Best place to get a Les Paul "Peter Green" mod done in Dublin?

Hi all,

I'm looking for somewhere that can flip the neck pickup on my Epiphone Les Paul standard, to achieve something like the famous Peter Green out of phase tone when using the middle position pickup switch.

I've read up on this mod, and it seems fairly quick and simple to do, a 5 or 10 minute job, but not being very familiar with messing around with guitar electronics, I'm not sure how viable it is for my particular guitar, pickups, wiring, etc, and I would rather pay someone who knows what they're doing to look at it, rather than risk messing up one of my favourite guitars.

Can anybody recommend a walk-in store in Dublin or surrounding area with a good record on this kind of thing? I would rather steer clear of "friends of friends" etc and use a reputable bricks and mortar place, as I'd like to have some comeback if anything is not to my satisfaction.

Many thanks.

Rigsby

While I have no personal experience of it, I know that "Haze Guitars" gets a lot of recommendations and praise around here. There is a thread about it if you want to do a search.

http://www.hazeguitars.com/



Did a search. Here is the thread.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=77813888

Rigsby

Rigsby wrote: »

"Haze Guitars" gets a lot of recommendations and praise around here...

Many thanks. I will check them out.

Does anyone have any experience of dealing with Jimi's Guitars in Ballymount? I've heard good things about them, and i just got a very reasonable quote from them for the mod, either on it's own or as part of a full service, clean, re-string etc. I'm probably going to go to them for it unless i can find a good reason not to.

Could anyone offer any advice?

Parsley

i can't help, but I think it's funny you're looking for 'someone who knows what they're doing' to carry out a mod that was originally made by accident cos the tech didn't know what he was doing :pac:

Parsley

Lol, yeah me too. The irony wasn't lost on me, especially as i don't know what I'M doing.:D

Still, i think would rather have my "mistake" professionally done than attempt it by myself.

Parsley wrote: »

i can't help, but I think it's funny you're looking for 'someone who knows what they're doing' to carry out a mod that was originally made by accident cos the tech didn't know what he was doing :pac:

wild turkey

Might be worth your while fitting a push pull pot so you can have both options rather than flipping the magnet

damonjewel

wild turkey wrote: »

Might be worth your while fitting a push pull pot so you can have both options rather than flipping the magnet

That would be my opinion too, however I think the Epi LP pickups are standard 2 wire and I think you need a 4 wire pickup. The other alternative I have read is to swap the braid connection with the hot on the pot connectors however you will need to insulate the braid with something, otherwise it has the potential to short circuit if it touches anything else.

wild turkey

wild turkey wrote: »

Might be worth your while fitting a push pull pot so you can have both options rather than flipping the magnet

damonjewel wrote: »

That would be my opinion too, however I think the Epi LP pickups are standard 2 wire and I think you need a 4 wire pickup. The other alternative I have read is to swap the braid connection with the hot on the pot connectors.....

I'm just going for a standard magnet flip. I love that tone, it suits 95% of the stuff i play, and also i like the simplicity of the mod, and i don't want to add extra switches to the LP body. As far as possible I'm looking to maintain it's looks cosmetically.

All I'll be doing is switching the pickup around to the back to front position once the mod has been done, so it's out of phase magnetically (rather than electrically), and upside down. As far as I've read there'll be no difference in terms of tone or operation by reversing the pickup once the magnet has been flipped, it's just a little cosmetic tweak that anyone who knows what they're looking at would spot, but that would go over the head of anyone who doesn't.

I've been advised that there are other ways to do it by messing with the pickup windings to get a more faithful reproduction of the PG sound, but that that's more difficult/expensive, less versatile in terms of tone, and more nasal and quacky. Also we're not all lucky enough to own a 1959 Les Paul standard, and for all the extra hassle, the small difference in the sound of the 2 mods on many lesser guitars would probably not warrant all the extra work & expense.

I'm hopefully getting the flip done in Jimi's Guitars later today. Will post back with some results once I've had a chance to mess around with it.

Ravelleman

My Robby Krieger SG has a push-pull phase switch on one of the volume pots. The sound it creates is interesting - quite nasal and with a big volume drop.

Ravelleman

Ravelleman wrote: »

My Robby Krieger SG has a push-pull phase switch on one of the volume pots. The sound it creates is interesting - quite nasal and with a big volume drop.

