Image 1
Hello and welcome back to Mod Garage. This month we continue our relic'ing project, taking a closer look at the pickup and its black plastic cover. Our Harley Benton project guitar has a single P-90 dog-ear pickup at the bridge position, similar to a vintage Gibson Les Paul Junior. The P-90 is a single-coil pickup, but sound-wise, its raw, raunchy, beefy tone is the perfect crossover between a single-coil and a humbucker. No wonder many players prefer this type of pickup to have the best of both worlds.
Our guitar is loaded with a pickup from Roswell Pickups. If you've never heard of Roswell, it's one of the biggest pickup manufacturing companies in the world, serving countless guitar companies, including the big guys. Chances are good that you've played their pickups without even knowing it. The company's former name was WSC Pickups before it was renamed in 2014. Our pickup, shown in Image 1, is the "P90D" Dog Ear model with a black dog-ear cover sporting the Roswell logo. Interestingly, it's a neck pickup they put in the bridge position of this guitar, but a bridge version is available as well.
Image 2
The overall construction of the pickup looks very classic. It even features the typical braided shielded wire type that was used in the '50s (Image 2). It's a scatter-wound pickup with degaussed alnico 5 bar magnets, so we can say it's close to an original pickup from the '50s. I was really curious how it would sound. To my surprise, it sounds very fresh and alive, with a good portion of high-end—definitely more on the single-coil side rather than in the humbucker ballpark. It's not the typical P-90 sound we all know and expect, but I really like this pickup.
Personally, I think it's better to have some high-end even if you don't need it, rather than to need it and not have it. I decided to keep it for this guitar, but my brain already worked in the background on how to tweak the electronics to also receive a more typical P-90 tone (more about this in the next part of this series). Anyway, if you want a heavier and darker tone, it's easy to get a replacement pickup and there are many, many P-90 pickups available without breaking the bank.
Image 3
After taking the pickup out of the guitar, I decided to change the cover for a more vintage-looking overall shape. The cover the pickup came with is rectangular and looks too boxy to my taste. The covers from the '50s are rounder and smoother, so I decided to change it because I prefer this aesthetic. A surprise was just around the corner: The cover is glued onto the pickup, so removing it on the fly wasn't possible. I have no idea why they glued on the cover in the factory, but after a minute it was clear there's no easy way to remove the cover without damaging the pickup. The cover was absolutely bonded to the pickup's top. So, I used a simple hairdryer to warm up the cover and, after some minutes, I could remove the cover with my hands (Image 3).
Image 4
It's up to you if you want to remove the glue from the top of the pickup by scraping it away after warming it up with the hairdryer, or simply leave it as is. I decided to leave it because, with the new cover on, you can't see it anyway. A word of warning: Don't use a heat gun for this operation. A hairdryer is all you need. The pickup cover is thin plastic, which a heat gun can melt within seconds.
Comparing both covers side by side (Image 4) clearly shows the different shapes, and you can decide what you like best. The rounded-edge cover I chose is very close to the vintage pickup covers from the '50s, and I had a used one in my parts tray. I didn't care about the scratches and paint on it because we want to relic it anyway.
Image 5
Next, I took out the six pole-piece screws of the pickup because we want to age these, too, along with the two screws holding the pickup in place. If you've been following along at home, you know this procedure by now, but if you missed earlier parts of this series, please reference "DIY Relic'ing: Break the Shine," "DIY: Relic'ing Tuners, Part 1," and "DIY: Relic'ing Metal Hardware." We'll use the same relic'ing process here as we did for the other metal parts. As always, first break the shine with fine sandpaper or steel wool. After cleaning the screws with a brush, put them on a wooden board and use the iron (III) oxide (ferric oxide) liquid to create some patina. Don't forget to wear gloves and goggles and to use old newspapers to protect the surface you're working on. Once you're pleased with the result, stop the process with water and dry the screws with a paper towel before putting them back into the pickup.
Now, this is our first time with a piece of black plastic to relic, and, as you can imagine, it's harder to do compared to white plastic because the visible results are more subtle on darker materials. For an idea of what we're going for, Image 5 shows a vintage P-90 soapbar pickup cover from the '50s, which gives an impression of how a pickup may look after 70 years.
Images 6 & 7
As you can see, it's not just about building up artificial dirt marks, so I decided to follow this photo as a pattern for the replacement cover regarding scratches and damages. First, I took some fine steel wool and rubbed off the shine. After cleaning it with a brush, I used a steel scribe to mimic the damages between the holes. You can also use a nail, X-Acto knife, scalpel … whatever you have available. Next, I used a needle to put some fine scratches at the top and a very sharp small chisel to create some chunking damages on the border and the corners. To finish, put the cover inside your box with the mixture of nails, metal parts, broken glass, gravel, sand, little stones, basalt, etc., and shake it around until you like the result.
After cleaning the cover, put it on the pickup to see the final result, as shown in Image 6 and Image 7. Voilá!
Images 8 & 9
In closing, some words about height adjustment of such a pickup. I like a pickup height adjustment of 1/16" (1.6 mm) for a P-90 at the bridge position, but as you may know, there is no way to adjust the height of such pickups. All you can do is adjust the pole-piece screws to follow the radius of the fretboard, but there is no spring or latex tubing under the attachment screws of the pickup. For this, special shims are available to put underneath the pickup so it will rise. These shims are available in different thicknesses so you can balance your individual pickup height adjustment. I decided to put a 7/32" (2.5 mm) shim underneath the pickup, so it's perfectly balanced to my ears. To keep an optical appearance, I decided to use a shim made of black plastic in the exact shape of the cover (Images 8 and 9).
