the tap test; to save me putting the bridge and strings on, I’ll pop in the
jack, plug it in to an amp and test the switches. The kill switch is stopping the white noise,
so that’s working. As I tap these pole pieces I can hear a snappy popping sound from the
amp; so Bridge pickup is ok. The others are inactive in this position. Neck making noises
in neck, others making a noise - a good sign. Middle and neck making noises here, good.
I’ve got 2 screws to keep it on place, I’m going to put on one string and the bridge
to give it a quick check in case I need to rewire anything.
I’ll slacken these off to make life a bit easier; the springs won’t have to stretch
as far. That should hold it for now and putting a string on.
I’ve popped and other spring on, and I’m going to use coins to block up here- I don’t
have any spare wood handy, so this will block the trem for now. I’m just going to tape
a few together and the trem block won’t be able to move once they go in here.
Cool, so that was my latest guitar modification voyage there; this isn’t the sort of video
I plan on doing all that regularly, ‘cause it’s not often that I modify a guitar at
least to this degree, but since I was doing it anyway I thought I might as well kind of
document it, film it and share it with people who might be interested in doing a similar
thing. If you’ve enjoyed this kind of voyage, you might want to check out my, eh gear and
beer. But yeah, all the usual stuff if you can leave a comment, share, hit subscribe
and enable notifications with that little bell on the side, if you feel so inclined,
cheers guys.