Yeah i'd expect to hear a volume drop playing on two out of phase pickups. Once the volume equalises between the pickups, the sympathetic frequencies would cancel each other out, meaning you're pulling a lot out of the sound. Still though, it's a distinctive tone, and is supposed to come through effects like distortions very well.

How have you found playing it while using effects that muddy up the sound?

zafo

Is the mod your looking to do literally just rotating the pickup 180 degrees or have I missed out on something?

zafo

zafo wrote: »

Is the mod your looking to do literally just rotating the pickup 180 degrees or have I missed out on something?

No, it involves changing the polarity on the magnet in one of the pickups so it's out of phase with the other one. When played by themselves there's no difference but when both pickups are played together some of the sound frequencies cancel each other out and you get a very unique tone. Its best heard on the early fleetwood mac tunes with Peter green. YouTube "fleetwood mac, need your love so bad" and you'll get the idea.

zafo

Deleted User wrote: »

No, it involves changing the polarity on the magnet in one of the pickups so it's out of phase with the other one. When played by themselves there's no difference but when both pickups are played together some of the sound frequencies cancel each other out and you get a very unique tone. Its best heard on the early fleetwood mac tunes with Peter green. YouTube "fleetwood mac, need your love so bad" and you'll get the idea.

I just did some reading on it now, you flip the magnet in the pick up relative to the windings, this makes much more sense.. cheers.

zafo

zafo wrote: »

I just did some reading on it now, you flip the magnet in the pick up relative to the windings, this makes much more sense.. cheers.

Yep, or you can switch the hot and ground wires going to the pickup, that does the same thing, switches the direction of the current and changes the magnet's polarity, but without opening the actual pickup. Incidentally this is what I just got done today. Haven't had a chance to play with it much yet but will post back later once I do.

So I've had a chance to play around with this since the mod was done earlier. It's very nice. It's quite narrow in terms of the point on the volume pot where the phasing kicks in. When you hit it there's a slight drop in volume and the bottom end drops out but the tone picks up a nice hollow harmonic quality. I ran it through a couple of different distortion units and the tone really stands up well even at higher levels of crunch. I'm not on my usual amp at the moment but I'm looking forward to playing on my usual setup and messing around with the tone pots to see what effect they have on the sound.

Dave in Jimi's music store did the mod for me by switching the wires to the pickup casing and re-insulating them to keep the sound from dropping out. He reckoned it was a lot less work to reverse the polarity on the magnet electrically than to take the pickup apart and there was a good chance you'd never get it sounding 100% again once you'd opened it up. He reversed the bridge pickup (for looks only) and he did a bang up job with cleaning it all up too. It's like new.

Jimi's was broken into last night, a professional smash job, a bunch of guitars were taken, so be on the lookout. They'll be putting the list online. Thanks to Dave for looking after me despite the fact he'd been in the shop since the early AM dealing with the robbery. They were clearly up to their eyeballs since early. Let people know to watch out for anything hooky from their list.

Ok, I've since played with this a bit more and at higher volumes on my usual stack, and it's a lovely mod, and a really simple way of getting a really interesting tone option for very little effort. It also doesn't really take anything away from your guitar's sound by having it done, because the point on your volume knobs where the phasing kicks in is very narrow and unless you're at that point exactly, the pickups behave 100% as they would otherwise.I leave my bridge pickup at 10 and vary my neck pickup for normal playing, and the effect only kicks in when my switch is in the middle position and both pickups are rolled up to 10. If one is out by a fraction, 10 and 9 for example, the guitar behaves like it normally would.

After playing with it yesterday on my usual setup, it's clear it sounds the best for blues and rock. Theres a slight volume drop once the pickups phasing kicks in, which means if you're playing rhythm and switching to it for lead you need to anticipate the dropout and use your pedals or pickups at a lower volume and switch up to it for your lead. It stands out through crunch and effects particularly well. It was distinctive no matter how much gain or volume I threw on it and sounds better the more volume you give it. It sounds much better dirty than clean, but that's les pauls generally in my opinion, and you can get some gorgeous blues lead tones out of it by using a little distortion and reverb and varying the tone pots on the pickups.

I would recommend it to anyone who is looking to get a nice, old style bluesy, dirty lo-fi lead sound for humbuckers. Its very nice, and really just adds an extra option to your guitar in terms of tone.

Keyzer

Sounds cool - would love to hear it play...

You in a band at the moment?