That's it for this round. In the next part of this series, we'll discuss the electronics for this guitar and start aging the components, including the knobs, the output jack, etc. But before this, I'll close the chapter about grounding next month.Until then ... keep on modding!
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Hotone Wong Press
Cory Wong Signature Volume/Wah/Expression Pedal
Renowned international funk guitar maestro and 63rd Grammy nominee Cory Wong is celebrated for his unique playing style and unmistakable crisp tone. Known for his expressive technique, he’s been acclaimed across the globe by all audiences for his unique blend of energy and soul. In 2022, Cory discovered the multi-functional Soul Press II pedal from Hotone and instantly fell in love. Since then, it has become his go-to pedal for live performances.
Now, two years later, the Hotone team has meticulously crafted the Wong Press, a pedal tailored specifically for Cory Wong. Building on the multi-functional design philosophy of the Soul Press series, this new pedal includes Cory’s custom requests: a signature blue and white color scheme, a customized volume pedal curve, an adjustable wah Q value range, and travel lights that indicate both pedal position and working mode.
Cory’s near-perfect pursuit of tone and pedal feel presented a significant challenge for our development team. After countless adjustments to the Q value range, Hotone engineers achieved the precise WAH tone Cory desired while minimizing the risk of accidental Q value changes affecting the sound. Additionally, based on Cory’s feedback, the volume control was fine-tuned for a smoother, more musical transition, enhancing the overall feel of volume swells. The team also upgraded the iconic travel lights of the Soul Press II to dual-color travel lights—blue for Wah mode and green for Volume mode—making live performances more intuitive and visually striking!
In line with the Hotone Design Inspiration philosophy, the Wong Press represents the perfect blend of design and inspiration. Now, musicians can channel their inner Cory Wong and enjoy the freedom and joy of playing with the Wong Press!
Reverend Vernon Reid Totem Series Electric Guitar - Shaman
Silos features six presets, tap tempo, one full second of delay time, and three voices—two of which are styled after bucket-brigade and tape-delay sounds. In the $150 price category, it’s not unusual for a digital delay to leave some number of those functions out. And spending the same money on a true-analog alternative usually means warm, enveloping sounds but limited functionality and delay time. Silos, improbably perhaps, offers a very elegant solution to this can’t-have-it-all dilemma in a U.S.-made effect.
A More Complete Cobbling Together
Silos’ utility is bolstered by a very unintimidating control set, which is streamlined and approachable. Three of those controls are dedicated to the same mix, time, and repeats controls you see on any delay. But saving a preset to one of the six spots on the rotary preset dial is as easy as holding the green/red illuminated button just below the mix and preset knobs. And you certainly won’t get lost in the weeds if you move to the 3-position toggle, which switches between a clear “digital” voice, darker “analog” voice, and a “tape” voice which is darker still.
“The three voices offer discernibly different response to gain devices.”
One might suspect that a tone control for the repeats offers similar functionality as the voice toggle switch. But while it’s true that the most obvious audible differences between digital, BBD, and tape delays are apparent in the relative fidelity and darkness of their echoes, the Silos’ three voices behave differently in ways that are more complex than lighter or duskier tonality. For instance, the digital voice will never exhibit runaway oscillation, even at maximum mix and repeat settings. Instead, repeats fade out after about six seconds (at the fastest time settings) or create sleepy layers of slow-decaying repeats that enhance detail in complex, sprawling, loop-like melodic phrases. The analog voice and tape voice, on the other hand, will happily feed back to psychotic extremes. Both also offer satisfying sensitivity to real-time, on-the-fly adjustments. For example, I was tickled with how I could generate Apocalypse Now helicopter-chop effects and fade them in and out of prominence as if they were approaching or receding in proximity—an effect made easier still if you assign an expression pedal to the mix control. This kind of interactivity is what makes analog machines like the Echoplex, Space Echo, and Memory Man transcend mere delay status, and the sensitivity and just-right resistance make the process of manipulating repeats endlessly engaging.
Doesn't Flinch at Filth
EarthQuaker makes a point of highlighting the Silos’ affinity for dirty and distorted sounds. I did not notice that it behaved light-years better than other delays in this regard. But the three voices most definitely offer discernibly different responses to gain devices. The super-clear first repeat in the digital mode lends clarity and melodic focus, even to hectic, unpredictable, fractured fuzzes. The analog voice, which EQD says is inspired by the tone makeup of a 1980s-vintage, Japan-made KMD bucket brigade echo, handles fuzz forgivingly inasmuch as its repeats fade warmly and evenly, but the strong midrange also keeps many overtones present as the echoes fade. The tape voice, which uses aMaestro Echoplex as its sonic inspiration, is distinctly dirtier and creates more nebulous undercurrents in the repeats. If you want to retain clarity in more melodic settings, it will create a warm glow around repeats at conservative levels. Push it, and it will summon thick, sometimes droning haze that makes a great backdrop for slower, simpler, and hooky psychedelic riffs.
In clean applications, this decay and tone profile lend the tape setting a spooky, foggy aura that suggests the cold vastness of outer space. The analog voice often displays an authentic BBD clickiness in clean repeats that’s sweet for underscoring rhythmic patterns, while the digital voice’s pronounced regularity adds a clockwork quality that supports more up-tempo, driving, electronic rhythms.
The Verdict
Silos’ combination of features seems like a very obvious and appealing one. But bringing it all together at just less than 150 bucks represents a smart, adept threading of the cost/feature needle.
EarthQuaker Devices Silos Multi-generational Time Reflection Delay Pedal
