TV Tones

In the last two instalments of Mod Squad we’ve installed new active and plug-in passive humbuckers. In this issue, Dave Burrluck is looking for a different voice…

A major part of the modding world is to improve a function or a sound, making a guitar (hopefully) better. But what about wanting to make an instrument sound different, perhaps dramatically so? For a guitar maker that’s easy and we’ve seen plenty of examples from all sorts of sources that maybe plonk a pair of humbuckers onto a Strat, or a set of Filter’Trons onto a Tele, or a Tele’s pickup set on a Jazzmaster… to name just a few sonic mash-ups. Mixing up the design cues from the classics is commonplace, but beyond butchering a perfectly good guitar, investing in a full partscaster build, or commissioning a custom build, is there another way? Of course!

As we know, there are plenty of humbucking pickups that we can voice to approach the sound of a single coil, and plenty of single coil-sized designs that emulate the sound of a full-size humbucker. These can in, the first instance, give our instrument more sounds or beef up a bolt-on in the second. All good, but it’s just scratching the surface.

Numerous other pickup designs exist that didn’t originally fit either the humbucking or classic single coil-size protocol. The Gibson P-90 was one of the first to be adapted to fit a standard humbucking route, for example. Conversely, especially in its soapbar size, there are plenty of pickups that’ll drop into that size cavity and offer very un-P-90-like sounds.

Different Voices

But these industry-standard sizes simply don’t reflect the diversely different pickup designs that have been used throughout the history of the electric instrument: Fender’s Jazzmaster or Jaguar pickups and the original ‘Wide Range’ humbucker, for example; the Gretsch Filter’Tron or Dynasonic; the Gold Foil and its variants that graced many a retro Japanese build; the Guild LB-1… There are plenty more.