Help with thin sounding guitar

  • Thread starter Thread starter Wayniac3
  • Start date Start date
griff10672 said:
switching out the value could help you out possibly .... and upgrading them .
I use Emerson Paper in Oil caps on all my guitars and highly recommend them .
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Not all guitars have caps on the pots, is there benefits to having them? I don't know about that kinda shit?? Is there anything wrong with just having a volume pot, no cap, and no tone pot?
 
Greazygeo said:
Anderson H2+ would be a good place to start. I have those in both my Cobras.
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I used a Tom Anderson H3 in a Yamaha super strat RGX model and that pickup was really fat sounding, perhaps too fat for that guitar, so the H2+ would probably be perfect for what he wants.
 
anomaly said:
Not all guitars have caps on the pots, is there benefits to having them? I don't know about that kinda shit?? Is there anything wrong with just having a volume pot, no cap, and no tone pot?
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tone caps are there to dump certain frequencies to ground ..... depending on the value of cap .... determines what range frequencies are dumped ....
so if it sounds thin .... you can change the value of cap fatten things up .... and vice a versa ...
 
headlessdeadguy said:
Motor City Afwayu.
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The Afwayu is my favorite MCP. Hands down.

But Scott's Psykes is as thick or thicker, has better articulation and feel. When I installed a Psykes it reminded me of an Afwayu....played the Psykes then my Charvel with the Afwayu and the MCP sounded flat in comparison. True story.

That guitar now has a Psykes. The MCP is in my pickup bin. Lol

OP, if your guitar has a Floyd or other trem a big block might help it sound thicker...I had an 88 Jackson strat that was thinner than I'd like; new pup AND a big brass block helped it immensely.
 
Racerxrated said:
The Afwayu is my favorite MCP. Hands down.

But Scott's Psykes is as thick or thicker, has better articulation and feel. When I installed a Psykes it reminded me of an Afwayu....played the Psykes then my Charvel with the Afwayu and the MCP sounded flat in comparison. True story.

That guitar now has a Psykes. The MCP is in my pickup bin. Lol

OP, if your guitar has a Floyd or other trem a big block might help it sound thicker...I had an 88 Jackson strat that was thinner than I'd like; new pup AND a big brass block helped it immensely.
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Just got another guitar that I felt needed Afwayu. Now on the lookout for a Psykes. Thanks for the heads up.
 
headlessdeadguy said:
Just got another guitar that I felt needed Afwayu. Now on the lookout for a Psykes. Thanks for the heads up.
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The whiskey will give you the feel of the Afwayu, maybe a little clearer. The Psykes will have more low mid grunt and more.output and more bounce. I'm on vacation at the moment but can get some out the first week of August.

 
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Racerxrated said:
The Afwayu is my favorite MCP. Hands down.

But Scott's Psykes is as thick or thicker, has better articulation and feel. When I installed a Psykes it reminded me of an Afwayu....played the Psykes then my Charvel with the Afwayu and the MCP sounded flat in comparison. True story.

That guitar now has a Psykes. The MCP is in my pickup bin. Lol

OP, if your guitar has a Floyd or other trem a big block might help it sound thicker...I had an 88 Jackson strat that was thinner than I'd like; new pup AND a big brass block helped it immensely.
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This. Throw that Psykes in there ASAP.
 
Wayniac3 said:
Hi all - looking for some input.
I have a custom ESP strat that is a bit thin. The tones cuts & it plays easily, but I want a beefier tone. Gain is good, but not essential. I typically lean towards Duncan Distortions or Customs.
It's a quilt maple over an alder body, H/S, with a maple neck.
Currently sporting a Duncan (not sure which - possibly a Screamin Demon?) and a JB jr in the neck.

Looking through my parts bin, I have a few choices - Duncan custom, Anderson H2+, Duncan Super V, Tonenerd Psykes, Tonenerd Whiskey, a couple of older Dimarzio Super Distortions (and single coil version as well).

I play hard rock & metal, mostly through ENGLs (Artist, Fireball 25, Ironball 20), a Peavey 5150 2x12 combo, and also use fractal and Kemper.

Hoping to get this guitar squared away - thanks for any input.
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One thing you could try for a thicker tone (and probably the cheapest and quickest option) would be to change your strings to a thicker gauge (at least for the lower gauge strings).

I had recently changed my strings on my favorite guitar and I didn't play on it right away since I was busy working around the house.

A few days later I played for a little while and I found everything sounded thinner to me (all of my amps).

I had tried changing various things on the amps (settings, tubes, ....) and even tried different cab placements in the room since I had moved around a few cabs when I was cleaning the studio but nothing seemed to work :-(

I decided to check the new pack gauge since the guitar seemed to play much easier (I assumed it was due to them being new strings) and I found they were a size below what I had usually played so I replaced them with the usual gauge and everything was back to normal again :)
 
Wayniac3 said:
It's just a vol (push/pull)
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That's a big part of it right there. Just having a single volume, especially if it's 500k or 1Meg pot, is going to have a pretty big effect on making it sound brighter and give the impression of a thinner guitar.

Give this a try, just for laughs. Hook a tone pot in there, and just stuff it in the cavity, and leave it fully open. You'll here a big difference just by the pot being there even if it's fully open and not even used.

But, another vote for Duncan Custom. Real nice, full low mids on that pickup with similar output to the Duncan Distortion, so it makes for a great alternative. But you could probably solve this problem with a $5 pot change, rather than a $75 pickup... up to you.
 
If you haven’t tried the Custom 5 that is actually a good option for opening up the sound of an alder strat. It has a looser/bigger sounding low end and something about where the midrange focus is make it sound wider and a little less immediate than the ceramic custom. It’s almost sort of “scooped” sounding, and it sounds and feels fairly compressed which helps if you have a stringy strat.

Alder Strats tend to have very little “bloom” to the low end and a very focused and up front midrange with some stringiness in the mix.
 
If you dont go tonenerd (you should) try a SD Custom Custom for that guitar...
 
Check the volume pot to make sure its at the expected tolerance. Assuming it's 500k, maybe try a 300k pot (you might have to find a 250k and scrape the carbon track sides to make it 300k). Sometimes taming some high end makes the mids and bass more pronounced giving you what you want.
 
scottosan said:
The whiskey will give you the feel of the Afwayu, maybe a little clearer. The Psykes will have more low mid grunt and more.outpit and more bounce. I'm on vacation at the momemt but can get some out the first week of August.

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All I got from this post is you're on vacation until August. That like 15 more days. I need that. hahah
 
scottosan said:
The whiskey will give you the feel of the Afwayu, maybe a little clearer. The Psykes will have more low mid grunt and more.outpit and more bounce. I'm on vacation at the momemt but can get some out the first week of August.

Click to expand...

I’m interested. Let me know when you are ready. Do you offer chrome covers?
 
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