Installing a vintage tone cap, like this paper-waxed capacitor (PIW), can make a noticeable difference in your guitar’s tone, because vintage caps leak more rich and detailed overtones than new tone caps.
To swap or not to swap? Let’s explore some situations when it makes sense to replace hardware … and instances when it doesn’t.
Welcome back to Mod Garage. This month I want to give you some insight into putting vintage parts into new electric guitars and explore why so many people are doing this.
The trend to put old vintage parts into electric guitars started years ago and it’s still in vogue today. But besides the hip factor, is it reasonable to do so? What can you expect, and are there specific situations where this makes sense for a new electric guitar? In this column, we’ll have to face some sad and unpopular facts (and myths) about vintage guitars and vintage parts, so not everyone will be happy about this.
In general, the vintage world is not limited to guitars or instruments. The scene includes a lot of categories, such as cars, watches, clothing, furniture, books, electric devices, and much more. But the basic principles are always the same and there are many reasons why someone decides to jump on that wagon.
We don’t have to discuss putting vintage parts on vintage guitars, which seems logical and natural. On a vintage guitar, it’s all about stock condition and authenticity, like on every vintage collector’s item, no matter what it is.
Let’s start with sad vintage “truth” number one:
Today we can build much better electric guitars than ever before.
That’s not really bad news, if you’re not a vintage guitar seller. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the old vintage guitars are obsolete or bad in comparison with the ones we can build today. But with today’s high-tech equipment, the level of consistent quality is outstanding and close to perfect. All instruments produced that way are more or less completely identical. Vintage guitars, even if built from the same persons on the same day, are virtually all individual items, which for sure is one of the main keys to their magic. And naturally everyone wants to own an individual item rather than an industrial, mass-produced object.
Today we can build tuners that are far ahead of what was possible in the ’50s and ’60s, as well as bridges and tremolos that are little mechanical pieces of art regarding precision and accuracy. So, does it make sense to put vintage hardware on a new electric guitar?
Regarding quality and performance, it’s a clear NO! I have numerous customers doing exactly the opposite, no matter if it’s sacrilege or not. They want to play their vintage guitars but with today’s highest possible performance, so they take out the vintage parts, carefully storing them away, replacing them with modern 1:1 copies to spruce up the old guitars. This is often the case with tuners, string trees, tremolos, and the like, and it’s important that the new parts will fit 1:1 so no new holes need to be drilled to make them fit.
Sometimes imperfection to a certain degree can be exactly the thing you’re looking for regarding tone.
Old and brittle plastic parts like pickguards and pickup covers are also stored away. You can buy modern plastic lookalikes easily and so the old parts are ready to drop in again when you want to sell the guitar someday. Vintage amp players are taking out the original speakers to protect and store them away. This way you can have both: Play your vintage guitar and amp with the highest possible performance, plus keep their value alive because you can always swap parts back to stock condition. I have quite a few customers who take out the complete electronics along with the pickguard, playing a modern substitute under the hood because they don’t want to risk damage to the original. And, believe it or not, a lot of them say the new pickups and electronics sound better than the originals, but compared to the originals, they are worthless. In general, this applies to all vintage items. For example, today it’s possible to build better cars and watches than ever before ... but they don’t make them like they used to, which is one of the number one pro-vintage arguments.
Naturally, there could be other reasons—including emotional ones—to put vintage hardware on a new electric guitar. This is highly individual. Maybe it’s just for fun because it was already lying around, or it looks cooler because it’s used and beaten up. But this can be had cheaper—the market for aged guitar parts is huge. Or maybe one of your favorite artists did something that you want to copy. This also applies to a lot of other vintage stuff like cars and watches—who doesn’t want to drive a Porsche 550 Spyder model like James Dean or wear the same Rolex Submariner 6538 that James Bond wore in 1962 during his first appearance in Dr. No?
But maybe it’s because people think putting vintage parts into a new guitar will increase its value. This leads us straight to sad vintage “truth” number two:
A new electric guitar with vintage parts fetches more money than it does in stock condition.
This is simply not true, at least when sold as one piece with the vintage parts built into the guitar. Like any modification, this will not increase the value of a new guitar—time and being witness to countless auctions has proven this.
But this is the perfect transition to sad “truth” number three:
A vintage guitar makes the most profit when sold completely intact.
