why did gibson switch over to 300k pots?

HAha, we can handle upto about 4'' of snow around here before it goes to shit. people don't tycally drive in the snow here if they can but hen they do theres usually a fair few car accidents. Yea, I think its bause we're a island in the sea so get a warming affect where in holland they get loads more snow and much colder temps despite being pretty much level with us. Continental climate that influences most of europe but us, spain and a few otheres. What time is it where you are? It's 12:15am here haha

Anybody mind explaining what exactly are 300k pots are? I tried researching this and there's so much. A quick rundown would be nice :)

argh.... do you even know what a potentiometer does? what resistors and capacitors are? wait, you would have to grok resistors in order to understand pots... before I start explaining it would be good to know WHERE to start.... is this just more of your usual stuff or are you really unable to find decent electronics books somehow?

I am really unable to find decent electronics books somehow. I'm sorry, if you know anything I can read, I can probably check if it's at the library or cheap enough to afford.

I've herd okay things about this, the book I had as a kid is apparently out of print now.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0615165419/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_3?pf_rd_p=1944687682&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0711902321&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1B08JPHFRV4568AXADT3

In the simplist terms possible a potentiometer is a variable resistor. On the volume pot in a strat the right lug next to the pick up selector is the input, the centre lug output to the jack and the left lug is to ground so as you adjust the resistor closer to zero you dump more signal to ground till all the signal is sent to ground. I may be wrong ob this but a tone put works in the same way but you put a capacitor between ground so what happens is a capacitance load is put on the pot meaning the high frequencies are sent to ground but the bass frequencies are left, leaving you with a darker sound. I'm not one hundred percent on how or why and I can't tell you the wiring off the top of my head but I think its typically the same as a volume pot. The taper of a pot is how much the resistance is changing through the sweep of the pot I think, so like at around 6 on a 500k pot the resistance should be around 300k the K stands for Kohm or kilo ohm. Read ohms law. 500k is 500,000ohms. And when you here 0.047, 0.022 uf etc this is microfarad which is a I cant remember how many zeros but a lot. Jim is more clued up on all this than I am. Just google how do variable resistors work and how D capacitors work etc. Ohms law os helpful too. I should be more clued up than most on this subject as I studied electronics and physics but if you don't apply it, you forget.

you didn't give him an misinformation, but you didn't teach him much either. I am not going to attempt to. There's too much. Read a book is my advice. Its what I did and what everyone I know did.

I know, just attempts to explain a little on what they do but there is far too much to explain and it gets somewhat complicated.

Stacked 250/500k pots. I was thinking of getting two concentric pots and use the 500k for the jb in my strat and wire the jb like a telecaster and send the signal to the seperate volume and tone and then to the switch and work out how to send the jb signal to either the jack or its own volume without having it controlled by a 250k or being on permanently. How would you say to wire it? Or would I also need a push pull to work as a on off switch so I can then send the 500k volume to the jack and have its own 500k tone wotrd to it like a Tele?

this is child's play... keep the 250k volume and just use stock wiring, 250k volume and no tone control will not load the JB down any more than two 500K pots for volume and tone.... this is traditional fat strat wiring and it works fine.... OR you could get a couple noise cancelling Dimarzio strat pups that work better with 500K and justrun all 2 pickups through 500K master volume and master tone and then make the spare tonecontrol a blend pot to mix in the humbucker when in neck position...

or you can try my "queen of the strats" mod... I have 3 singles, all differently flavored singles, 3 phase switches, 3 on/offs, 2push/pull pots to switch the middle and bridge pickups between series and parallel so you can mix up quack tones and hot buckery sounds... straight bridge pickup ina custom pickguard...

http://images.equipboard.com/uploads/gear_photo/image/2529/m_20150616_112539.jpg

I'm thinking of going back to a SSS set up over the HSS set up I use currently and repurposing the JB into either the art120 or the RG if I don't like the passive EMG pick ups in there. I amp tempted to get a Dimazrio superdistortion F spaced and a 36th anniversary F spaced too. My JB in the strat isn't the currect spacing but it sounds no diferent than it did in my les paul so I could care less. Its just don't sound as good as it could.

