Official Luthiers Forum!

My goal is to build a good sounding light weight guitar for my grandson minus all the bells and whistles....

Love the simplicity (and sound) of the 'Les Paul Junior'...... but with only one (GFS Mean 90) bridge pickup I am wondering whether the best possible sound wouldn't come from placing the pickup a bit farther from the bridge towards center in order to balance a bit what a bridge/neck combo would sound like.........

Anybody know that magic distance?

.....thank you.........

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http://jimwaltersblog.wordpress.com/

I built the guitar below with the neck pickup farther away from the heel of the neck. In my opinion it was a good move. Looks different, but retained the neck pickup warmth and got rid of a lot of mud. If I were trying to get a sound closer to the combo of a neck and bridge pickup together, I'd place it nearly centered between the heel of the neck and the front of the bridge, but just slightly closer to the neck. The problem with this positon is that it might interfere with strumming, depending where the player strums at. Or you could look for a neck pickup that's a little brighter than most, and just put it in the neck position. That's probably what I'd do. Since I use 250k pots on everything(humbuckers or single coils) I'd also go with a 500k volume pot and no tone. MHO.

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

I'm guessing that there is NO magic placing and am probably going to have to hook the p90 up and move it around, testing till I find the best place and dig in there..... hopefully it won't be where it will interfere with the fingers or pick... . . . . nice looking guitar, by the way........

PS: Haven't seen an ugly one yet from any of you guys...... (no ass kiss intended)

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http://jimwaltersblog.wordpress.com/

Thanks, Jim.
Speaking of moving a pickup around, there was a guy on the TDPRI(I think) that built a guitar that was made so that you could slide the pickups forward or backward to test what the pickup locations might do to alter the tone. It was a neat idea. I wish I had bookmarked the thread.

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.