Exactly the opposite is true. If you want to make the most profit, nothing beats completely disassembling a vintage guitar and selling it in pieces. I know some vintage parts dealers in Europe and the U.S.—I’ve worked with some of them for over two decades—and they’re all doing the same thing: finding vintage guitars that are for sale, disassembling them, and selling off the individual parts.
One dealer told me this: If you can sell a vintage guitar for $10k, take it all apart and you can make $15k with the individual parts. So, if you put vintage parts on a new guitar that you want to sell, take out the vintage parts and sell them off individually to make top dollar. (It’s not a bad idea to store away any hardware you remove from your guitars, because you might need to put it back in later.)
So, are there any instances where it does make sense to put vintage parts in a new guitar? I would say yes, and I can think of two good considerations:
1. Putting vintage pickups into a new electric guitar.
Putting vintage switches, pots, output jacks, and wires into a new guitar is not reasonable. The pickup-selector switches are still made the same way now as they were in the past. Only the materials have changed a bit, enhancing reliability and longevity. So why spend $600 for a vintage CRL 3-way switch when you can get much better performance for $30? A switch has no tone, so leave the vintage switch for a vintage guitar. Same with pots: They don’t have a tone and modern pots are much more reliable. Companies spent years researching the taper and action of vintage pots and you can buy exact vintage copies for only a few bucks. You get the idea.
With a faithful recreation of a vintage pickup plus a vintage tone cap, you can come very close to the magical sound, so investing in a tested NOS tone cap can make a big tonal difference, whereas a new cap can’t.
However, if you fall in love with a set of vintage pickups, it can make sense to put them into your modern guitar. There is no financial risk. They will increase in value, so if you ever want to sell them again you will get more than you paid, enjoying their tone in the meantime. Keep in mind that companies also spent years to analyze, research, and re-engineer vintage pickups and today you can buy almost every given pickup you’re looking for and as close as possible to its original. Such pickups are a lot cheaper compared to a vintage set, but naturally this is no investment.
2. Putting vintage tone caps into a new electric guitar.
This is for sure a reasonable procedure to quickly enhance the tone of a new electric guitar. Installing a vintage tone cap into a guitar is also done easily because it’s a simple 1:1 swap with the original tone cap. It’s still possible to find NOS vintage tone caps today, but prices are rising while supplies are running out. Why is this an improvement in tone? The tone of vintage guitars is often described as detailed, harmonically rich, and open. Part of this tone is from the tone cap. Today capacitors are built to perfection and with very low tolerances so they will do a perfect job. In our electric guitars we use them to only short out the highs against ground, leaving the bass untouched ... in very simple words.
Production processes to build capacitors in the ’50s and ’60s were far from perfect, and besides high tolerances in capacitance, certain caps (depending on the dielectric inside) tend to be kind of “leaky” regarding overtones. A modern cap will do a perfect job, filtering out all overtones that it’s supposed to. Most vintage caps will do a lousy job, still letting some overtones through, especially the harmonic ones. This is what makes the tone so rich and detailed, and, by the way, it’s the same situation with tube amps.
With a faithful recreation of a vintage pickup plus a vintage tone cap, you can come very close to the magical sound, so investing in a tested NOS tone cap can make a big tonal difference, whereas a new cap can’t. Sometimes imperfection to a certain degree can be exactly the thing you’re looking for regarding tone. Back in the golden guitar days, no one really cared about such odd details, and even if they did ... it was state of the art and all new technologies were still science-fiction at that time. Today we know better and can use old technology for certain tasks.That’s it for now.
Next month we’ll explore our next guitar mod, so stay tuned. Until then ... keep on modding!
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Legendary shredder Joe Satriani was the first ever guest on Wong Notes, so it makes sense that he’s the first returning sit-in with Cory Wong.
He teases a new song with Sammy Hagar, plus delves into the intricacies of Eddie Van Halen’s playing and why he can’t quite replicate it—every guitarist has their strengths and deficiencies, claims Satch. And believe it or not, Satriani didn’t figure standing in front of huge crowds to be one of his strengths when he was younger. Fate figured otherwise.
Satriani goes deep on one of his favorite tools, the Sustainiac pickup, and talks about how it’s defined his playing—just like his trademark sunglasses, even in dark rooms. (“Stupid idea, right?” he jokes.)
And young guitarists, listen up: Satriani has some wise words on the importance of rigorous practice while you’re budding on the instrument. The big takeaway? Learn. Your. Scales.
