Tone Pros Bridges/Tailpieces

[David Root]

Thank you Billyz. Yes the Epi Elitist is made in Japan, as opposed to the regular Epis which are Korean, so it likely has Gotoh stuff on it. I will check. Tuners are Grovers though!

The guitar has a Nashville bridge on it and I would like to change to an ABR-1. I could put the ABR from the '65 Standard on it, but it is more than relic'd, it is real beat up.

I should have mentioned that I have already changed out the pickups, I have a pair out of a beaten to death '65 SG Standard, one Patent and one T-top that are much better than any new HBs I have yet heard, excluding ones I have built myself, ie they don't have high end that sounds like it came out of a cheap CD. OTOH I have not tried Holmes etc grade pups either.

I also want to get all nickel major parts on the body, the two nickel HB covers don't fit with the chrome bridge & tailpiece, much higher cool coefficient with all nickel!

[billyz]

Those are good pickups. The covers too. Be careful with new covers some really suck and don't even fit right. Dave Stephens sent me some of his secret metal PAF screws and I put them in my TTop. It made a nice difference and cost like $8. I think TV jones has the best repro covers for the Humbuckers. I would leave the old ones on.

[David Root]

Oh the original covers are staying! They are great pickups, 7.1K neck and 7.3K bridge, not overwound at all. When I was winding I found that yes you can go higher but anything above 8.3K in the bridge is Mud City, and of course much less in the neck.

What about these screws is so special? You are talking about the pole piece screws right? I have a bunch of custom made double nickel plated pp screws I got when I was building a lot of pickups but I don't think the screw material itself is anything special. Are we talking high carbon steel here, or soft iron? My guess is soft iron.

[billyz]

Oh the original covers are staying! They are great pickups, 7.1K neck and 7.3K bridge, not overwound at all. When I was winding I found that yes you can go higher but anything above 8.3K in the bridge is Mud City, and of course much less in the neck.

What about these screws is so special? You are talking about the pole piece screws right? I have a bunch of custom made double nickel plated pp screws I got when I was building a lot of pickups but I don't think the screw material itself is anything special. Are we talking high carbon steel here, or soft iron? My guess is soft iron.

The individual pole adjusting screws. I was skeptical , but he sent 3 different sets for me to try. He told me the metal of two of them,1018, and 1028 (IIRC?) carbon steel. The exact type Gibson used from different eras. The PAF screws he did not reveal what they were made from ( soft iron?).
Bottom line they really do sound different from one another and I much preferred the PAF screws even in my TTop. They warmed it up and made it sweeter at the same time.
Dave has done a lot of metallurgical studies of all the parts of the Humbucking pickup and has very definite ideas about how they affect the sound.

I hear you about the ohm readings of good sounding pickups. My original 1960 PAF reads 7.6k and sound huge and fat but sweet. There is much more to it than Ohms.

[David Root]

"Verrry interestink" as they used to say on TV!

1018, 28 etc, the last two digits are the % carbon in the steel. The lower the number the lower the carbon content and the softer the steel.

Soft iron has virtually no carbon in it, so its effect on the magnetic field is different, maybe stronger. maybe more symmetrical, I cannot remember, but this stuff is starting to come back to me from my pickup winding days.

Update: checked on the web and my recollections above are correct. Soft iron. I have about 2,000 or so HB polepiece screws of 2,500 I bought in a group buy of 10,000 several years ago.

I will check and see how easily they bend, they might be soft iron. They are Ni plated too.

Update. Cannot bend them with my fingers, however in a vise I can bend one 90 deg quite easily with a hammer and it does not begin to crack let alone break, so it is pretty soft material.

I'll be happy to send you a few billyz if you would compare them with what you have and like. BTW, I just got my December Tonequest magazine and there is a long interview with Dave Stephens, but he didn't give anything away.

FWIW I think the slug side slug material behaves similarly.

UPDATE: What I have is 1018, so not what you have. Stephens said when he was starting out in analyzing all the materials that go into an original PAF, he said he was told that the polepiece material was "electrical steel", which is transformer lamination steel like M6, M19, M27 etc.

[skyboltone]

I have the tone pros wrap around on my PRS McCarty. The PRS bridge is a fine piece of engineering but I think the tone pros makes more sense if you want to change strings types/gauges.

I have the tone pros bridge and tailpiece here and ready to install on my Heritage H-535. I hope it makes an improvement. There's a dead spot on the G string from about 12-14. Common with ES types but frustrating because I love that guitar otherwise.

[David Root]

I will make sure those birds of paradise don't fly up my nose! (If my very rusty Latin is close).

[skyboltone]

I will make sure those birds of paradise don't fly up my nose! (If my very rusty Latin is close).

Hey David. I was fooling around with an online translator when I came up with that. My Latin is Alter Boy/Elementary school stuff. When I first put in "May the bird of paradise fly up your nose" it came up with "May avis torantus paradisi nasum." That retranslates back to "May the bird flying in the nose garden." It's hard to get those suffixes in the right place you know? So I knew that volantus couldn't be right because it needed the infinitive case and paradisi modified avis, not nasum. Anyway, I came up with that and it seems to translate fairly close. "May" in English doesn't translate directly to Debes because latin doesn't have that sort of permissive word apparently. Debes is sorta like "you need" So I gave up for now.

You are welcome to keep trying. Ha!

Dan

[David Root]

In my boyhood this was called "pig latin" for some reason.

For example, "Ne illegitimi non carborundum" allegedly means "Don't let the Bastards grind you down."

[skyboltone]

Yes, I've seen that one too! I do like it. Completely sorta kinda related; perhaps you remember the comic "Pogo" from the '50s and '60s authored by Walt Kelly? Anyway, it was populated by a variety of swamp type animals and had a very subtle political twist. Frequently, while the main character "Pogo" the possum would be floating around in a small boat with one of his pals, (Albert the alligator or Churcy the turtle) in each successive frame the name painted on the stern of the boat would change.

Pogo was the first to say "We have met the enemy and he is us". Another of my favorite "Pogoisms" is "In these darkened times when everyone speaks at once, some of us must learn to whistle"

Anyway, I like to keep my signature changing....hence the "Pig Latin". Keep the bastards on edge I always say.

[David Root]

Oh yes, I was a Pogo fan too... those were the days. Now it's all per ardua ad nauseam.

[skyboltone]

Yes indeed. Strongly agree. Just remember. Ex nihilo nihil fit!