I have a Kramer Pacer Classic with the SD clone pickup, and I also have a Kramer Baretta Vintage with the original SD. the clone is so good that I wouldn't bother getting a real SD if I had a special. of course woods differ, but they still are head to head. 😎
Seymour Duncan is a ripoff. Hes part of the tone wood snake oil salesman generation that used the lack of internet and readily available information we have today to overcharge people for magnets and copper wire.
Tone wood isn’t a thing. If you played it acoustically you’d hear a change but that goes away when plugged in. You changed the nut, the bridge, and the pickup and went with lighter strings. All of this changes sound/tone/sustain etc. if you want a bigger change in tone change your speaker.
as long as you buy from a REPUTABLE seller (no ebay 'by musiclily' listings), wilkinson all-steel bridges can still be had pretty inexpensively. the musiclily stuff is not the same quality and i wouldn't call it much of an upgrade.
I'm a Luthier, builder and player. I've had really good luck with Wilkinson, musiclily, and a few other inexpensive brands. Obviously you want to think about what you're buying and use some common sense when making a decision, but a lot of it is very usable and/ or upgradable. Wilkinson is a bit of a standout though. It's usually better quality than the rest of the Chinese stuff. The Wilkinson 2 point trems, and locking tuners are my go to on builds. Great products.
Always replace electronics at the same time as your pickup! If you have pots that darken the sound you can buy expensive pups all you want and they'll still sound dark
+1 on the pot. Cheaper pots can be really off, and no matter what pickup you put in, the pot, if it's actual reading is significantly out of spec can just throw a blanket on the overall tone killing highs and dulling mids. I recently bought a replacement 500k audio taper pot from Fender no less, and once installed, I was getting a very weird tone from my SD Pearly Gates. I checked the pot, and it was reading 307k. Not even close. Got a Bournes instead, it was pretty much bang on at 496k, which is in the acceptable range. It really brought the pickup back to life.
Excellent on the pot. And the saddles. Buy cheap titanium saddles from aliexpress and they will make all the difference. Or even good steel ones, not pot metal.
@666dreamboat Yes! A good set of quality solid forged or stamped steel/ brass saddles over some of the ones on cheaper budget bridges is a major mprovement, not only in tone, and sustain, but longevity. Inferior material can corrode prematurely, and make them nearly impossible to adjust when the threads, and screw slots rust out. Not sure what these new Kramer's have on this particular bridge.
I’m sitting pretty close to 200 in upgrades on mine too, I bought a GM 84 ceramic pickup for it and still wasn’t happy, so I pulled the Duncan Distortion out of my RG and put it in there with a new pot, well now it looks cool AF because I bought a shop floor custom Duncan distortion with Neon Green bobbins several years ago and it looks killer in my Ruby red Baretta special but I’m still not satisfied with the tone either. Back to that in a minute. I’ve got a set of Gotoh staggered locking chrome tuners (now I sorta wish I’d gone with black or cosmo black) with 4 short posts from high e to d string and two medium length posts on the low e and a string this got the string pull angle near perfect across the nut , the nut that’s also a graph tech tusqxl, I put a Wilkinson vintage tremolo with the full sized block in it and it’s got Dunlop strap locks so I’m in it for over 200 in upgrades if you allow 50 dollars for the used distortion that I paid full price for years ago lol . I don’t know if you are having the same issues as me but I feel like I can’t get a tight enough rhythm tone for thrash style riffs ( through a DSL20cr with a older made in England V30 in it , pushing the front end with a SD1 or a OCD and even mid boosted 5 band eq in the loop with the volume a little above unity )I shouldn’t have any problem getting a tight defined tone from that signal chain in my opinion . Watching your video it hit me it’s got to be the slanted PU , the bass side poles are more towards the middle position and thus the strings have more energy and output, I think a vintage output would be better suited for my needs at least. Something around 7-9 ohms ( I know that’s not necessarily the best guide but it’s how we refer to pickup output especially Duncan’s ) I’m going to order a push/push pot and have the ability to choose series or parallel, and if putting the distortion in parallel doesn’t clear it up some, I guess I’ll be looking for a 59 or screaming demon or full shred . I know I what ever one is going to say but Eddie had his PU slanted like that and you’d be correct until he started playing guitars with higher output PUs think about it ... and the “brown sound” on VH1 was more than likely just the stock Ibanez PU in his Destroyer and I think the PU debate is what did he have in the Frankie ? The major of guitar on that album is the Destroyer and he said it was a PAF out of a Gibson in the Frankie with the slanted mount lower output right? I guess when the Frankie was white and black around VH1 it did have a full pickguard with the pu mounted parallel to bridge though. Anyway I’ve went on long enough but I think maybe me, you and anyone else might be trying to get a hot PU to do things it just can’t do mounted that far away from the bridge on the bass side . My beretta special is quite loud acoustically and resonates fairly well and that’s really all you can ask for tone wise from an electric when played acoustically does the body vibrate ? Is it loud? Does it have an acceptable amount of sustain ? Something I do to all my bolt on guitars is I tune all the strings about a half to 3/4 of a step sharp , then I slowly loosen the neck plate screws until all four have no load or clamp then usually I get a satisfying pop ( that’s the string tension setting the neck back tight into the pocket) if you have never tried that method for setting the neck on a bolt on , it can be a real game changer for some, and like any other adjustments on a guitar I do it ever so often and nearly always the neck moves a little bit. Jim Lil has convinced me that tone wood is snake oil, his “air tele” sounded just as good as his Anderson once he had everything right. I don’t think tone of an electric guitar acoustically translates directly to amplified tone but if it’s loud and vibrates acoustically it’s probably going to Rawk amplified.
Switch to a brass bridge block and brass/steel saddle will change the tone more, wood isn't that important comparing to these. But your mod still looks awesome!
guyker makes a lot of different ones, and there are a few that are decent but most I've tried had skips and general-chunkiness that couldn't be resolved with lubrication. On the other hand, these Jin-Ho ones that Harley Benton and Guitarfetish sell as their own have never given me issues, I have them on 4 guitars and thinking about replacing more standard tuners with them. If you still have the link to the guyker tuners you tried that worked great for you, please send! I would love to try them out!
you can however get steel blocks (yours will be import, so 52mm string spacing) and brass blocks that fit. musiclily do one which is good quality once you swill out the metal filings from the drilled holes haha. if you can't upgrade the whole bridge that is. saddles can be had cheaply too
I think what really helped with your tuning stability was the nut and tuner upgrades not so much the bridge itself but that is my personal opinion. I am always for upgrading a cheap guitar to make it perform better.