The New ToneWoodAmp2 is smaller, lighter, rechargeable, and offers foureffects simultaneously, along with a mobile app and much more.
ToneWoodAmp has released the second generation of its popular accessory that brings a wide array of special effects to acoustic guitars without needing to plug into an external amplifier.
The ToneWoodAmp2 has been redesigned with portability, ease of use, and enhanced performance in mind, featuring a lighter and more compact design while adding more features and capabilities. The new ToneWoodAmp2 has a powerful DSP, a rechargeable battery that lasts for more than 10 hours, and it provides more creative tools as well as the ability to play with up to four simultaneous effects. A new smartphone app allows users to operate the device from either their phone or the device itself.
Reverb Basics | ToneWoodAmp2 Effects Guide
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.The upgraded product is also a fully professional preamp. In addition to the built-in effects, it includes a powerful EQ, compressor, “Feedback Assassin” tools, and more. “While the firstToneWoodAmp provided a breakthrough technology in how acoustic guitar players experience their guitar playing mostly off-stage, the new ToneWoodAmp2 doubles as an on-stage professional pre-amp device with many new capabilities, a perfect tool for performing musicians who need a professional set of tools in a very small footprint package,” says Ofer Webman, CEO of ToneWoodAmp and its inventor.Like the original ToneWoodAmp, the ToneWoodAmp2 attaches to any acoustic guitar via an innovative magnetic X-brace. A new and unique guitar attachment system, called the LiftKit, allows the second-generation device to attach to any acoustic guitar, even a guitar with a curved back.
TonewoodAmp2 features expanded capabilities by its new smartphone app: With its built-inBluetooth®, guitarists can now connect the ToneWoodAmp2 to a free smartphone app for extended control, intuitive adjustments, preset management, and on-the-fly tweaks. The new app is compatible with all modern iOS and Android devices.“The new device is a massive improvement from the original ToneWoodAmp,” says MikeDawes, the U.K.-based guitar player who has twice been named the Best Acoustic Guitarist in the World Right Now by MusicRadar and Total Guitar's end-of-year poll. “This thing is not only reverb or delay or chorus on your guitar it’s everything and more at once. The reason why this is so good is that it’s reducing every barrier that I would have to creativity.”The new ToneWoodAmp2 is available for $300.
For more information, visit www.tonewoodamp.com.
Paul Reed Smith also continues to evolve as a guitarist, and delivered a compelling take on Jeff Beck’s interpretation of “Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers” at the PRS 40th Anniversary Celebration during this year’s NAMM.
After 40 years at the helm of PRS Guitars, our columnist reflects on the nature of evolution in artistry—of all kinds.
Reflecting on four decades in business, I don’t find myself wishing I “knew then what I know now.” Instead, I’m grateful to still have the curiosity and environment to keep learning and to be in an art that has a nonstop learning curve. There’s a quote attributed to artist Kiki Smith that resonates deeply with me: “I can barely control my kitchen sink.” That simple truth has been a guiding principle in my life. We can’t control the timing of knowledge or discovery. If profound learning comes late in life, so be it. The important thing is to remain open to it when it arrives.
I look at what’s happened at PRS Guitars over the last 40 years with real pride. I love what we’ve built—not just in terms of instruments but in the culture of innovation and craftsmanship that defines our company. The guitar industry as a whole has evolved in extraordinary ways, and I’m fortunate to be part of a world filled with passionate, talented, and good-hearted people.
I love learning. It may sound odd, but there’s something almost spiritual about it. Learning isn’t constant; it comes in stages. Sometimes, there are long dry spells where you can even struggle to hold onto what you already know. Other times, learning is sporadic, with nuggets of understanding appearing here and there that are treasured for their poignancy. And then there are those remarkable moments when the proverbial floodgates open, and the lessons come so fast that you can barely keep up. I’ve heard songwriters and musicians describe this same pattern. Sometimes, no new songs emerge; sometimes, they trickle out one by one; and sometimes, they arrive so quickly it’s impossible to capture them all. I believe it’s the same for all creatives, including athletes, engineers, and everyone invested in their art.
Looking back over 40 years in business and a decade of preparation before that, I recognize these distinct phases of learning. Right now, I’m in one of those high-gain learning periods. I’ve taken on a teacher who is introducing me to concepts I never imagined, ideas I didn’t think anyone could explain—things I wasn’t even sure I was worthy of understanding. But when he calls and says, “Have you thought about this?” I lean in, eager to absorb, not just to learn something new for myself, but because I want him to feel his teaching is appreciated, making it more likely that the teaching continues.
