Fender Player Plus Meteora HH Demo | First Look
Hear how the new Fireball pickups in the latest evolution of the offset unleash much more than flaming destruction.
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Hear how the new Fireball pickups in the latest evolution of the offset unleash much more than flaming destruction.
Image 1 — Image courtesy singlecoil.com
Hello and welcome back to Mod Garage. After receiving a lot of emails about installing humbucker pickups, this month I will show you how to do this in a pickup ring or a pickguard. This is one of the daily shop challenges I like to call “alien tasks"—the situations where you wish you had at least one additional hand—and there are a lot of them in guitar electronics. Sure, there are a lot of available “third hand" devices with two or more clips to hold something in place, small pony vices, clamps, and whatever else. But, often enough, none of these tools will work for a certain operation. So, there are only two ways: look for a specialized tool for doing the job or make your own.
If you've ever physically installed a humbucker in a pickup ring (Les Paul, SG, 335, PRS) or in a pickguard (Strats, etc.), you know this can be a frustrating pain in the ass. You need a minimum of three arms and hands for doing this, and usually you need several attempts until you succeed, with the springs flying off several times while you're fumbling to hold everything together. With a little luck, you'll find the springs again on the floor, but often they dissolve in the Bermuda Triangle of lost guitar parts and will never be seen again. If you've ever done this procedure, you instantly know what I mean.
This may be acceptable if you have iron nerves and only do this once a decade, but if you change humbucker pickups regularly or run a guitar store or repair shop, it's time to look for a professional solution to save a lot of time, springs, curses, and neural pathways.
Commonly used for this job are tools called “Humbucker Helpers," which are two metal clips (Image 1) that hold the springs, screws, and mounting ring together in one piece so you can use your screwdriver to fasten the humbucker. Just set it over the pickup, turn the screws into the pickup-mounting tabs, and pull away the clips. You need a little practice to use the clips the right way, so don't throw in the towel if you can't figure it out the first time you try. I think our friend Dan Erlewine from the Ohio-based Stewmac company came up with this simple and small solution around 15 years ago, and I bet it's still a bestseller for them.
But while Humbucker Helpers can make this operation much easier, there are some downsides to be aware of:
1. It's easy to scratch the surface of the guitar and the pickup ring with the metal clips, especially when you perform this with the pickups already installed, leaving you with no room to move around. Always protect the finish of the guitar with a cloth, wool felt, or whatever you have available. It's also a good idea to cover the contact surface of the metal clips with some tape or thin self-adhesive felt.
2. The clips aren't adjustable and won't work with certain lengths of humbucker-mounting legs. Shorter mounting legs like those of PRS humbuckers simply won't work with this tool, because it's too long. You can bend the clips to a certain degree, but it won't always fit. The same problem can show up with import humbuckers, which usually have shorter screws.
Image 2 — Image courtesy singlecoil.com
3. Sometimes the physical dimensions of the screw head and the diameter of the screw itself doesn't match the dimensions of the hole and the slot in the clips. You can make it work by drilling the hole out bigger or make it a slot, too. If the slot is too small, use a small metal file and widen it.
4. If you want to install humbuckers in a pickguard, you can't use the clips because the two legs aren't long enough to place the tool where you need it.
So, the Humbucker Helper can be a great little tool, but it's not the cure-all weapon when installing humbucker pickups. I used these clips for years and bought several sets of them to modify and to have one for each task. Finding the perfect tool for this happened years later by accident.
Image 3 — Image courtesy singlecoil.com
While visiting the Gibson factory in Memphis in 2011, I asked our tour guide if it was possible to see the electronic assembly area, because I was very interested to see how they worked there. I'd never given a thought to how they might install the humbuckers into the pickup rings. Our tour guide was very polite and friendly and brought me to this area where I had the chance to speak with the guy in charge. When I saw how they install the humbuckers I was instantly speechless, with an unbelieving expression on my face, followed by a good laugh. They use a super simple tool you can easily build for only a few bucks that works perfectly for installing humbucker pickups into pickup rings and pickguards. The only downside is that you can't use this tool with the pickups already installed into the guitar. It only works when installing the pickups outside the guitar. But how often do you have to change a pickup ring with the humbuckers installed in the guitar?
So here it is: my homemade version of Gibson's factory humbucker pickup installation tool, as seen in Image 2.
It's basically just a wooden base with two angle sections screwed to it. Inside the Gibson factory, it seemed that every worker made their own and most of them used a very thick and heavy wooden base with metal angle sections where one could clearly see toolmarks of rounding and smoothing out all surfaces with a file and sandpaper. Most tools were also very long, so they could put up to 10 humbuckers at once on them. I decided to use a scrap piece of pinewood that we use for amp cabinets, and wooden angle bars that I reinforced by gluing two slightly smaller plastic angle bars inside. I had all the materials lying around, and the wooden angle bars are perfect to prevent the pickups from scratches that could easily happen with metal on metal. I didn't need the tool to be very long for several humbuckers all at once, so I decided on a length that will work for two humbuckers and a Strat pickguard without any jiggle during the installation process.
Image 4 — Image courtesy singlecoil.com
It's a super simple build. Cut your wooden base to size, cut the angle bars to match the length of the wooden base, and drill some holes into the leg that sits on the wooden base so you can fasten it with some screws. Now place the two angle bars on the wooden base so a humbucker will fit between them, mark the holes on your wooden base and pre-drill the holes for the screws. Now screw on the two angle bars and you're ready to go. You can experiment with the size of the wooden base and the height of the angle bars to match your personal preferences. Leave it as is, put some lacquer or a funny paint job on it—whatever you prefer. I simply used what was in the junk box and it works perfectly for me.
