Adventures in Epi LP Tinkering

[closetrocker]

I have a 2005 sunburst Epi LP Standard Plus that I have been tinkering with for about a year. In addition, I have been setting up my closet rocker studio at home. Here is what I currently have as my home studio.

I use a B52 Matrix 200 PA as my amp/PA. Am very happy with this set up for plugging in guitar on Digitech RP150 pedal, a bass guitar, my Tascam MP-GT1 MP3 guitar trainer, laptop or drum machine. I play with backup trax that I play through my Tascam MP-GT1. The PA system allows the flexibility of mixing the sound and maintaining good fidelity. With the RP150 pedal, the presets have amp modeling that sounds great through the PA system.

Back to my LP. The standard comes with Grover tuners, alnico humbucker Epi pickups, Epi stock Nashville style bridge and tail piece, plastic nut, Alpha pots with modern wiring (cap wired between pot posts).

The first thing that drove me to start thinking about tinkering was the quality of tone when using the volume knobs to control volume. I hated how I needed to turn the knob almost all the way down before any noticeable volume control took place. I also started comparing my epi to the Gibson out there and noticed that my Epi had a lot of quality workmanship in the neck, finish, binding and fret board that compared well with the real thing. With some hardware upgrades, it looked very doable for the average hobbyist and tinkerer.

Ok, first steps where to replace the stock bridge and tailpiece with something better; TonePro chrome that fasten on the pegs. These are available in metric sized from several vendors and are easy to drop in, bolt down and intonate. They are beefier than the stock Epi versions, and look very nice. Only disadvantage of the springless TonePro bridge is that the saddle adjustment screw is bolted to the securing nut and you can’t flip the saddles around to give a little more tone length to the string. This only became an issue with the G string, as it intonates a little sharp using the lighter super slinky gauge strings. I also was considering replacing the saddles with the Tusq versions. Bought them, but decided to abandon this idea after sticking with the TonePro bridge. Feels good and sounds fine with my rig, so I left it alone.

After replacing the tailpiece and bridge, I spent some cycle adjusting their heights to optimize the action and height of tail piece. Too low places too much strain on the bridge and too high causes strings to pop out of the saddles on bends.

Next was the nut. I bought a Tusq nut, but noticed on its arrival that it would require significant sizing to get it to match my guitar. Seems the string spacing and nut width was a bit wider than my Epi. I then ordered a Earvana drop-in LP replacement nut. From carefully evaluating it against my stock nut, I could see that the sizing was right. I then took action of removing my stock nut and gluing in the Earvana version. That required filling/re-drilling the truss rod cover screws. After stringing, I noticed that string slot height would need to be lowered to get the action I wanted.

At the next opportunity, I took my Epi to a local guitar shop and explained what needed to be done. They adjusted the string slots in the nut, tighten my truss rod and lower the action on my axe. The result was very good, eliminating a buzz spot that I had on the high E string around the 17-20 frets and improving playability. Jury is still out on the Earvana nut replacement. I noticed that intonation is very good in the 3-12 fret range, but still believe that playing a cowboy D chord sounds no better. Strings fretted near the nut are just bent too much to be compensated for by this nut; especially the G string. This could be due to the string gauge that I use; super slinky (09s)

Ok, on to the electronics. I spent a lot of time reviewing possible PU choices. Since I am a closet rocker, I picked the Golden Age zebra humbuckers from StewMac. These are very reasonably priced and allow for coil tapping with the white wire. I read many reviews of these with folks generally in favor. I couldn’t justify spending big $$$ on a home-playing guitar

I also started studying wiring options, and decided to go with a classic wiring with coil tapping. I ordered some of the Vitamin Q Sprague capacitors, picked up some standard height CTS pots, a classic volume bleed cap/resistor kit. Once I determined I had a free day without wife and kids around, I put my LP under the knife! Here’s how it went:

Tear out was easy…

PU placement was a snap

I did most of the soldering outside of the guitar on a cardboard template that spaced the pots correctly for later placement into the cavity.

CTS pots required some reaming of the body holes but wasn’t a problem with a standard electric drill and a ½ inch bit.

The bridge volume pot was on the short side, but was able to thread it in after eliminating the washer.

I got confused with the wiring of the push-pull pot mainly due to not understanding how the Golden Age white wire functions in a coil tap set up. After re-reading all the instructions and reviewing the StewMac PU theory material on their website, I got it right!

