Hey!
I thought I'd share a quick, 5 cent mod that turned my muddy sounding 490R into a pickup whose tones I absolutely love. This is definitely not a new trick, and I'm not smart enough (or old enough) to be the first to do it, but it was very successful for me, so I thought I'd share. TLDR: add a capacitor in series to roll off some of the bass.
I picked up a 490R/498T set cheaply second hand from someone who'd taken them out of an SG. I have a cheap Jackson Randy Rhoads style offset V that plays phenomenally, and that I find super fun. It's also the easiest guitar for me to mod, because the control cavity is incredibly easy to access. At any rate, I threw this set in to see what would happen.
You should know that this is an unusually bright sounding guitar. I typically use 1M pots, but this is one of the only guitars I own where I use 500k instead, including in my strat and tele!
At any rate, the 498T bridge sounds GREAT for high gain in this guitar. I know that the 498T is often criticized for being too bright and brittle, but remember, this is a pointy flying V, so this is NOT a bluesy/jazzy axe. Its brightness allows it to keep its clarity despite all the full, fat gain I throw on it. But I digress,..
When I tried the 490R, it sounded dark - lots of bass + low mids. I love a mid-focused lead tone that sings and sounds dark and buttery, but the 490R was downright muddy. It was impossible to EQ my amp so that the 490R stayed clear without making the 498T shrill.
A while ago, I'd picked up a box of 700 Hilitchi caps of varying values from Amazon.com for about $12 shipped. I play with pots and caps a lot to dial in my tone on different guitars. In the past, I've turned tone controls into bass cut knobs, but as this guitar only has 1 volume and 1 tone, I would have had to have given up the only treble cut pot in order to have a bass cut pot, so that was a no go.
When thinking about it, I realized that since I could never really see why I would want that much low end mud on the 490R, I wouldn't really need to have the bass cut feature on a pot. I wanted it always on. With that in mind, I soldered a capacitor in series with the hot wire of the pickup, between the hot wire and the pickup selector.
BAM!
I've still got mids galore in the neck position, and it sounds warm and silky smooth for leads (I love that Alnico II sponginess), but by cutting off some of the bass, it's crystal clear instead of being a mudfest.
I originally used a 0.082 mF cap, which wasn't quite enough cut. I then switch to 0.068 mF, which sounds great, but may be slightly too much bass cutting for me. Unfortunately, I don't have any caps whose values are in between these two, so I'll probably end up soldering two caps in parallel to get a value in between them. So the experiment goes on. However, the initial results have been so successful that I thought I should share.
Good luck!
I thought I'd share a quick, 5 cent mod that turned my muddy sounding 490R into a pickup whose tones I absolutely love. This is definitely not a new trick, and I'm not smart enough (or old enough) to be the first to do it, but it was very successful for me, so I thought I'd share. TLDR: add a capacitor in series to roll off some of the bass.
I picked up a 490R/498T set cheaply second hand from someone who'd taken them out of an SG. I have a cheap Jackson Randy Rhoads style offset V that plays phenomenally, and that I find super fun. It's also the easiest guitar for me to mod, because the control cavity is incredibly easy to access. At any rate, I threw this set in to see what would happen.
You should know that this is an unusually bright sounding guitar. I typically use 1M pots, but this is one of the only guitars I own where I use 500k instead, including in my strat and tele!
At any rate, the 498T bridge sounds GREAT for high gain in this guitar. I know that the 498T is often criticized for being too bright and brittle, but remember, this is a pointy flying V, so this is NOT a bluesy/jazzy axe. Its brightness allows it to keep its clarity despite all the full, fat gain I throw on it. But I digress,..
When I tried the 490R, it sounded dark - lots of bass + low mids. I love a mid-focused lead tone that sings and sounds dark and buttery, but the 490R was downright muddy. It was impossible to EQ my amp so that the 490R stayed clear without making the 498T shrill.
A while ago, I'd picked up a box of 700 Hilitchi caps of varying values from Amazon.com for about $12 shipped. I play with pots and caps a lot to dial in my tone on different guitars. In the past, I've turned tone controls into bass cut knobs, but as this guitar only has 1 volume and 1 tone, I would have had to have given up the only treble cut pot in order to have a bass cut pot, so that was a no go.
When thinking about it, I realized that since I could never really see why I would want that much low end mud on the 490R, I wouldn't really need to have the bass cut feature on a pot. I wanted it always on. With that in mind, I soldered a capacitor in series with the hot wire of the pickup, between the hot wire and the pickup selector.
BAM!
I've still got mids galore in the neck position, and it sounds warm and silky smooth for leads (I love that Alnico II sponginess), but by cutting off some of the bass, it's crystal clear instead of being a mudfest.
I originally used a 0.082 mF cap, which wasn't quite enough cut. I then switch to 0.068 mF, which sounds great, but may be slightly too much bass cutting for me. Unfortunately, I don't have any caps whose values are in between these two, so I'll probably end up soldering two caps in parallel to get a value in between them. So the experiment goes on. However, the initial results have been so successful that I thought I should share.
Good luck!
