Upgrading Epiphone Guitar

October 15, 2004 1:34 PM

Tone Filter. I have an Epiphone Dot (Gibson ES335 copy) semi-acoustic, hollow body guitar. I love it, but I'm thinking of upgrading the pickups and tone pots, as well as the tuning machines. For the machines, I think I'll go with Planet Waves Auto-Trim Tuning Machines, as I love a locking machine. But I'm at a loss WRT choosing pickups. I play through a Mesa Boogie Mark IV, and I want a real crisp rhythm tone, perhaps even a little weak in the midrange, and I want a clean, fat solo tone that I can always run through the "rhythm 2" channel or "lead" channel on the Mark IV for blues or serious overdrive. As far as pots go, I'm in the dark.
Any Suggestions?
posted by gnz2001 to sports, hobbies, & recreation (5 comments total)

*waits to see if any of the suggestions would help his de armond*
posted by lescour at 8:07 PM on October 15, 2004

Well, lescour, I think late Friday was a lousy time to post this question. All the tone gods are out gigging tonight. Curses.
posted by gnz2001 at 9:09 PM on October 15, 2004

Actually I was tracking some stuff in GarageBand.

I just put a pair of Seymour Duncan Antiquities into my Dot last Saturday. It was more work than I was expecting - the entire operation has to be carried out through the lower F-hole. Now I know why they're called F-holes. If you are foolish brave enough to try this yourself, say so and I'll lay some tips on you that will make it a lot easier.

Nice amp btw - I rock a IIC+ and a Maverick so I'm familiar with the general Mesa schtick.

You don't specify whether you're after a vintage or a modern tone, and you know what, rather than lay out a bunch of options for you, I think I need to hear that first.

(Although my first inclinations include: a pair of Fralin humbuckers for a more vintage yet beautifully tight PAF tone; a Duncan '59 neck and Custom 5 bridge for a vintage neck and a tight fat slightly sccoped lead sound; and possibly 4-lead conductors with a push pull tone pot so's you can do a coilcut and get a couple extra sounds.)

As for pots, you want CTS brand 500K pots, audio taper for the volume pot and linear taper for the tone pot, and I believe the tone caps are usually 22 microfarad. You can order them from guitarelectronics.com, although they're currently out of the audio taper 500K pot.

I'd also suggest asking this question on guitargeek.com in the Guitars forum; it's a really good forum.
posted by ikkyu2 at 10:14 PM on October 15, 2004

I didn't mean to end this thread, by the way; I was hoping other people would answer too!
posted by ikkyu2 at 3:50 PM on October 16, 2004

Have you thought about adding in coil-split switching, too? I tend to think of single coils (or split 'buckers) as better at the crisp clean tones--think Steve Cropper, say--and humbuckers as the way to go for fat lead tones. Dunno how that'd sound on a semi-hollowbody like the Dot, though... Gibson offered a coil-tap equipped ES-335 for a few years in the late '70s, but it'd probably be extremely hard to find one to test-drive.

Anyway, Seymour Duncan's website has some pretty comprehensive samples of their pickups, in bridge/neck and clean/dirty variations. Even if you don't want to buy from them, that might give you a better idea of what you want.
posted by arto at 9:29 PM on October 16, 2004