In general, I did a neat job of soldering all the groundings and components. Things just got a bit tight around the push pull pot. In retrospect, I should have used the inside connectors of the push/pull pot for wiring as this would give me much more room to work.

So, are you dying to know how it all turned out? Well, I was very happy that everything worked almost perfectly the first time I plugged into an amp. I had one of the tone pot wires reversed on the push/pull pot that cause the knob to work in the opposite direction. After reversing those wires and figuring out the coil tap, I had a short with the grounding paint from one of my solder joints. This took some head scratching to figure out, but was easily fixed by just bending the solder point away from the paint. Ok, so I didn’t accomplish all this in just an hour, but more like 6! But in the end, everything worked out and I am very happy with the results.

The volume and tone controls actually do something on my axe! I can actually lower the volume and use the tone controls to come up with some different tones and still keep everything sounding good! The Golden Age PUs with the new wiring do really sound like the classic LP sound. I get really full sounding tone from the neck PU on up-neck leads and can get that 80s growl out of the lower strings with the bridge PU. The bridge PU also delivers nice biting high note leads as well. The coil tap on the bridge PU does give you that strato sound, but a lower volume. If anything, it reminds me that I am just an LP kind of guy. I just haven’t spent much time futzing around with the coil tap tone, as I’m still exploring all the full humbucking tone that I’m getting out of this axe. This axe kicks butt on classic 70s rock, blues, heavy metal and 80s glam. I play along with backup trax ranging from ZZ Top, Bon Jovi, Santriani, Hendrix, and just heavy rock jams. Hey, I’m a closet rock star now with a cheapo kick butt axe!!!

So, what is left to do on this Epi? I decided to pass on the tuner upgrade to the locking type. Once I correctly learned how to pass the string over and under the tuner post on winding, I haven’t had any tuning issues. Oh, I did replace the control knobs with gold speed knobs and selector switch with a Switch Craft. I’ll get around to posting some pix. So, anyone got any suggestions on what else can be done to this Epi LP

[Benniator]

No progress pictures accompanying this novel? For shame.

[rickym]

Originally Posted by Benniator

No progress pictures accompanying this novel? For shame.

MAN! And I made popcorn too!

[closetrocker]

Sorry, pix will be coming. I just got to get to it. Any suggestions on other projects?

[Benniator]

Sand the neck and throw some rainbow and unicorn stickers on the body.

[closetrocker]

Ok, here's the first pix of my Epi Standard + LP

[diceman]

Yeah... she looks great!

[closetrocker]

Any experience with the Earvana nut?

[diceman]

None here...

[closetrocker]

Hey Diceman, are you into using backup tracks? I'm always looking for new ones to play lead along with.

[diceman]

Not so much... I get to band practice pretty regularly.

I have been using some blues back tracks though... pretty random ones - this place is OK:

Blues Jam Tracks 2003

I play in a rock/punk/metal band, so most of my bases are covered there. I usually throw in one of those backtracks for blues, or google some other random stuff...

You got any good ones?

[closetrocker]

Here are some sites that I found some free stuf:

Guitar backing tracks
FREE Guitar Backing Tracks - Browse Downloads

other than these, I have purchased a Santriani CD from Planet of Rock.com. The one I purchased had 100 mp3 Santriani back up tracks that were probably recorded overseas. Some where cheesy midi tracks, but I chose about 15 that suited my needs and are of good quality. I have also bought some books off of Amazon that have some tracks with instruction. I load these into my Tascam MP- GT1 and mix them with my guitar through a PA system. Works like your playing right along with the band. The Tascam has looping, in pitch slo-mo, and guitar muting. I'll attach some mp3 files of my licks at some point.

[diceman]

Right on. Thanks for the links. Looking forward to hearing your clips!

[closetrocker]

Ok, here is the picture of the wiring I did on my 2005 Epi LP Standard Plus. You may need to magnify this, as the file size limitation is very limiting

[1999nbmZ]

Any reason for using PIO caps and ceramic caps together?

[brettk7]

Originally Posted by closetrocker

Any experience with the Earvana nut?

Stock part on my ESP EC-1000.