“Learning isn’t just about accumulating knowledge; it’s about applying it, sharing it, and evolving because of it.”
Beyond structured teaching, learning also comes through experience, discovery, and problem solving. We recently got our hands on some old, magical guitars, vintage pickups, microphones, and mic preamps. These aren’t just relics; they’re windows into a deeper understanding of how things work and what the engineers who invented them knew. By studying the schematics of tube-mic preamps, we’re uncovering insights that directly influence how we wire guitar pickups and their electronics. It may seem like an unrelated field, but the many parallels in audio engineering are there if you look. Knowledge in one area has a ripple effect, unlocking new possibilities in another.
Even as I continue learning, I recognize that our entire team at PRS is on this journey with me. We have people whose sole job is to push the boundaries of what we understand about pickups, spending every day refining and applying that knowledge so that when you pick up a PRS guitar, it sounds better. More than 400 people work here, each contributing to the collective advancement of our craft. I am grateful to be surrounded by such a dedicated and smart team.
One of my favorite memories at PRS was at a time we were deep into investigating scale lengths on vintage guitars, and some unique pickup characteristics, when one of our engineering leaders walked into my office. He had just uncovered something astonishing and said, “You’re not going to believe this one.” That excitement and back-and-forth exchange of ideas is what keeps this work so rewarding.
As I reflect on my journey, I see that learning isn’t just about accumulating knowledge; it’s about applying it, sharing it, and evolving because of it. I get very excited when something we’ve learned ends up on a new product. Whether lessons come early or late, whether they arrive in waves or trickles, there is always good work to be done. And that is something I just adore.
The country artist and session weapon packed a range of acoustics for some recent studio time.
Charlie Worsham was just wrapping up some tracking down at Sony Studios in Nashville when PG’s John Bohlinger caught up with him for a look at what tools he packs for a recording gig. Worsham had with him some of his most treasured acoustics, electrics, mandolins, banjos, and more, plus a collection of primo picks for all applications. Check out the highlights below.
Brought to you by D’Addario.
Guitar So Nice, He Bought It Twice
This 1963 Martin D-28, gifted to him from his parents, was Worsham’s first serious vintage guitar. Around 12 years ago, he took it into a shop for a refret, and after a freak in-store accident left it in pieces, Worsham accepted a check for the guitar’s value, and walked away.
A while later, he noticed it hanging on the wall of the same store—reassembled and fit for service again. Worsham couldn’t help himself; he bought it back, making it “the guitar so nice, [he] acquired it twice.”
He runs it with D’Addario XS strings and likes bluegrass gauges: mediums for the E, A, and D strings, and lights for the G, B, and high E strings. It’s kitted out with an LR Baggs HiFi pickup. And the scratches around the soundhole and pickguard? Those came courtesy of John Osborne’s heavy picking hand.
Check, Please
Worsham reckons he’s probably played this treasured Gibson J-50 on more records than any other guitar he owns. After he took the check from the busted Martin D-28, he used it to buy this one.
Family Jewel
This Parker mando used to belong to John Osborne, Worsham’s former bandmate. Worsham was always borrowing this mandolin, so when Osborne decided to sell it, Worsham picked it up to keep it in the family.
Burkett from ’Bama
This mini Burkett was built by luthier James Burkett in Alabama. Its nut is equivalent to a capo on the third fret of a regular acoustic.
Tune in to the full video to see Worsham’s Ohm open-back banjo, P-90-equipped Gibson mandolin, an Osborne-owned Strat, and a super-special wedding-gift ES-335 from Vince Gill.
Tweed Fit for a Prince(ton)
Worsham took Tom Bukovac’s wisdom and got himself a Fender Princeton Reverb, which he still loves, and he runs it alongside a Nashville Amp Works clone of a golden-era tweed Fender Deluxe.
Charlie Worsham’s Pedalboard
At his feet, Worsham runs a pedalboard with a Sonic Research ST-300 tuner, Browne Amplification Protein, Mythos Mjolnir, Guyatone ST2, Electro-Harmonix Canyon, Neunaber Immerse, Strymon El Capistan, and Chase Bliss Warped Vinyl HiFi.