A pickup magnet is such simple technology that must cost a dollar to make. I don't understand why people think stock pickups must suck. Why would they make a pickup sound bad when for the same dollar they can make it an exact clone of a famous pickup?
Great vid! I dropped a Vega Trem in mine and the tusq nut. Also black tuners. I actually like the pickup, normally I'd swap but it's been in there over a year now.
Interesting. Too bad you didn't demonstrate the new tuning stability after the mods. Some dive bombs and "abuse", just to check it fully and honestly. Because they're really good starting point guitars for the price, you're right.
I’ve had a Baretta Special for about a year and a half now and did the Tusq nut upgrade a few weeks after getting it along with some Gotoh locking tuners and the difference in tuning stability once the upgraded were done was HUGE! It easily went out of tune before and now I can hit the trem bar and it stays in tune ten times better. I think the nut upgrade and locking tuners is the key to take this guitar to the next level. Also I love the sound of the stock pickup and really haven’t seen anyone do a pickup upgrade that made a substantial difference. In my opinion don’t waste your money on chasing a better pickup. The stock one just sounds right with this guitar. 😃
I have the Tusq nut and now you have encouraged me to take the time and put it on. I will be doing a new video on this guitar. I redid the stripes and put a big light up kill switch on it. the blue matches the VanHalen pedals.
Pickups are very simple in the way they work. They are not an EQ. A pickup in the same style, in the same position, is going to sound the same. If you want to fundamentally change the tone of this guitar you should cycle through IRs and change the EQ curve on the amp sim you're using. If you want to change it in the guitar itself, maybe check out some new potentiometers-since those actually do EQ your signal. Also, you could remove the body and neck from this guitar and keep the position of everything the same and it would sound the same. Guitars are a closed circuit.
I kinda feel ashamed that I kind of like the stock pickups more than the duncans on this!😅 Ofc the duncans sounds a bit more clear and less blended, but the og ones just got that classic 80's metal sound to them!
maybe its just the pickup choice a seymour duncan distortion would be a better choice or a dimarzio super distortion. pretty cool mod project tho i like how it looks. i dig the 80s style
I modded mine with Fame black locking tuners and Fender strat standard bridge with a heavy sustain block. The later have the guitar some more weight and mass and made it sound a bit heavier since indeed the lighter weight tonewood gives it a lighter acoustic sound on the bass strings if you compare with a basswood body guitar. I also adopted the pole pieces on the pickup, bringing them up about about a mm or so. While this reduces the output a bit, since you need to lower the pickup to adjust for the higher pole pieces it make the sound wider more resonant and sound a bit meaner, more metal like then before it was more the hard rock classic rock sound. So try to adjust the polepeices to on the Seymour Duncan. And also make sure the balance between bass and treble side it optimal. Best point to start is 1.5 mm treble side and 2mm bass when pressing down on the last fret. And then make small adjustments till you find the optimal balance and eq response. Might give you more the sound you're after. Also indeed a custom with the scooped mids might not be the best for a heavier sound, a jb or distortion or even invader may have done the job better.
The pot in mine read like 340k on my multimeter. I had a push-pull that was measuring at 497k and used that and it totally woke up the guitar. The split coil sound from the trembucker i have in it was way more "stratty" than Im used to and I 100 percent believe that its because of the pickup slant. A brass trem block and maybe some nice roller saddles would make a meaner bridge out of the one you got, which in my opinion contrary to what everyone else is saying isn't that bad its more than usable.
I've opened a lot of guitars in my days. What I've found out is:You can NEVER FIND THE PERFECT GUITAR. I have a 1966 Fender Stratocaster with an all parts Yngwie malmsteen scalloped Neck. And people ask me all the time about the details of this guitar. Including the headstock design and the strings I use . Just for the record I use Ernie ball Super slinking Guage 9- 42 And dive it through a Marshall Amp ITS Great for me But I've met alt of folks who've Bought better and newer stuff And I've Checked it out on various sites. Truth be told The Les paul Or The Stratocaster are probably the best.
I much preferred the stock pickup. It sounded clearer and more chunky. I have that Seymour Duncan pickup in one of my guitars and the lower-mid emphasis works will with some amps but it's the only SD pickup I have tried that I have been underwhelmed by.
Bro, it has nothing to do with the wood. the body is Mahogany, the reason for the slight difference in tone is because whoever makes the cheap Alnico 5 pickup hit a home run with it. I put a JB in mine when I first got it but realized the stock pickup sounded better so I put it back lol.
The sound on electric guitars have little if nothing to do with the wood or construction in my opinion .. you find tons of video that talk about that . Probably the pick-up you choose has a similar frequency response than the other one or if you are using a vst / amp simulator the patch you are using make them sound similar or more probably it's just a impression. If you use a Dimarzio Evo you should feel the crazy mid range frequencies / the overall increase in output and clarity in theory but with a real valve amp not with some Multi/processor / vst x.x. The problem with cheap guitars is that you can mod them as much you want but the neck / body shape overall construction quality is still the same will affect the play-ability and the feel when you play that it's what you think is still lacking . Also a better bridge from Gotoh / better locking tuners a full anti-noise treatment / shielding could improve it even more but you can't reshape the neck and redesign everything , how the frets are are made etc etc . I mean you could potentially but not worth... just buy a new guitar at that point 😂 For that reason personally when i buy i a guitar i check first the feel and play-ability / tuning stability after that i test everything else . I think no point to buy a guitar with a amazing sound that lack feel and uncomfortable to play. Overall i liked the video and you did well to don't spend to much on that guitar .. look cool tho u.u.
I did all the same upgrades and it really does add to the guitar's tuning stability. I did two things different however... I didn't replace the pickup, I found the one that came in the guitar sounded as good as the JB in my Charvel, so I didn't mess with that and I installed a Bourns EVH Low Friction 500k volume pot. The new pot didn't really do anything for the sound, but it made the responsiveness of the volume at all levels much better and it allows for better rolling when doing EVH style volume swells. (Somebody Get Me a Doctor for example) You can also make the stock volume pot more responsive if you cut out the treble bleed soldered to the pot.
I heard people online saying there is a lil capacitor soldered onto the volume pot and that one could just clip it off to resolve the issue with the volume response. I think I will but one just to see:]
@@richardmartinez3342 Yes, you can just take a pair of cutters and snip it right out. That will fix the problem and make the pot more responsive to volume swells. I believe the pot in there is already a 500K as well. I had no problem with how it functioned after I snipped the little piece out, I just prefer a low friction pot because all my other guitars have them, so I swapped it out. But if you don’t care about that, then snipping that little treble bleed will absolutely fix the volume response issue.