How do you the queen of the strats mod? sounds awesome and something I would love to try.

So my grandma and granddad came round earlier and gave us the other half for the Gibson providing we pay them back, pretty damn happy. set up a direct debit to them so will gradually pay them back :)

Good for you. Be wise about resale when borrowing money to buy a guitar.

My queen mod is basedon the GFS brian may strat mod with a custom pickguard based on theirs. I went with a mix of 2 custom made strat pickups, A2 stagger pole neck and A5 flat pole middle with different wire types and gauges that are well calibrated and one of the hot bridge position GFS brighton rock strat pickups. I added a fralin baseplate to the GFS to enhance its tonal bigness and great low end even further. I bought six mini sliders from GFS that are in their brian may kit and in the end wired them basically like GFS did, but on middle and bridge I wired up alpha push-push pots between the phase and on-off switches for mid and bridge to be individual series/parallel switches so you can get ANY combination of strat and Queen inbetween tones. Pots are wired Brian May style as master vol and tone. Mixing all 3 pickups with different combinations of phase and series/parallel can yield some insane sounds that are beyond normal strat quack or queen's out of phase weirdness. The best sound to my ear though is neck and bridge out of phase in series. Wild harmonics but still pretty full.

had a look on ebay and a 2004 model is selling for £450 and a 2007 £500. not too bad for the age. I think I'm gunna have a look at the local store and see if I can maybe get a Gibson case thrown in for £50 extra, be loving it if they do! probably won't though haha. I'll try haggling with them in the true british manner.

That sounds badass! I reckon I should try giving it a go on my strat but maybe with the jb in too. I almost won two dimarzio superdistortions and a set of groover rotomatics for my ibanez lp copy but forgot to bid again, went for £48 -.-

that's right, the junk finish Gibbies don't come with lifton style cases, just gig bags... I forgot that my special was caseless and I ahd to get one as a gift from my bassist at the time. Its a shame you live in the UK, I have scads of Gibson, Epi, Gretsch and 'Gibson style' cases in my walk-in. When I sell to stores I usually keep the cases. I have fender type cases too, both vintage rectangular and modern molded plastic. I have SKB cases, Gators, you name it. More hard cases than guitars. I would sell one to you cheap but the shipping would defeat the point.

The JB is way too hot and humbuckery to use in brian may wiring.

Na, just a padded bag. Still more than Epiphones come with. Weren't Epiphone gibsons rival till they went bust and Gibson bought them? Shame epiphone don't really have their own designs anymore other than than the casino as far as I'm aware though the do have some cool les Paul models like the ultra iii. Didn't les Paul himself prefer epiphonr or always thought they was great? And weren't they built in America before Gibson turnt them into a lisensed budget company?

Shame that it cost so much shipping plus customs on top of that. Alwell, maybe I'll go to America oneday and buy one off you and take it back haha

originally epis are nothing to write home about before the Gibson takeover apart from the emperor... in my opinion anyway... theya re valuable and they have cool sounding pickups whether theya re in 3rd party winds or done in-house, but their QC and playability was not in my opinion up to vintage Gibson standards. They fell in with the other set-neck also-rans like Gretsch and Guild. They COULD be great guitars, but only certain models and only if you got the right one. the value of some of these old guitars from the "other 3" as I like to think of them pisses me off because you have to sort a lot of dogs to find good vintage examples.

Also, I feel like you are going to take a total bath on this faded finish LP studio you want if you buy it new. Play a lot of them so you can be sure you get one you'll keep forever.

I see, never really knew any of that.