Very nice piece, definitely worth the $25 or whatever they are new (pretty decent OEM part too ). It has to be a BIG step-up over the Epi one for sure, I would definitely say go for it if you are considering it.

[aaronl]

Where did you get your bridge?

I need a new tail piece for sure mine just falls off when I take the strings off...

Anyway it looks nice I just put Duncans in mine and am going to do the pots/caps next.

Great write-up btw

[diceman]

Originally Posted by aaronl

I need a new tail piece for sure mine just falls off when I take the strings off...

Anyway it looks nice I just put Duncans in mine and am going to do the pots/caps next.

Its supposed to fall off!!! The only ones that don't are the locking tailpieces like Tonepros...

I'm a big fan of Sprague Vitamin Q caps - they're cheap, PIO, and sound great!

[aaronl]

Originally Posted by diceman

Its supposed to fall off!!! The only ones that don't are the locking tailpieces like Tonepros...

I'm a big fan of Sprague Vitamin Q caps - they're cheap, PIO, and sound great!

Well I guess I need a Tonepros? I have heard they add sustain to the guitar. I know on my strat I used a Callahan(sp??) but he doesnt seem to make LP stuff

Sprague Vitamin Q on ebay? I thought I may go 50s wiring.

BTW Again great write up man, I don't know if I have ever typed that much at one time...

[closetrocker]

Looks like Guitar Center carries them now:

TonePros Metric Locking Tune-O-Matic Bridge (large posts) and more Bridges and Tailpieces at GuitarCenter.com.

[closetrocker]

I started with the Vitamine Qs as these are suppose to give you that classic sound. After I put them, the guitar sounded really nice. It still didn't complete solve the volume control problem, so I picked up the ceramic caps and resitor volume bleed kit to be consistent with the vintage wiring. The ceramics apparently don't have the same tolerance range as the modern caps, but it all worked out well. I get a clean taper on turning down the volume, with no mudding of tone.

[closetrocker]

Hi,

I'm not 100% satisfied with the Earvana nut. It did drop in very easily, but required that the string slots be deepened to get the action where it needs to be. As I mention, a cowboy "D" still sound out of tune as you are fretting the G string at the nut. I do get good intonation in the mid-ranges and all the way down the neck. So, I'm not sure if its worth doing this as an upgrade. Maybe your factory installed and set-up ESP gets better results? How do your Cowboy D's sound?

[closetrocker]

Just a quick update. I went for the .10 gauge strings on my last string change, and the issue of G string tuning has improved. Certainly the heavier gauge strings seem to keep their intonation better when fretting around the nut.

[closetrocker]

Been a while since I’ve posted, and got some time on my hands to give an update. I still have the Epi LP Standard + that I worked on last year. It is my favorite and most versatile ax. I have been spending a good part of last year updating my studio set up and doing some playing with a band in my area. Well, the band seems to have disintegrated as babies and jobs got in the way of some members. I’m back to being a closet rocker in my home studio.

I decided to start building out a rack rig as I needed some flexibility around mixing with mp3s, instruments and vocals. I’ll post some pix of this project but will start with the narrative version.
I went through a series of pedal board configurations seeking the right match of tone and flexibility. I finally settled on the Line 6 Pod XT live that I was able to find a Craig’s List for $150; an absolute steal. This thing is a beast and takes a lot of learning curve to get what you want out of it. Between effects, amp and cab modeling, it will keep you quite busy if you stray from the factory pre-sets. I love the patch downloads that you can get from the Line 6 customtone.com community site. It makes tweaking so much easier when someone has done some of the work for you already. The beauty of this thing is that it eliminates a lot of the guesswork around what happens to you signal when it leaves your effects processor and runs through an amp and a cab. I run the XT directly into my mixer, through a parametric equalizer (Behringer), power amp and 2 x 12 Celestion speaker cab.

There is a lot of religion floating around out there on the web on valves (tubes) vs. solid state modeling. I have to say I’m an old fart that started out on Fender tube amps in the 70’s and I really think that solid state with modeling is the way to go. So much more flexibility and control! For under a grand, you can put together a very nice solid state rig from used equipment that will get you far in terms of the types of tone and styles at your fingertips. Tube stuff has gotten way too expensive and I don’t see the value.