Waiting for the "If you're with Legendary, why didn't you get a Legendary pickup donated?" comments. The answer? Who doesn't like Seymour Duncan? I know I do. They were around at the exact era to be perfect for this project! Amazing video as always my man.
I ot my kramer baretta in hot pink, and aside from a basic set up- as with all new guitars- I ended up with one of my favorites to play for literally $99 bucks. That is insane. I do want to get that graphite nut and lockin tuners, but right now it has not right to sound this good at this price point.
I did almost the same mods last year to mine. Duncan distortion instead. Ive since swapped it out to a Fluence classic which completely changed the character. Really fun guitar.
Yo! If you have to upgrade strings...those aren't much of an event mate...try Elixir, they cost a lot more than those... but they last forever and are way more comfortable to play and, I think, sound better than EB. My brother pulled out of the attic one of those from the 80s just a couple of days ago...dusty and very unloved. I thought maybe I can mod for fun....then I saw your vid. ..not really worthy neh?!. It is better as furniture...
It is wirth it because the body is Mahogany, your trying to compare it to your main guitar which is bass wood with a better locking system giving more sustain then the special. Mahogany is a good wood Gibsons dont demand the type of money they get for nothing. Everyone deals with all the issues the LP has for the tone.
The oem pickup is BHC made by epiphone as it seems. So its not a noname brand and its actually really good.I got the same guitar and decided to put a SD custom 5 too There is a difference but considering the price of the custom i dont think it worth it,minimal difference to be fair
Think I’m buying one of these could anyone mention if they’ve had any fret issues? It’s really all I’m concerned about. ❤love this bad boy. Personally I thought the new pickup had a better sound but not by miles I’d deffo change the pot for the sake of a tenner. Enjoyed this video thank you!
xd those kramers have a alnico 5 pickup. its supposed to sound good. the diference u might have listenned can be doe to the new pickup beeing just different. Different pickups have different voicings. so yeah xd. And you dont need a ultra expensive pickup from one of the top 3 know brands to buy a good sounding pickup.
It has something to do with the sound of the guitar itself (as he explained very clearly) in a physical, non amplified way. The resonance of the body is in my opinion very important for the player (not the listener!) so I totally get his point. Would you also claim that the wood does not matter for acoustic guitars? It does not affect the sound of the pickups, that is right. But that was not the point.
One mod that you can do and it won't cost you a thing is clip out the crappy capacitor that they put in those.i done it to mine and it woke it up big time. I seen the mod on TH-cam and it works.cheers
the answer to the question was it worth it comes down to are you keeping it for yourself and it sounds better to you if so yes if it is a case of thinking about resale value then the answer is no. as when you come to resell it for all other buyers and the market it is still just a second hand Kramer Baretta Special and will only be worth the price of a stock one, regardless of any upgrades you made as they are only upgrades to you personally they may not be what other people want on the guitar. so to get the value of the guitar and what your upgrades were you would be better off putting all the stock parts back on selling the guitar as stock then selling the upgrade parts separate to the guitar.
The first thing I would've done is not buy a guitar in a colour that's suitable for 8yo girls only. But the guitar is sick, Kramer just decided to make these guitars gay colours for some strange reason!
3:07 OMG thank you for explaining that! I do that all the time and sometimes when people want to stand around me and watch me while I'm working on something (so fuckin annoying! ) they like to remind me "righty tighty lefty loosey!", I just ignore them and keep working while thinking to myself that if they had any idea how to do the work themselves then they would be doing the work instead of me doing it.
I have the same guitar, and for the money it's great. But, I think Kramer could have done us all a big favor if they would have upped the price a bit and included a cheap Floyd on the guitar. Then you would be talking about a great modding platform for a cool shred guitar. It would already be routed for a Floyd upgrade, and that would have totally sweetend the deal. I added locking tuners and a Super Vee Bladerunner I had laying around. Plays great and stays in tune very well.
Honestly, you're better off with that Super Vee Blade Runner than a cheap floyd, because the Floyds that Kramer uses tend to wear out really quickly and they don't have the same dimensions as an OFR, so you can't just drop a better floyd in. I picked up a used Kramer with a floyd and it wouldn't stay in tune until I installed a trem stop and cranked the springs way in. It doesn't behave any different than the Super Vee Blade Runners I have on a couple of my guitars.
Protip on these. The volume pot makes a bigger difference in sound than the pickup. Bourns 500k made mine come alive. The stock volume pot is actually so bad it makes the pickup not sustain notes.
It’s hard to capture what the purple and Ruby red ones look like in person in a picture or video, they appear duller in pics and video they are much more vibrant in person the Ruby red is between hot pink and grapefruit ( not the pealing the part you eat )
@@MelloState Correction: Seymour Duncan is the market leader, so "most pickups" *are* Seymour Duncan pickups. The second most popular brand, DiMarzio, at least utilizes some innovative patents, like Airbucker, Virtual Vintage and Dual Resonance.
I’m a Duncan guy myself and I do think that some of the after market Chinese pickups are way better than a stock import guitars PU are most of the time, they still cut costs in a critical area from what I’ve learned from watching Dylan Talks Tone he says that the baseplate of a quality PU needs to be nickel and there’s another material that’s good too but the stock PU in the Kramer Baretta special is most likely an epiphone and I’ve had it apart it’s definitely not a Duncan or Dimarzio it’s got the bronze looking base plate and the Guitar Madness 84 also is made in China and has the bronze looking baseplate. I can’t say for sure but Dylan swears that the baseplate makes a difference in tone. I’ve been wanting to order a couple nickel baseplates and put them on the stock Kramer PU and the GM 84 and see for myself. If you get the tone you want out of a 25c PU that’s great for you the way I see it and if someone wants to spend 399 on a boutique pickup and that makes them happy that’s awesome for them I’m happy for them, but from my experience personally a Seymour Duncan JB or Distortion is what I like, and it’s more about string to string clarity and definition I want to be able to hear every string ringing out equally whenever ever I hit a cowboy chord with a ton of gain on it and those two Duncan’s are the only PU I’ve been able to get that from except for an EMG 85x and the Dave Mustaine LW that are also made by Seymour Duncan. Duncan Trembuckers have copper tape around the coils for some reason too , I don’t know what it does just found it interesting. The point I’m making is we guitar players worry way too much about what someone else is doing to their rig and are very vocal about it if we think they’re wasting money or spending it in the wrong place. I’m not trying to beat you up but just sharing my experience to my ears there’s a noticeable difference in a Duncan or Dimarzio compared to the China PU and if you can find one used for 50 bucks my personal recommendation would be to get the used Duncan instead of the 15 to 20 dollar MIC deal. I want to do some experimenting on some of those Guitar Madness PU though.
