1950s gibson les paul
Here's an easy but effective mod for Les Paul slingers that solves a problem they've been living with since the model's introduction more than a half century ago. This project also applies to most other guitars with dual humbuckers, individual master volume and master tone knobs for each pickup, and a 3-way pickup selector switch.
The problem (or not).
The Les Paul circuit dates back to the mid '50s. It has changed slightly over time—Gibson used several different tone caps and experimented with tone-pot wiring—but essentially, modern Les Pauls employ the original wiring.
The Les Paul circuit dates back to the mid '50s. It has changed slightly over time—Gibson used several different tone caps and experimented with tone-pot wiring—but essentially, modern Les Pauls employ the original wiring.
One thing Gibson did not change was the concept of coupled volume pots. You know how this works: With an independent pair of controls for each pickup and a 3-way toggle switch, you can dial in your lead volume and tone using the bridge pickup, set up a rhythm tone using the neck pickup, and then quickly change from lead to rhythm and back using the 3-way switch. This works great—two preset sounds at your fingertips.
Les Paul players know what happens when you use the middle position of the 3-way switch: Backing down just one of the volumes to zero shuts off the entire guitar.
But Les Paul players know what happens when you use the middle position of the 3-way switch: The pickups are wired together in parallel, so when both pickups are engaged, rolling down the volume of one even slightly while leaving the other fully open makes the latter much louder than its mate. Even worse, backing down just one of the volumes to zero shuts off the entire guitar.
Why is this? Because the two volume controls are not decoupled, they interact. With a passive circuit like this, it's just the nature of the beast. Consequently, the dual-humbucker world divides into two opposing camps: The first doesn't consider this interaction a problem. It's simply part of the game—get used to it. The other camp regards this interaction as a system error and tries to eliminate it.
Now, the only real solution for this problem—assuming it's an issue for you—is to switch to active circuitry. All other "solutions" are compromises that may or may not appeal to you. You must let your ears decide.
Swap it out.
It's easy to wire a Les Paul so the volume controls work independently: You simply wire the volume pots backwards. (This is how some Rickenbacker guitars and early Fender Jazz basses are wired.)
Wiring diagram courtesy of singlecoil.com.
First, study the wiring diagram shown here. It represents the modern factory wiring typically found in Les Pauls. The black wires are ground; the white wires are the hot connections from the pickups and to the output jack. The black wires that run from pot to pot form the "ground bus." Be careful not to close this ring—leave the connection between the two volume pots open, as shown in the wiring diagram, otherwise you'll create a perfect antenna that picks up all kinds of funny noises. (For a noise-free circuit, it's very important that the ground bus uses a solid, not too thin wire and strong soldering spots.)
Now, simply interchange connections 3 and 2 on both volume pots, including the tone cap connections. That's it! Leave all connections on the tone pots untouched. You've now wired both volume pots backwards, thus decoupling them.
Time to network?
There's a big downside to this mod: When the pickups are wired backwards, they "see" less resistance, and the output impedance rises. This results in dramatic treble loss when you roll back the volume. It's an idiosyncrasy of passive guitar systems: When you turn down the volume, even just a bit, treble loss is not proportional: A small cut in volume creates a far greater loss in treble response. And the treble loss is even worse when the volume pots are wired backwards.
You can combat this by adding a treble-bleed network between the input and output of each volume pot. This usually consists of a small capacitor, often with a resistor in series or parallel. Simply solder the treble-bleed network between lugs 3 and 2 on each volume pot and see if it sounds right to you.
As far as capacitor and resistor values, that depends on how much treble you like. Some people prefer using a capacitor only (aka "treble bypass cap"), while others like a cap with a resistor in parallel. A useable range for the cap is from 220 pF to 680 pF; a resistor wired in parallel can range from 150k ohm to 330k ohm. A popular choice for a cap-only solution is 330 pF. For a network solution, many players like a 470 pF cap with a 330k-ohm resistor wired in parallel. You could start with this and see what sounds best to you. Small silver mica caps sound excellent for this mod.
Remember, passive circuitry can never add anything that isn't already there, but it can reshape the tone by deemphasizing certain frequencies, which makes others more prominent. This treble-bleed network filters bass so the highs are more pronounced.
Until next time, keep on modding!
[Updated 9/28/21]
- Mod Garage: Three Ways to Wire a Tone Pot - Premier Guitar ›
- The Fascinating Peavey T-60 Tone Circuit - Premier Guitar ›
Onstage, Tommy Emmanuel executes a move that is not from the playbook of his hero, Chet Atkins.
