Page 129 - Guitar Classics Magazine - The Les Paul Bible 2019

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO VINTAGE LES PAUL TONE

it may lack bite, aggression and output. Moving the It’s the simplest mod to try with both vintage and
pickup closer to the string will increase output and repro pickups. Slacken off the baseplate screws very
make the tone brighter. Lift it higher still and slightly until the magnets will slide with a little bit of
you’ll get more bite and aggression, but the tone encouragement. Try moving them a millimetre or so
can get become too edgy and shouty, plus the at a time and you may hear how the beefy midrange
pickup’s magnetism may dampen string vibration roar begins to take on a vintage quackiness.
and reduce sustain. You can try this on just one pickup to achieve tonal
We take our time getting the bridge just right, contrast, or both if you like the effect. It costs nothing
always shooting for an even string-to-string balance and so long as you note the starting points, the
from bass to treble. We follow the same procedure magnets can be returned to their original positions.
for the neck pickup, but it’s slightly complicated by
the need to balance the neck to the bridge pickup. OLD OR NEW PICKUPS?
You may notice that low strings lose definition if the If you only take one thing away from reading this
neck pickup is set too low. When both pickups are article, it should be that dropping genuine vintage
perfectly balanced, the middle setting’s voice will be pickups into a decent-quality reissue or copy will get
noticeably distinct. you closer to the actual sound of a vintage Les Paul
We were perfectly happy with this procedure than buying a top-dollar Gibson Custom or custom-
until that 1960 Les Paul came along and opened built replica instrument that comes equipped with
our eyes to other possibilities. We soon noticed the factory-made pickups.
bridge pickup was set far lower than usual, but the Prices for vintage PAFs have skyrocketed and you
pole screws were jacked high above the covers to need to be careful, because some replicas are scarily
compensate. The bridge sounded almost like a P-90, indistinguishable from real ones and sadly, there are
combining a thick midrange roar with tremendous a few dishonest sellers out there. But even if you are
clarity and soft treble. prepared to pay around £4,000 for a vintage set,
Trying this approach with our own Monty’s loaded you would still have a grand or so’s worth of change
Greco LP Standard copy, we were astonished to to play with before you start getting into the price
discover how close we could get to the tone. All the range of even the cheapest second-hand Collector’s
action happens in the midrange and once you get the Choice Gibsons.
hang of balancing pickup and pole-screw heights, you At the time of writing, there were three 1950s
can shift the midrange tonal characteristic and almost P-90s on Reverb for between £330 and £360 each.
re-voice a pickup to your taste. Granted this isn’t cheap compared to even the best
By taking the more traditional approach to the replicas, but as a magic-bullet solution for vintage
neck pickup, you can swing it so the neck is just as Les Paul tone, a set of vintage P-90s may end up
bright, or even brighter than the bridge. A fantastic saving you a lot of effort, time and money. You could
tonal contrast can be achieved, and the middle setting even buy one at a time as funds allow.
will also now have an audible phasiness with slightly
BELOW The Duggie Lock
hollow mids for a great third tonal option. And if you VERDICT Burst’s pickups were
don’t want to go down that route, contrary to what Although a range of factors interact to produce set low, but the pole
some people might claim, the pole screws can still be vintage-style Les Paul tone and controllability, our screws were jacked up
used to even up string-to-string balance.

ADJUSTING P-90S
Attention turns to P-90s and we count ourselves
lucky to have a genuine 1953 set to test in our
Greco. Cutting to the chase, the Greco conversion
with vintage P-90s installed sounds virtually
indistinguishable from the bona-fide 1954 Gibson
Goldtop. This mirrors our findings when we installed
a set of vintage PAFs in a Greco in the past.
The set-up procedures we discussed in relation
to PAFs also apply to P-90s; however, adjusting
height can be tricky. Some use foam rubber for its
springiness, but we prefer wood shims. There is
another set-up trick you can try to alter P-90 voicing.
Years ago, a prominent pickup builder explained
to us how the two magnets in P-90s are arranged to
repel rather than attract. Over the decades, this can
actually cause the magnets to move apart, and this
changes the shape of the magnetic field.

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