I really want one haha. I'm going to head down to portsmouth and try a lot of them and hopefully will take my one home :) I'll just say I've come in to buy a gibson lp studio faded today but want to try a couple first and they usually are really happy to help out there. very good store, hard to find, its inside a huge warehouse on a industrian state, if you didnt know it was there, you wouldn't find it. I can't wait though. I tried a friends laney irt60h today and I am sold, I know its a ''metal'' amp but that clean channel is the shit and the gain on the amp is amazing

take your time... try to find one that suits your hands BUT also has a nice smooth feel to the finish where you don't feel any 'grain texture' through the lacquer whether you can see grain or not. The ones that are sanded better wear better and if it were me I would setup a makeshift spray booth this summer and get a few aerosols of gloss clear coat lacquer and hit her with a top coat to protect her. Just be careful, the nicest store clerks are the worst for pawning shitty examples of pricey guitars off on guys they consider to be newbies. Try not to seem to eager and make sure you talk the talk. These guys can be sharks. They are commissioned, remember, and handing a guy a bunch of dogs instead of the nicer examples of a model and preying on their strong lust for any Gibson they can afford is common practice. Its what puts food on their tables.

nothing wrong with getting a 'metal amp' as a non-metal players if you want a lot of gain on tap... You can always roll the gain back and you can always pin the clean channel and drive the power amp for vintage tones. You can also use the metal channel for a singing lead and then use the clean channel as a clean rhythm and get rhythm OD and distortion from pedals. World's your oyster if the base sound is to your liking.

also, you mentioned the casino s an epi design, it is not... before the Casino there was the ES330, a Casino with a Gibson headstock... Gibson continued to produce the 330 in small number through the 60s but mostly made the casino as epis flagship thinline hollowbody as the rest of the epi line was either adapted frmom the old epi catalog or were also rebranded ES models... the Riviera and Sheraton are kinda obvious, rivieras are 335s with minihums and the Sheraton is a 355 but both got epi headstocks and inlay designs. The Kalamazoo Epis by Gibson are universally nice axes. Much better than most NYC epis, but they have less of their own character after Gibson created the minihum to fill the slot of the old NYC epi pickups when Gibson ran out of Epis stock of them.

I'lll keep that in mind, thanks :) can you guys buy nitro spray paints over there? I've heard they're illegal or something. I can buy them over here no problem and have sprayed a tele body white and gloss cleared it all in nitro. I'll buff the body up slightly and give it a few coats of clear satin nitro

I love the laney its very versitile and has a attentuator or powersoak thing in it so can go from 1w all the way to 60 and anywhere in between which is nice when you need to be quieter.

I never knew the casino was just a epi copy of a old gibson haha. I always got told it was a epi design but alwell, ~I still want one

yes we can buy nitro spray cans but only through certain dealers and not in large quantities. You can't get it at the Home Depot LOL. Acetone/nitrocellulose products aren't banned but they are restricted for environmental reasons as are CFC based spray cans.

Well, the Epi isn't a copy, its just a 330 with an Epi headstock. I think the 330 came out alongside the 335 and then within a year or two Gibson decided to rebrand some of their hollow and semihollow guitars so that all the old Epi dealers could now have more than the jazzboxes that Epi previously made in NYC without having to apply for a separate Gibson dealership (there was a whole territory setup then so in a certain city there would only be 1 or 2 authorized Gibson dealers, but they increased their market share by overlapping the same rock friendy guitar designs with different headstocks to Epi dealers who were not also Gibson dealers that way stores that previously only catered to the jazz crowd could also lure some rockers in who might otherwise have bought Fender or Gretsch... or that was Ted McCarty's thinking.... it worked out well actually, old Ted was a smooth businessman as well as being a visionary idea man and amazing talent scout)

As far as I know in the UK there's not really tough restrictions on it, I mean I can buy ten cans in one go with no problems at all.

Sounds a pretty good idea to put the epi headstock ob etc, prefer the Gibson headstock to my epi headstock bit its just a headstock, don't matter.

I think I got lucky with my Chinese LP custom pro. The pickups sound great, silent, no hum etc, frets are extremely good and well dressed, same with the neck and the body. Plays like a low end Gibson too so can't complain. Just wish they'd use better jacks and switches in them and not pcb electronics. The Chinese did a good job. I hate how they have hacked away the wood for the neck joint and it looks shit inside the neck pickup cavity as a result. Most epis I play are shit though, just get lucky once in a while, same with squier.

What's the Gibson les Paul spirit like? Was £800 now £650, 2015 model. Are they alright? Has the 57 classic humbuckers in it and all the usual Gibsony stuff