This guitar seems to be a killer one, especially for who is low in the budget. It's a quality piece and you don't run out of money for an instrument. I would do the similar mods as you did, but the pickup. I think there is no reason to spend money with a SD after listening the difference of both on this specific guitar. Really cool vid!
Pickup winder here with 30 years of experience (started in early 1990-s due to went to electronic school). People, kids, etc save your hard earned $ no need to spent em on Pickup industry lies served by people who never went to school for that, who just blindly cpy paste what Fender, Gibson etc did and they cop them based on a wrong data. NO NEED TO SPENT MORE THEN 40-50 MAX for a humbacker except if it's only winded specifically for you and your guitar. But even then it should cost a lot, it's a simple device. So it's not strange that stock pickup is good enough. But if you get some no name well made ''Asian'' pickup you would also get great results, the same goes if you spent 150-300$ on some hyped overpriced pickups due to they all use in more then 90% same materials and approach.
Nice Video! I have an Ibanez RG1127PBFX and the Tuning stability is awful although it has locking tuners. I dont have much experience but watching this video seems to confirm what I noticed with my guitar. Somehow if you bend too much or bent the neck back and forth, the strings seems to get stuck and there is instant detuning. It has a plastic nut and there is obviously not much space for the strings. Do you think somehow filingthe nut (where the strings go through) would help? But it is a shame, that such an expensive guitar (I luckily bought it quite cheap used) has such a simple plastic nut...
Filing the nut can quickly change the height of the string and give you a problem with the string action but you can try by sliding a guitar string through the slot a couple of times or use graphite to lube the slot. Or you can get a replacement like I did!
I think the tilted pickup makes this guitar sounds special. I have it and try many pickups in it and you have to find the right one to it and it will sound great. Better pickups for it for me are the ones with more high mids than low mid, because the tilting puts the pickup fuerther from the bridge and gives more low mids. Also a big brass block would add more mids, i think it's a bit scooped guitar also.
@@DrumBuster16 that's one I didn't tried yet. Also the Custom, never tried it. I wanted to buy the Ecclair, which is a JB with A2, some like that, but i already have the RTM that I think it sound kind of like the Ecclair, so I don't know if spending the money on it, it's Custom Shop
For modding beginners or for those like myself who suck at soldering, I recommend going with EMG pickups because they're completely solderless and come with higher quality potentiometers and output jack. I'd also spend the extra $20 for a set of Gotoh locking tuners. In the states a set of Gotoh locking tuners is around $60 , so not much more expensive than the Harley Benton tuners.
Before resigning yourself to the sound being limited entirely due to the tonewood... something I learned from swapping out the stock pickups from my Steinberger Spirit, replacing the volume and tone pots w/ quality ones made a big difference. The factory ones seemed like they were choking the life out of the pickups.
That would actually be a very interesting topic - only change the pots and see what's the difference there! I didn't mean here to reduce the sound ONLY to the wood, I just meant that an expensive pickup can't make a 160€ guitar sound like it was 1600€ with the same pickup.
Absolutely! I just wanted to point out that the pots are easily overlooked. I mean, I overlooked them when I did my pickup swap. The Seymour Duncan's I used shouldn't have sounded so "dead." It wasn't until I read about the pots in a Steinberger forum, that the lightbulb went on. CTS are usually what's recommended, but they were too stiff for me (to do pinky volume swells.) Emerson's were recommended, but they sounded too "scratchy," IMHO. I think I went w/ some mini-Alphas. For your Kramer, the 500K Seymour Duncan Yngwie Speed Pot would be slick!
Oh, a quick test you can do to see if the stock factory pot is choking your sound, is to simply bypass it, meaning wiring the pickup directly to the output jack. If the sound improves, that's pretty convincing evidence that the factory pot should be replaced.
Hey dude nice work , i have the same guitar and even got teh same bridge as you ; black Gotoh tuners , and dimarzio super distortion wired parallel ala 80s paul gilbert. Another thing to try - cut off the capacitor on the pot for a much better roll off , they come with the wrong value. Also try the fender half size saddle screws , which sit down below the saddle and its much smoother on your hand ! Rock on !
It's not that big of a sound difference because it's the same speaker... That's what makes the biggest sound difference The 'tonewood' argument only holds up on acoustics and when not plugging in
The mods I did to mine were a gfs bridge with brass block, babicz saddles, locking tuners, Planet Tone Pasadena 78 pickup, and Mad Hatter electronics wiring kit
@MilianMalivukMusic did you measure the tone stability when using the tremolo with z tuning device? The reason I als, I managed to snad out the nut and with some lubrication it stays about in tune, but still raises at few point above pitch, but to the earnit:s ok, so i am wondering if changing to a graphtech is worthwhile, in a way it stays perfect in tune? Thx
I know what you mean about a decent pickup not saving the sound of a cursed guitar. I have a cheap 7 strings that I am not a big fan of its sound for metal at all, I put an expensive Seymour Duncan on it and it barely changed anything. I remember this interview with a guy from the Fender Custom Shop, one of the builders. When asked what makes a guitar sounds great, in the middle of the whole answer, he said something like "some pieces of wood, for some reason, do not want to be a guitar...". Well, I guess there's some truth to it.
Although your style is metal/drop tune riffs, you probably could have sensed more the difference in tone of the pickups by playing a clean sequence. . No matter what, regarding the wood, I absolutely agree: if it's a plank of non-resonating wood, you can change whatever you want in terms of electronics, it won't make a night and day difference. The vibration, overtones, sustain do come from the quality of the body. Cheers !
The tone you attribute to the wood type is actually a product of the guitar's construction. The scale and pickup placement are the main factors in electric guitar sound. All other details only have subtle effects as you displayed in this video!
![[TH] FS vs BME - VCT Ascension Pacific - Lower Bracket Final](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wnygqsR2Fig/mqdefault.jpg)
The reason that the Duncan pickup doesn’t sound much better has nothing to do with the wood. It’s just because the cheap, stock pickup is SO GOOD.
Yes the pickup that came with it is pretty good! I will have to do a video on mine. Better than anyone I have seen.
Completely agree , I've got a Kramer and the pickup is great 👍 Don't change it !!!!
I have a Kramer Pacer Classic with the SD clone pickup, and I also have a Kramer Baretta Vintage with the original SD.
the clone is so good that I wouldn't bother getting a real SD if I had a special. of course woods differ, but they still are head to head.