Orientate and place the humbucker on the tool in front of you (Image 3). Next, orientate and put on the pickup ring or pickguard (Image 4)—it will lay on the top of the angle bars. Now place the screw and spring by lifting the pickup ring or the pickguard (Image 5). As you can see, you have plenty of space, and while holding the screw with the spring with one hand. you can use your other hand to turn the screwdriver.
Image 5 — Image courtesy singlecoil.com
With a little practice, you can install a humbucker within a minute or less. Is that genius or what? Thanks, Gibson, for this priceless inspiration!
Sometimes it's really that easy to master an alien task like this, but often one is unable to see the forest for the trees. We'll explore more alien tasks and the DIY tools to master them in future columns.
Next month we'll combine several mods, with two single-coil pickups and a master volume/tone configuration to get the most out of it. It will work on all guitars with this configuration, whether it's a Telecaster, Duo Sonic, Danelectro, or whatever else.
Until then ... keep on modding!
Image 1 — How to Get the Most out of Hum-Sing-Hum Wiring
Hello and welcome back to Mod Garage. Today we'll talk about HSH wiring in general and how to get the best out of it. In general, an HSH configuration means that you have three pickups on your guitar: a bridge humbucker, a middle single-coil, and a neck humbucker. This configuration was very popular in the so-called “super-strat" era, but is still used today, even if you don't see it as often. Almost every manufacturer has at least one or more HSH models in its portfolio, from Ibanez to Suhr, Charvel, Fender, and PRS to Framus, just to name a few. So, I think it's worth taking a closer look at this special configuration, its possibilities, and its downsides.
The original HSH concept is clear and easy: combining humbucker and single-coil pickups on a guitar to enhance your tonal palette by implementing two different basic sounds. You have the power of the two humbucker pickups plus the clearness and chime of a single-coil pickup, so the possibilities to combine these three pickups is virtually unlimited. For example, you can put a really hot modern humbucker at the bridge position for fat, loud, and overdriven lead playing. A PAF-style neck humbucker will take you instantly to blues land, while an S-style middle single-coil will give you an additional archetypal sound we all love.
It came into fashion to split humbucker pickups to receive a single-coil type sound from them, usually by shutting one coil down to ground, which makes things even more complex in an HSH configuration. Playing the three pickups on their own is trouble free and the purest shape of the basic HSH concept. The problems start when you want to combine the pickups to get even more sounds out of your guitar. Usually the humbucker is way louder than your single-coil pickup, upstaging its tone when playing together. With the humbuckers in split-mode, balanced volume together with the single-coil pickup is usually not a major problem but phasing often is. You will have to take care not to end up in an out-of-phase dilemma, if it's not intended. With two splittable humbuckers, the number of possible combinations is almost slaying: You can combine all individual coils (five in total) in parallel or in series, you can have all of these combinations in phase or out of phase, you can operate the two humbuckers in normal humbucker mode (both coils in series), or in a hum-free single-coil sounding mode (both coils in parallel), or in real single-coil mode (one coil shut down to ground). You see, it's easy to get lost with all these possibilities.
Not everything that's technically doable sounds great or is useable in a musical context, so it's time to think about the combinations you really need and want from such a configuration. Almost every company came up with their own solution and combinations. What I want to show you is a wiring with two stages to get the most desirable sounds out of an HSH guitar. It's basically the combination of the standard HSH switching with auto-split wiring when combining the humbuckers with the middle single-coil on the first stage, and a normal S-style single-coil wiring by splitting the humbuckers into single-coils on the second stage. This is like having an HSH and SSS guitar in one package.
Not everything that's technically doable sounds great or is useable in a musical context, so it's time to think about the combinations you really need and want from such a configuration.
We've talked about auto-split several times before, but this means that a humbucker is automatically split into a single-coil when it's combined with a single-coil pickup, usually in an HSS or HSH configuration. With this wiring you will receive the following combinations:
If you want to squeeze more sounds out of this, you can add phase switches, series/parallel switches, humbucker multi-sound switches, etc. Keep in mind that most humbucker pickups in split mode don't sound like a real single-coil pickup—only sort of ... but, in most cases and especially in a band context, this is all you need. For me, this is the most practical HSH wiring when you don't need series and out-of-phase switching. But as mentioned, all this can be added to the circuit.
So here we go. The good news for this wiring, as seen in Image 1, is that you can leave your stock 5-way pickup selector switch (with the standard two switching stages). All you additionally need is a DPDT switch to change between the two operating modes. This can be an additional mini toggle switch or a push-pull or push-push pot. Both humbuckers need to have a 4-conductor wiring, so you have access to both coils. This wiring will not work with humbuckers sporting the traditional 2-conductor wiring. I show the version with a standard push-pull pot and, as usual, with the Seymour Duncan color code. If you use pickups from a different company, you need to transfer this color code, but you already know where and how to do this. For clarity, I left out all ground connections (there are many of them in this wiring), using the standard ground symbol instead. Simply solder these wires to the back of one of the pots and do the same with the string-grounding wire in your guitar.
That's it! Next month we return to our DIY relic series, taking care of the plastic tuner buttons, so stay tuned.
Until then, keep on modding!
[Updated 7/26/21]