Les Paul Studio project - FINISHED! (kinda)

GuitarHive · October 2013

That looks fantastic, Ronnie. Great job. Have to admit, I'm a fan of cream plastics, but the all black does look really good.

Longtallronnie · October 2013

Cheers.

The new pickups and wiring kit turned up today so it now sports a set of Oil City Blitz Spirits with Jimmy Page switching. It was a total nightmare to wire up but it's nice having some extra sounds on tap.

The pickups are perfect, can't wait to gig them this Saturday!

OilCityPickups · October 2013

I love it when I see the full story of a guitar my pickups are going into. If I could, I'd go a gig of every customer who uses my pickups, so I could bounce up and down in the audience and possibly nudge somebody next to me going: '... ere ... I wound them pickups you know?
I know I'm a big kid

Longtallronnie · October 2013

I'm well chuffed with them, Ash.

I haven't tried adding the resistors to the split positions yet, I thought I'd try them stock first and see how it goes, I've only played them at home so far so it's difficult to judge volume differences etc. I've heard enough though to know it's going to sound awesome on saturday!

Longtallronnie · October 2013

Had my first gig with it last night, the first time I've not used my 335 in about three years so quite a big deal for me. I get quite attached to guitars and struggle to use anything else.

It passed with flying colours, sounded great and after two and a half hours I wasn't crippled with back pain as I expected I might be. I'm not sure of the exact weight, different attempts on the bathroom scales have it between 9 and 11lbs but I think it's nearer to 9 and feels perfectly balanced.

The new pickups sounded superb, just the sound I was after. I still need to play with the heights a bit to get the balance right but I'm really very happy with them. I was concerned that a fairly low output bucker would sound horrible when split but they're just right. The slight drop in output helps clean things up and worked great for certain songs. The split neck position could well be my favourite setting. I'd thoroughly recommend anyone looking for replacement pups to try Oil City Pickups. Ash was very helpful with my questions and from placing the order, had the pickups wound and delivered in under a week. When you also consider they cost under a ton for a set of hand wound, UK made pickups they're astounding value as well!

As for the Jimmy Page wiring, I can't see me using the series setting, the phase switching sounds cool but unlikely to get used too much. I might change the wiring to push/push for the coil splits and leave out the other options in the future but I'll keep it as is for now.

not_the_dj · October 2013

Excellent stuff Ronnie. I'm loving the coil spit options on my Trad Pro ii, and I'm using those sounds a lot with the band, so I'm getting tempted to upgrade the pick-ups and wiring to something similar on my Smartwood to use as a back-up.

Longtallronnie · October 2013

Cheers Colin.

I've considered doing it to my other guitar but the thought of rewiring a semi doesn't appeal!

DeeTee · October 2013

That looks absolutely cracking mate, well done. Is the black on the top just the original finish? And is the "binding" effect achieved by baring the wood on the maple top?

Longtallronnie · October 2013

Thanks @DeeTee, yeah the top is original and I just scraped some of it off to reveal the maple cap.

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Les Paul Studio project - FINISHED! (kinda)

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