😎
@@Dad-Gad I put an EMG 81 in mine
Seymour Duncan is a ripoff. Hes part of the tone wood snake oil salesman generation that used the lack of internet and readily available information we have today to overcharge people for magnets and copper wire.
Tone wood isn’t a thing. If you played it acoustically you’d hear a change but that goes away when plugged in. You changed the nut, the bridge, and the pickup and went with lighter strings. All of this changes sound/tone/sustain etc. if you want a bigger change in tone change your speaker.
and I would def suggest to tape off the leads you dont need, unless you put switches in there of course
Should have put a Floyd on it as it was meant to be. They came with Floyd's in the 80s and more expensive version comes with a Floyd.
as long as you buy from a REPUTABLE seller (no ebay 'by musiclily' listings), wilkinson all-steel bridges can still be had pretty inexpensively. the musiclily stuff is not the same quality and i wouldn't call it much of an upgrade.
I'm a Luthier, builder and player. I've had really good luck with Wilkinson, musiclily, and a few other inexpensive brands. Obviously you want to think about what you're buying and use some common sense when making a decision, but a lot of it is very usable and/ or upgradable. Wilkinson is a bit of a standout though. It's usually better quality than the rest of the Chinese stuff. The Wilkinson 2 point trems, and locking tuners are my go to on builds. Great products.
@Watcher Bruh I literally bought Wilkinson tuners for bass, 30 euros, and they were A LOT better than the original ones
@@ChrisLee1353-c6e i had a set of wilkinson and a set of vanson where 4 were loose hahahaha. how odd.
Bro Jim lill disproved the whole “tone wood” trope lmao. his video is worth he watch
Always replace electronics at the same time as your pickup! If you have pots that darken the sound you can buy expensive pups all you want and they'll still sound dark
+1 on the pot.
Cheaper pots can be really off, and no matter what pickup you put in, the pot, if it's actual reading is significantly out of spec can just throw a blanket on the overall tone killing highs and dulling mids.
I recently bought a replacement 500k audio taper pot from Fender no less, and once installed, I was getting a very weird tone from my SD Pearly Gates.
I checked the pot, and it was reading 307k. Not even close.
Got a Bournes instead, it was pretty much bang on at 496k, which is in the acceptable range.
It really brought the pickup back to life.
Excellent on the pot. And the saddles. Buy cheap titanium saddles from aliexpress and they will make all the difference. Or even good steel ones, not pot metal.
Yup. I put an Invader in mine and it didn't sound like it should until I swapped out the pot for a CTS pot.
@@treishtrei also I think super important, is better saddles are often nice and comfy!
@666dreamboat Yes! A good set of quality solid forged or stamped steel/ brass saddles over some of the ones on cheaper budget bridges is a major mprovement, not only in tone, and sustain, but longevity. Inferior material can corrode prematurely, and make them nearly impossible to adjust when the threads, and screw slots rust out.
Not sure what these new Kramer's have on this particular bridge.
I’m sitting pretty close to 200 in upgrades on mine too, I bought a GM 84 ceramic pickup for it and still wasn’t happy, so I pulled the Duncan Distortion out of my RG and put it in there with a new pot, well now it looks cool AF because I bought a shop floor custom Duncan distortion with Neon Green bobbins several years ago and it looks killer in my Ruby red Baretta special but I’m still not satisfied with the tone either. Back to that in a minute. I’ve got a set of Gotoh staggered locking chrome tuners (now I sorta wish I’d gone with black or cosmo black) with 4 short posts from high e to d string and two medium length posts on the low e and a string this got the string pull angle near perfect across the nut , the nut that’s also a graph tech tusqxl, I put a Wilkinson vintage tremolo with the full sized block in it and it’s got Dunlop strap locks so I’m in it for over 200 in upgrades if you allow 50 dollars for the used distortion that I paid full price for years ago lol .
I don’t know if you are having the same issues as me but I feel like I can’t get a tight enough rhythm tone for thrash style riffs ( through a DSL20cr with a older made in England V30 in it , pushing the front end with a SD1 or a OCD and even mid boosted 5 band eq in the loop with the volume a little above unity )I shouldn’t have any problem getting a tight defined tone from that signal chain in my opinion .
Watching your video it hit me it’s got to be the slanted PU , the bass side poles are more towards the middle position and thus the strings have more energy and output, I think a vintage output would be better suited for my needs at least. Something around 7-9 ohms ( I know that’s not necessarily the best guide but it’s how we refer to pickup output especially Duncan’s ) I’m going to order a push/push pot and have the ability to choose series or parallel, and if putting the distortion in parallel doesn’t clear it up some, I guess I’ll be looking for a 59 or screaming demon or full shred . I know I what ever one is going to say but Eddie had his PU slanted like that and you’d be correct until he started playing guitars with higher output PUs think about it ... and the “brown sound” on VH1 was more than likely just the stock Ibanez PU in his Destroyer and I think the PU debate is what did he have in the Frankie ? The major of guitar on that album is the Destroyer and he said it was a PAF out of a Gibson in the Frankie with the slanted mount lower output right? I guess when the Frankie was white and black around VH1 it did have a full pickguard with the pu mounted parallel to bridge though.
Anyway I’ve went on long enough but I think maybe me, you and anyone else might be trying to get a hot PU to do things it just can’t do mounted that far away from the bridge on the bass side .
My beretta special is quite loud acoustically and resonates fairly well and that’s really all you can ask for tone wise from an electric when played acoustically does the body vibrate ? Is it loud? Does it have an acceptable amount of sustain ?
Something I do to all my bolt on guitars is I tune all the strings about a half to 3/4 of a step sharp , then I slowly loosen the neck plate screws until all four have no load or clamp then usually I get a satisfying pop ( that’s the string tension setting the neck back tight into the pocket) if you have never tried that method for setting the neck on a bolt on , it can be a real game changer for some, and like any other adjustments on a guitar I do it ever so often and nearly always the neck moves a little bit.
Jim Lil has convinced me that tone wood is snake oil, his “air tele” sounded just as good as his Anderson once he had everything right.
I don’t think tone of an electric guitar acoustically translates directly to amplified tone but if it’s loud and vibrates acoustically it’s probably going to Rawk amplified.
Tone wood..... 🤣 Isn't is more likely that the two pickups were voiced very similarly?
Trembucker? 🤔 But that slanted Van Halen routing is because he use standard Gibson pickup 😁 ..
Switch to a brass bridge block and brass/steel saddle will change the tone more, wood isn't that important comparing to these. But your mod still looks awesome!
Thank You!