“My biggest decision every day on tour is, ‘What do I want to start with? How do I want to come out of the gate?’” Emmanuel explains to me over a video call. “A good opener has to have everything. It has to be full of surprise, it has to have lots of good ideas, lots of light and shade, and then, hit it again,” he says, illustrating each phrase with his hands and ending with a punch.“You lift off straightaway with the first song, you get airborne, you start reaching, and then it’s time to level out and take people on a journey.”
In May 2023, Emmanuel played two shows at the Sydney Opera House, the best performances from which have been combined on his new release, Live at the Sydney Opera House. The venue’s Concert Hall, which has a capacity of 2,679, is a familiar room for Emmanuel, but I think at this point in his career he wouldn’t bring a setlist if he was playing Wembley Stadium. On the recording, Emmanuel’s mind-blowingly dexterous chops, distinctive attack and flair, and knack for culturally resonant compositions are on full display. His opening song for the shows? An original, “Countrywide,” with a segue into Chet Atkins’ “El Vaquero.”
“When I was going to high school in the ’60s, I heard ‘El Vaquero’ on Chet Atkins’ record, [1964’s My Favorite Guitars],” Emmanuel shares. “And when I wrote ‘Countrywide’ in around ’76 or ’77, I suddenly realized, ‘Ah! It’s a bit like “El Vaquero!”’ So I then worked out ‘El Vaquero’ as a solo piece, because it wasn’t recorded like that [by Atkins originally].
“The co-writer of ‘El Vaquero’ is Wayne Moss, who’s a famous Nashville session guy who played ‘da da da’ [sings the guitar riff from Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’]. And he played on a lot of Chet’s records as a rhythm guy. So once when I played ‘El Vaquero’ live, Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’” Emmanuel says, laughing.
Atkins is the reason Emmanuel got into performing. His mother had been teaching him rhythm guitar for a couple years when he heard Atkins on the radio and, at 6, was able to immediately mimic his fingerpicking technique. His father recognized Emmanuel’s prodigious talent and got him on the road that year, which kicked off his professional career. He says, “By the time I was 6, I was already sleep-deprived, working too hard, and being forced to be educated. Because all I was interested in was playing music.”
Emmanuel talks about Atkins as if the way he viewed him as a boy hasn’t changed. The title Atkins bestowed upon him, C.G.P. (Certified Guitar Player), appears on Emmanuel’s album covers, in his record label (C.G.P. Sounds), and is inlaid at the 12th fret on his Maton Custom Shop TE Personal signature acoustic. (Atkins named only five guitarists C.G.P.s. The others are John Knowles, Steve Wariner, Jerry Reed, and Atkins himself.) For Emmanuel, even today most roads lead to Atkins.
When I ask Emmanuel about his approach to arranging for solo acoustic guitar, he says, “It was really hit home for me by my hero, Chet Atkins, when I read an interview with him a long time ago and he said, ‘Make your arrangement interesting.’ And I thought, ‘Wow!’ Because I was so keen to be true to the composer and play the song as everyone knows it. But then again, I’m recreating it like everyone else has, and I might as well get in line with the rest of them and jump off the cliff into nowhere. So it struck me: ‘How can I make my arrangements interesting?’ Well, make them full of surprises.”
When Emmanuel was invited to contribute to 2015’s Burt Bacharach: This Guitar’s in Love with You, featuring acoustic-guitar tributes to Bacharach’s classic compositions by various artists, Emmanuel expresses that nobody wanted to take “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” due to its “syrupy” nature. But for Emmanuel, this presented an entertaining challenge.
He explains, “I thought, ‘Okay, how can I reboot “Close to You?’ So even the most jaded listener will say, ‘Holy fuck—I didn’t expect that! Wow, I really like that; that is a good melody!’ So I found a good key to play the song in, which allowed me to get some open notes that sustain while I move the chords. Then what I did is, in every phrase, I made the chord unresolve, then resolve.
Tommy Emmanuel's Gear
“I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head,” Emmanuel says. “So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever.”