Anyway, I digress – back to the rack set up. It consists of two 10u carpeted wood racks that I put wheels on one for the base and stacked the second one on top. The components are stacked like this starting from the top and working down toward the lowest component:

Top Rack

1U ART surge/power strip with lights ($70/ebay): Helps you power on/off and see what you are doing
1U Berhinger PEQ2200 Parametric equalizer ($40/ebay): Adjust equalizer with turn of a knob
3U Behringer RX1202FX rack mixer ($200 new): Compact with lots of input/output flexibility and an FX engine. This thing is the cat’s meow!
3U Dennon dual cassette deck ($60 CL): I like to just push a button and record what I’m playing sometimes for self improvement purposes
1U Alesis 3630 Compressor/Gate ($70 CL): This is a nice-to-have
1U BBE 482 Sonic Equalizer ($60 ebay): Crisps up my backing tracks for play-along

Bottom Rack

1U no-name power strip for bottom rack components ($40 new)
4U rack mount PC ($100 ebay): Took an old PC board out of a tower case and laid it horizontal for rack mounting
2U Crown XT402 power amp ($140 CL)
2U Gemini power amp GXA 750 ($130 ebay)

So, you may be asking what do I do with this Frankenrack? Well, I found that I needed a work station/learning center to do all the things that I want to do with guitar. Let’s look at the different activities and how they fit into the design needs:

Backing tracks: I play along with backing track that are often run in Audacity. This allows me to loop on lead breaks and other areas that I want to focus on. Kind of the same idea as the guitar trainers that are for sale out there but with the flexibility of using a PC GUI. On top of my frankenrack, I have an old desktop flat panel display. This allows me to use the PC to download, edit and play track that I want to mess with. So, the PC is my primary backing track playback engine but can also be used to edit the tacks in Audacity for pitch and tempo changes. I run the PC signal through the mixer, compressor/gate, BBE and Gemini GXA 750 power amp. This is basically what a DJ would do, so I can crank out some nice volume. In addition, when I’m in the mood, I’ll run a vocal mix of myself singing along. Since I have lots of inputs on the mixer, guest vocalists are always welcome to jam along! All this gets loud through 2 OSP 12” floor monitors that I picked up on CL for $200. With the 12” driver and horn, they get the low bass as well as the vocal highs. A local bass player can hook his BassXT Live directly to my mixer and get some nice lows.

Learning new stuff: I've been buying the DVD lessons from Metal Method and this rig is great for following the DVDs and playing along. It's like having a private lesson.

Self evaluation: I record myself playing to the backing tracks occasionally to judge progress or style using the TEAC tape deck. Folks, I screwed around with many recording scenarios using my PC and software and was never very successful. The Dennon for the price of $60 and some rack space greatly simplifies recording what you are doing. Yes, an iMac would be the preferred solution but I’m going the cheapest route here to accomplish what I want. I also like the fact that the cassettes are readily available for reviewing if I want without the hassle of searching computer files.

Playing loud-assed Rock and Roll!: Yes, at the end of the day, it’s all about playing the guitar. As I outlined earlier, the POD XT live does me right by giving the flexibility and sound that I want. I can run the processed signal through the parametric equalizer to do some final touch up on the effect before it goes off to the Crown power amp. I’m only using one channel in the 9 o’clock position for powering the 2 x 12 Celestions; plenty loud for home use. The Crown power amp is certainly overkill, but I’m ready for Rock Armageddon when it comes….

So, this set up resides in an upstairs bedroom in my house and has been serving me well. Some of my rock buddies will come over and plug in and we can jam along with a backing track. We also have used a set of e-drums and the whole band playing through this set up. Works great too. I’ll need to posts some pix of the FrankenRacken shortly.

[closetrocker]

Ok, here are the pix

[closetrocker]

Nirvana nut update: I took my epi in for a set up, and the tech notched the nirvana nut a little deeper to lower the action. He used the right nut slotting tools and depth gauges. This made a big difference and fretting those cowboy chords now sound true instead of a bit sharp as before. Its important to get the string depth right after replacing a nut. Lesson learned is that replacing a nut is never a simple process and requires the right tools to set the string depth correctly in the nut.

[closetrocker]

Here are some tracks that I recorded. Keep in mind I'm not using any fancy recording stuff here, so the quality of the recording is a little rough. I do the vocals and lead guitar on all these:

Music page of MyStuffHangsHere - MP3 music page on SoundClick

Enjoy