Btw, if youre after amazing cheap locking tuners, try some guyker tuners of ali. They will be way better than the generic ones
guyker makes a lot of different ones, and there are a few that are decent but most I've tried had skips and general-chunkiness that couldn't be resolved with lubrication. On the other hand, these Jin-Ho ones that Harley Benton and Guitarfetish sell as their own have never given me issues, I have them on 4 guitars and thinking about replacing more standard tuners with them.
If you still have the link to the guyker tuners you tried that worked great for you, please send! I would love to try them out!
If you pulled the pick up and controls out why wouldn’t you shield the cavities? That alone can improve the quality greatly
you can however get steel blocks (yours will be import, so 52mm string spacing) and brass blocks that fit. musiclily do one which is good quality once you swill out the metal filings from the drilled holes haha. if you can't upgrade the whole bridge that is. saddles can be had cheaply too
I think what really helped with your tuning stability was the nut and tuner upgrades not so much the bridge itself but that is my personal opinion. I am always for upgrading a cheap guitar to make it perform better.
A pickup magnet is such simple technology that must cost a dollar to make. I don't understand why people think stock pickups must suck. Why would they make a pickup sound bad when for the same dollar they can make it an exact clone of a famous pickup?
full anxiety min 4:50, come on men, buy a fcking crimper hahahaha
Great vid! I dropped a Vega Trem in mine and the tusq nut. Also black tuners. I actually like the pickup, normally I'd swap but it's been in there over a year now.
How does that vega trem hold tune?
13:49 “the nut went really fast” -> me when you showed the guitar next to the purple lights
Interesting. Too bad you didn't demonstrate the new tuning stability after the mods. Some dive bombs and "abuse", just to check it fully and honestly. Because they're really good starting point guitars for the price, you're right.
I’ve had a Baretta Special for about a year and a half now and did the Tusq nut upgrade a few weeks after getting it along with some Gotoh locking tuners and the difference in tuning stability once the upgraded were done was HUGE! It easily went out of tune before and now I can hit the trem bar and it stays in tune ten times better. I think the nut upgrade and locking tuners is the key to take this guitar to the next level. Also I love the sound of the stock pickup and really haven’t seen anyone do a pickup upgrade that made a substantial difference. In my opinion don’t waste your money on chasing a better pickup. The stock one just sounds right with this guitar. 😃
I have the Tusq nut and now you have encouraged me to take the time and put it on. I will be doing a new video on this guitar. I redid the stripes and put a big light up kill switch on it. the blue matches the VanHalen pedals.
did the gotohs fit with no drilling?
Pickups are very simple in the way they work. They are not an EQ. A pickup in the same style, in the same position, is going to sound the same. If you want to fundamentally change the tone of this guitar you should cycle through IRs and change the EQ curve on the amp sim you're using. If you want to change it in the guitar itself, maybe check out some new potentiometers-since those actually do EQ your signal.
Also, you could remove the body and neck from this guitar and keep the position of everything the same and it would sound the same. Guitars are a closed circuit.
I kinda feel ashamed that I kind of like the stock pickups more than the duncans on this!😅 Ofc the duncans sounds a bit more clear and less blended, but the og ones just got that classic 80's metal sound to them!
maybe its just the pickup choice a seymour duncan distortion would be a better choice or a dimarzio super distortion. pretty cool mod project tho i like how it looks. i dig the 80s style
I modded mine with Fame black locking tuners and Fender strat standard bridge with a heavy sustain block. The later have the guitar some more weight and mass and made it sound a bit heavier since indeed the lighter weight tonewood gives it a lighter acoustic sound on the bass strings if you compare with a basswood body guitar. I also adopted the pole pieces on the pickup, bringing them up about about a mm or so. While this reduces the output a bit, since you need to lower the pickup to adjust for the higher pole pieces it make the sound wider more resonant and sound a bit meaner, more metal like then before it was more the hard rock classic rock sound. So try to adjust the polepeices to on the Seymour Duncan. And also make sure the balance between bass and treble side it optimal. Best point to start is 1.5 mm treble side and 2mm bass when pressing down on the last fret. And then make small adjustments till you find the optimal balance and eq response. Might give you more the sound you're after. Also indeed a custom with the scooped mids might not be the best for a heavier sound, a jb or distortion or even invader may have done the job better.
The pot in mine read like 340k on my multimeter. I had a push-pull that was measuring at 497k and used that and it totally woke up the guitar. The split coil sound from the trembucker i have in it was way more "stratty" than Im used to and I 100 percent believe that its because of the pickup slant. A brass trem block and maybe some nice roller saddles would make a meaner bridge out of the one you got, which in my opinion contrary to what everyone else is saying isn't that bad its more than usable.
I've opened a lot of guitars in my days. What I've found out is:You can NEVER FIND THE PERFECT GUITAR. I have a 1966 Fender Stratocaster with an all parts Yngwie malmsteen scalloped Neck. And people ask me all the time about the details of this guitar. Including the headstock design and the strings I use . Just for the record I use Ernie ball Super slinking Guage 9- 42 And dive it through a Marshall Amp ITS Great for me But I've met alt of folks who've Bought better and newer stuff And I've Checked it out on various sites. Truth be told The Les paul Or The Stratocaster are probably the best.
That purple isn't a cool, deep metallic purple tho... it's a lame, pastel purple. Gay purple. Beta purple. Actually... it works for you 🤣
Kramer necks are pretty amazing. I still have my 88 kramer neck on a build I did in the early 90s
Should also replace the pot and wires
If you find a mahogany body/maple neck guitar lacking tone the issue is you.
I much preferred the stock pickup. It sounded clearer and more chunky. I have that Seymour Duncan pickup in one of my guitars and the lower-mid emphasis works will with some amps but it's the only SD pickup I have tried that I have been underwhelmed by.
Damn i never saw someone using a cutter like this. It looks like you are cutting yourself. I nearly shit my pants of fear dude. 🤣🤣🤣
Bro, it has nothing to do with the wood. the body is Mahogany, the reason for the slight difference in tone is because whoever makes the cheap Alnico 5 pickup hit a home run with it. I put a JB in mine when I first got it but realized the stock pickup sounded better so I put it back lol.
The sound on electric guitars have little if nothing to do with the wood or construction in my opinion .. you find tons of video that talk about that .
Probably the pick-up you choose has a similar frequency response than the other one or if you are using a vst / amp simulator the patch you are using make them sound similar or more probably it's just a impression. If you use a Dimarzio Evo you should feel the crazy mid range frequencies / the overall increase in output and clarity in theory but with a real valve amp not with some Multi/processor / vst x.x.