Photo by Simone Cecchetti
Guitars
- Three Maton Custom Shop TE Personals, each with an AP5 PRO pickup system
Amps
- Udo Roesner Da Capo 75
Effects
- AER Pocket Tools preamp
Strings & Picks
- Martin TE Signature Phosphor Bronze (.012–.054)
- Martin SP strings
- Ernie Ball Paradigm strings
- D’Andrea Pro Plec 1.5 mm
- Dunlop medium thumbpicks
“And then to really put the nail in the coffin, at the end, ‘Close to you’ [sings melody]. I finished on a major 9 chord which had that note in it, but it wasn’t the key the song was in, which is a typical Stevie Wonder trick. All the tricks I know, the wonderful ideas that I’ve stolen, are from Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, James Taylor, Carole King, Neil Diamond. All of the people who wrote really incredibly great pop songs and R&B music—I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a -half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
I share with Emmanuel that the performances on Live at the Sydney Opera House, which include his popular “Beatles Medley,” reminded me of another possible arrangement trick. In Harpo Marx’s autobiography, Harpo Speaks, I preface, Marx writes of a lesson he learned as a performer—to “answer the audience’s questions.” (Emmanuel says he’s a big fan of the book and read it in the early ’70s.) That happened for me while listening to the medley, when, after sampling melodies from “She’s a Woman” and “Please Please Me,” Emmanuel suddenly lands on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
I say, “I’m waiting for something that hits more recognizably to me, and when ‘While My Guitar’ comes in, that’s like answering my question.”
“It’s also Paul and John, Paul and John, George,” Emmanuel replies. “You think, ‘That’s great, that’s great pop music,’ then, ‘Wow! Look at the depth of this.’”
Often Emmanuel’s flights on his acoustic guitar are seemingly superhuman—as well as supremely entertaining.
Photo by Ekaterina Gorbacheva
A trick I like to employ as a writer, I say to Emmanuel, is that when I’m describing something, I’ll provide the reader with just enough context so that they can complete the thought on their own.
“You can do that musically as well,” says Emmanuel. He explains how, in his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” he’ll play only the vocal melody. “When people are asking me at a workshop, ‘How come you don’t put chords behind that part?’ I say, ‘I’m drawing the melody and you’re putting in all the background in your head. I don’t need to tell you what the chords are. You already know what the chords are.’”
“Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’”
Another track featured on Live at the Sydney Opera House is a cover of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” (which Emmanuel then jumps into an adaptation of the Australian bush ballad, “Waltzing Matilda”). It’s been a while since I really spent time with There GoesRhymin’ Simon (on which “American Tune” was first released), and yet it sounded so familiar to me. A little digging revealed that its melody is based on the 17th-century Christian hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” which was arranged and repurposed by Bach in a few of the composer’s works. The cross-chronological and genre-lackadaisical intersections that come up in popular music sometimes is fascinating.
“I think the principle right there,” Emmanuel muses, “is people like Bach and Beethoven and Mozart found the right language to touch the heart of a human being through their ears and through their senses ... that really did something to them deep in their soul. They found a way with the right chords and the right notes, somehow. It could be as primitive as that.
Tommy Emmanuel has been on the road as a performing guitarist for 64 years. Eat your heart out, Bob Dylan.
Photo by Jan Anderson
“It’s like when you’re a young composer and someone tells you, ‘Have a listen to Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind,”’ he continues. “‘Listen to how those notes work with those chords.’ And every time you hear it, you go, ‘Why does it touch me like that? Why do I feel this way when I hear those chords—those notes against those chords?’ I say, it’s just human nature. Then you wanna go, ‘How can I do that!’” he concludes with a grin.
“You draw from such a variety of genres in your arrangements,” I posit. “Do you try to lean into the side of converting those songs to solo acoustic guitar, or the side of bridging the genre’s culture to that of your audience?”
“I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a-half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
“If I was a method actor,” Emmanuel explains, “what I’m doing is—I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head. So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever. I always think it has to have that kind of orchestral, not grandeur, but … palette to it. Because of the influence of Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, and Elton John, especially—the piano guys—I try to use piano ideas, like putting the third in the low bass a lot, because guitar players don’t necessarily do that. And I try to always do something that makes what I do different.
“I want to be different and recognizable,” he continues. “I remember when people talked about how some players—you just hear one note and you go, ‘Oh, that’s Chet Atkins.’ And it hit me like a train, the reason why a guy like Hank Marvin, the lead guitar player from the Shadows.... I can tell you: He had a tone that I hear in other players now. Everyone copied him—they just don’t know it—including Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, all those people. I got him up to play with me a few times when he moved to Australia, and even playing acoustic, he still had that sound. I don’t know how he did it, but it was him. He invented himself.”
YouTube It
Emmanuel performs his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” illustrating how omitting a harmonic backdrop can have a more powerful effect, especially when playing such a well-known melody.
Initially released in 1977, the Gibson RD model has been a cult classic for years. It is famous for its unique appearance, which takes inspiration from both the Gibson Explorer and Firebird designs, as well as its functionality and use by several popular guitarists across multiple genres.
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