'81 Humbucker Issue

Updated
Tim B.

Hi all,

I've just been very excited to get hold of an '81 and have stuck it in a Les Paul project guitar of mine.

I am by no means an expert but I've used the wiring diagrams available to put it in there and everything seems to be soldered correctly.

On first plug-in the pickup sounded really thin, quiet and a little distorted in comparison to the stock neck pup I already had in there.

I changed the battery and had a double-check of the solder joints which look ok. Plugged back in and no change in sound.

I've just run a voltmeter over the '81 and i got a reading of 58.9 ohms which seems like an insane amount of resistance. 

Could this be the reason it sounds so weak? Do you have any suggestions for making the pup sing? 

Cheers all,

Tim

Pushead

Did you replace the pots as well? If the guitar had passive pickups originally, they use much more resistance in the pot than active pickups.

Tim B.

ahh good shout. The axe is a malaysian LP custom copy with the standard awful pots etc. Food for thought

Tim B.

What kind of pots would you recommend. The pup came out of an epiphone LP special.

Foolishly, I didn't plug it in before I cannibalised it. However, the pots look beefier on the epi. will try and swap 'em over.

Pushead

An EMG 81 needs a 25kohm pot. The stock pots on the Epi are probably 300 or 500kohm.

Tim B.

Again, great shout. Every day's a school day

ESP Customer Service

Thank you to Pushead for helping out with this.  I hope your project came out awesome!

 

Pushead



I'm here to help!

Post to Thread