The problem with cheap guitars is that you can mod them as much you want but the neck / body shape overall construction quality is still the same will affect the play-ability and the feel when you play that it's what you think is still lacking .
Also a better bridge from Gotoh / better locking tuners a full anti-noise treatment / shielding could improve it even more but you can't reshape the neck and redesign everything , how the frets are are made etc etc . I mean you could potentially but not worth... just buy a new guitar at that point 😂
For that reason personally when i buy i a guitar i check first the feel and play-ability / tuning stability after that i test everything else .
I think no point to buy a guitar with a amazing sound that lack feel and uncomfortable to play.
Overall i liked the video and you did well to don't spend to much on that guitar .. look cool tho u.u.
Love these guitars! Have a few of them and plan to mod them in different ways.
I did all the same upgrades and it really does add to the guitar's tuning stability. I did two things different however... I didn't replace the pickup, I found the one that came in the guitar sounded as good as the JB in my Charvel, so I didn't mess with that and I installed a Bourns EVH Low Friction 500k volume pot. The new pot didn't really do anything for the sound, but it made the responsiveness of the volume at all levels much better and it allows for better rolling when doing EVH style volume swells. (Somebody Get Me a Doctor for example) You can also make the stock volume pot more responsive if you cut out the treble bleed soldered to the pot.
I heard people online saying there is a lil capacitor soldered onto the volume pot and that one could just clip it off to resolve the issue with the volume response. I think I will but one just to see:]
@@richardmartinez3342 Yes, you can just take a pair of cutters and snip it right out. That will fix the problem and make the pot more responsive to volume swells. I believe the pot in there is already a 500K as well. I had no problem with how it functioned after I snipped the little piece out, I just prefer a low friction pot because all my other guitars have them, so I swapped it out. But if you don’t care about that, then snipping that little treble bleed will absolutely fix the volume response issue.
Waiting for the "If you're with Legendary, why didn't you get a Legendary pickup donated?" comments.
The answer? Who doesn't like Seymour Duncan? I know I do. They were around at the exact era to be perfect for this project!
Amazing video as always my man.
jason, you are an absolute babe
I ot my kramer baretta in hot pink, and aside from a basic set up- as with all new guitars- I ended up with one of my favorites to play for literally $99 bucks. That is insane. I do want to get that graphite nut and lockin tuners, but right now it has not right to sound this good at this price point.
I did almost the same mods last year to mine. Duncan distortion instead. Ive since swapped it out to a Fluence classic which completely changed the character. Really fun guitar.
Yo! If you have to upgrade strings...those aren't much of an event mate...try Elixir, they cost a lot more than those... but they last forever and are way more comfortable to play and, I think, sound better than EB.
My brother pulled out of the attic one of those from the 80s just a couple of days ago...dusty and very unloved. I thought maybe I can mod for fun....then I saw your vid. ..not really worthy neh?!. It is better as furniture...
It is wirth it because the body is Mahogany, your trying to compare it to your main guitar which is bass wood with a better locking system giving more sustain then the special. Mahogany is a good wood Gibsons dont demand the type of money they get for nothing. Everyone deals with all the issues the LP has for the tone.
The oem pickup is BHC made by epiphone as it seems.
So its not a noname brand and its actually really good.I got the same guitar and decided to put a SD custom 5 too
There is a difference but considering the price of the custom i dont think it worth it,minimal difference to be fair
Think I’m buying one of these could anyone mention if they’ve had any fret issues? It’s really all I’m concerned about. ❤love this bad boy. Personally I thought the new pickup had a better sound but not by miles I’d deffo change the pot for the sake of a tenner. Enjoyed this video thank you!
xd those kramers have a alnico 5 pickup. its supposed to sound good. the diference u might have listenned can be doe to the new pickup beeing just different. Different pickups have different voicings. so yeah xd. And you dont need a ultra expensive pickup from one of the top 3 know brands to buy a good sounding pickup.
dude seriously thinks wood has anything to do with the sound of a electric guitar. lmao
It has something to do with the sound of the guitar itself (as he explained very clearly) in a physical, non amplified way. The resonance of the body is in my opinion very important for the player (not the listener!) so I totally get his point. Would you also claim that the wood does not matter for acoustic guitars? It does not affect the sound of the pickups, that is right. But that was not the point.
Pickups are such a relatively small part of the signal chain that most of the time getting one that simply works is good enough.
Wood doesn't change the sound of the electronics.
Speaks about tone wood and plays the guitar at very high gain in a plugin ... sorry but you discredited yourself only with this.
I'd have gold hardware installed since this is a cheesy 80's guitar. the black hardware makes it look like a toy
One mod that you can do and it won't cost you a thing is clip out the crappy capacitor that they put in those.i done it to mine and it woke it up big time. I seen the mod on TH-cam and it works.cheers
That Chris Fix impression was on point.😂
the answer to the question was it worth it comes down to are you keeping it for yourself and it sounds better to you if so yes if it is a case of thinking about resale value then the answer is no. as when you come to resell it for all other buyers and the market it is still just a second hand Kramer Baretta Special and will only be worth the price of a stock one, regardless of any upgrades you made as they are only upgrades to you personally they may not be what other people want on the guitar. so to get the value of the guitar and what your upgrades were you would be better off putting all the stock parts back on selling the guitar as stock then selling the upgrade parts separate to the guitar.
tell me you picked the wrong pickup without telling me
The first thing I would've done is not buy a guitar in a colour that's suitable for 8yo girls only. But the guitar is sick, Kramer just decided to make these guitars gay colours for some strange reason!
Oh no, someone's manliness is being attacked by a guitar being purple!
@@MilianMalivukMusic Pretty gross when a grown man pretends to be a 8yo girl, you and Dylan Mulvaney have a whole lot in common🤭😱🤗🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤘
🤣🤣🤣🤣 you had to delete my last comment because it was a little to close to the truth wasn't it😱💯🤗
Replacing the nut was unnecessary, the stock one is already just fine.
This Kramer that I've looked at is pretty cool Too.
Didn’t change your pots and output Jack
playing guitar is pay to win so thats what you are saying? haha
Add some reverb to give the sound some depth, if you feel it is a bit flat....
3:07 OMG thank you for explaining that! I do that all the time and sometimes when people want to stand around me and watch me while I'm working on something (so fuckin annoying! ) they like to remind me "righty tighty lefty loosey!", I just ignore them and keep working while thinking to myself that if they had any idea how to do the work themselves then they would be doing the work instead of me doing it.
Put a real brigde ! the pickup wont change much ;)
Tone wood is only listenable acousticly but not on records.
