I'm sorry if this isn't the right place to ask this but, I thought there might be musicians from my city on IGT who can help me out on this. I recently ordered a set of Seymour Duncan pickups from Bajaao.com (bdw had a horrible experience with Bajaao, they were supposed to be delivered in "12-15 days" and got 'em more than a month later). Anyways, so before ordering them I went to Furtados Pune to ask their guitar tech if he can change pickups, I asked him if he can do a "coil-split" (which is a fairly common modification while changing pickups), and he'd never heard of coil-splits but assured me he can change the pickups "normally". So I went there yesterday to find out he's been transferred to Mumbai and they don't have any guitar techs left, and I'm stumped! I would have done this myself, but it needs a soldering iron, and I'd like to get it done from an experienced person so that nothing goes wrong. Does anyone know any other place in Pune that can replace guitar pickups? They're humbuckers to be put into a lefty Greg Bennett AV3. Hope someone on IGT can help me with this.
To be able to do coil split in the AV3, you'll need to replace the 3 way toggle switch with a rotary switch or replace one or two potentiometers with push/pull types. Their frequent guitar tech's knowledge base is quite low regarding guitars. I'd find it amazing if they can sand down worn/dented fret wires without ruining intonation at individual frets :gather: Someone at an electrical repair shop would be able to do it in a few minutes as long as you have the wiring diagrams for the pickups & the AV3. If you can't find the wiring diagram on the Greg bennett website then since it's a Gibson styled guitar so maybe they copied the wiring layout of one exactly the same. Open up the cover on the back & start tracing to see if you can find something same or similar to normal gibson wiring. That should solve some wiring problems or even present a better way of tiding things up of the stock wiring. If you do take it to such a place then make sure the pole pieces are in the right direction, sometimes changing the orientation of the pickup can change the way it sounds. Hope you can find someone to do it for you. You could do it yourself & it's fairly easy work but since you haven't soldered anything before then don't bother doing it as a first time experiment. Now would be a good time to buy a soldering iron & some solder and try practicing/building soldering skills on some old worn/broken/bad/non functioning instrument cables. Easiest would be to buy some MX plugs & some house guard wire and start practicing on those, after awhile when you get good at it you won't be in this situation again.
Thanks henrynh, hah, the guitar tech had never heard of push-pull pots, so I didn't bother explaining to him (I find this amazing considering Furtados is supposed to be the biggest music retail chain in India :O ) Yup going to an electrical shop is what I'm planning to do, hopefully they shouldn't screw it up, I got a wiring diagram with the pickups, I'll print one for the guitar too. Being a lefty, the wiring is gonna be reverse for my guitar
Hey guys, specially the OP, I'm ordering a Duncan JB and 59 combo from furtadosonline.com this week for my Greg Bennett AV3.. They price it at Rs 9450 together and free shipping (much less than than Bajaao who sell the combo for Rs 13000).. @axdp I am a noob regarding pickups, tell me if I have to replace any electronics in the guitar before installing the pickups.. And also tell me, what is coil split? How does it help?
I also heard from a review of the AV3 that the pots are too small for a Duncan humbucker.. Are you changing them as well?
To put it simply, a humbucker is basically 2 single-coils used together in such a way as to cancel out any "hum", coil-split allows you to access sound from only one of the 2 coils to get a single-coil sound from your guitar. This article explains all the tech details The Magnificent humbucker coil tap/coil split It'll make your guitar sound more versatile. You don't have to replace any parts if you want to do a standard installation of the JB/59'. For a coil-split, you will need to buy push-pull pots for your tone/volume control knob, so you activate the single-coil mode when you pull out the knobs. Yeah furtadosonline does offer pickups much cheaper than Bajaao, should have ordered a Custom5/'59 set from them, instead I bought the Slash Alnico Pro-II set from Bajaao. :/
Some say the JB sounds better with a 500k pot, some with a 250k, I haven't used either since this is my first pickup upgrade too Someone else who's used a JB might answer that better!
Thanks theghost, what's great is that he lives close to my place, will go and give the guitar to him tomm.. So does he have experience in replacing pickups? How much do you think he would charge for this kind of work? Thanks.