I have the same guitar, and for the money it's great. But, I think Kramer could have done us all a big favor if they would have upped the price a bit and included a cheap Floyd on the guitar. Then you would be talking about a great modding platform for a cool shred guitar. It would already be routed for a Floyd upgrade, and that would have totally sweetend the deal. I added locking tuners and a Super Vee Bladerunner I had laying around. Plays great and stays in tune very well.
Honestly, you're better off with that Super Vee Blade Runner than a cheap floyd, because the Floyds that Kramer uses tend to wear out really quickly and they don't have the same dimensions as an OFR, so you can't just drop a better floyd in. I picked up a used Kramer with a floyd and it wouldn't stay in tune until I installed a trem stop and cranked the springs way in. It doesn't behave any different than the Super Vee Blade Runners I have on a couple of my guitars.
Definitely a lot chunkier sound
Protip on these. The volume pot makes a bigger difference in sound than the pickup. Bourns 500k made mine come alive. The stock volume pot is actually so bad it makes the pickup not sustain notes.
this is true. I changed mine now to a seymore duncan and put in a separate kill switch.
the perfect tinker guitar
If you want to sell i would love to buy
That sounds good. There is a big difference in sound. More bite. More crunch. The nut and the seymour and locking tuners tighten the sound up.
As much as i love purple, that thing needs re finishing
The problem is it looks lavender on my camera and waaay of like the real thing. Like it's a really rich purple in real life.
Ah ok i see, maybe a matte then rather than its current gloss finish? Just my personal preferences :)
It’s hard to capture what the purple and Ruby red ones look like in person in a picture or video, they appear duller in pics and video they are much more vibrant in person the Ruby red is between hot pink and grapefruit ( not the pealing the part you eat )
Did you do anything soecific with the nut or was it so close size wise to the stock nut that you didn't need to sand it down for height or width?
I was wondering the same thing.
Gonna incorporate "fiddleage" into my lexicon after this video 😂 very cool project man!
that wood is bad man
Seymour Duncan pickups are overrated AF. Case in point.
$20-30 Chinese pickups by Fleor or Donlis sound just as good.
Correction, Most pickups are overrated in general. Not all but Most
@@MelloState Correction: Seymour Duncan is the market leader, so "most pickups" *are* Seymour Duncan pickups.
The second most popular brand, DiMarzio, at least utilizes some innovative patents, like Airbucker, Virtual Vintage and Dual Resonance.
I’m a Duncan guy myself and I do think that some of the after market Chinese pickups are way better than a stock import guitars PU are most of the time, they still cut costs in a critical area from what I’ve learned from watching Dylan Talks Tone he says that the baseplate of a quality PU needs to be nickel and there’s another material that’s good too but the stock PU in the Kramer Baretta special is most likely an epiphone and I’ve had it apart it’s definitely not a Duncan or Dimarzio it’s got the bronze looking base plate and the Guitar Madness 84 also is made in China and has the bronze looking baseplate. I can’t say for sure but Dylan swears that the baseplate makes a difference in tone. I’ve been wanting to order a couple nickel baseplates and put them on the stock Kramer PU and the GM 84 and see for myself.
If you get the tone you want out of a 25c PU that’s great for you the way I see it and if someone wants to spend 399 on a boutique pickup and that makes them happy that’s awesome for them I’m happy for them, but from my experience personally a Seymour Duncan JB or Distortion is what I like, and it’s more about string to string clarity and definition I want to be able to hear every string ringing out equally whenever ever I hit a cowboy chord with a ton of gain on it and those two Duncan’s are the only PU I’ve been able to get that from except for an EMG 85x and the Dave Mustaine LW that are also made by Seymour Duncan.
Duncan Trembuckers have copper tape around the coils for some reason too , I don’t know what it does just found it interesting.
The point I’m making is we guitar players worry way too much about what someone else is doing to their rig and are very vocal about it if we think they’re wasting money or spending it in the wrong place. I’m not trying to beat you up but just sharing my experience to my ears there’s a noticeable difference in a Duncan or Dimarzio compared to the China PU and if you can find one used for 50 bucks my personal recommendation would be to get the used Duncan instead of the 15 to 20 dollar MIC deal. I want to do some experimenting on some of those Guitar Madness PU though.
You french m'y boy j'ai entendu l'accent français 😉😉😉
Actually Luxembourgish ;)
È una 2022 Made in china?
This guitar seems to be a killer one, especially for who is low in the budget. It's a quality piece and you don't run out of money for an instrument.
I would do the similar mods as you did, but the pickup. I think there is no reason to spend money with a SD after listening the difference of both on this specific guitar.
Really cool vid!
Thanks. You are right about the pickup.
1:45 - that purple universe guitar sure is pretty.
You' re winner💯
Pickup winder here with 30 years of experience (started in early 1990-s due to went to electronic school). People, kids, etc save your hard earned $ no need to spent em on Pickup industry lies served by people who never went to school for that, who just blindly cpy paste what Fender, Gibson etc did and they cop them based on a wrong data. NO NEED TO SPENT MORE THEN 40-50 MAX for a humbacker except if it's only winded specifically for you and your guitar. But even then it should cost a lot, it's a simple device.
So it's not strange that stock pickup is good enough. But if you get some no name well made ''Asian'' pickup you would also get great results, the same goes if you spent 150-300$ on some hyped overpriced pickups due to they all use in more then 90% same materials and approach.
black hardware is more 80s
You mention the new nut being wider than what was on there, is the string spacing on it different or same as the original one?
String spacing isn't affected, they only add a bit more meat on the edges so you can fit the nut perfectly to your neck.
LOVED the ChrisFix reference!!!!
Nice Video! I have an Ibanez RG1127PBFX and the Tuning stability is awful although it has locking tuners. I dont have much experience but watching this video seems to confirm what I noticed with my guitar. Somehow if you bend too much or bent the neck back and forth, the strings seems to get stuck and there is instant detuning. It has a plastic nut and there is obviously not much space for the strings. Do you think somehow filingthe nut (where the strings go through) would help? But it is a shame, that such an expensive guitar (I luckily bought it quite cheap used) has such a simple plastic nut...
Filing the nut can quickly change the height of the string and give you a problem with the string action but you can try by sliding a guitar string through the slot a couple of times or use graphite to lube the slot. Or you can get a replacement like I did!
Expensive guitar?
I think the tilted pickup makes this guitar sounds special. I have it and try many pickups in it and you have to find the right one to it and it will sound great. Better pickups for it for me are the ones with more high mids than low mid, because the tilting puts the pickup fuerther from the bridge and gives more low mids. Also a big brass block would add more mids, i think it's a bit scooped guitar also.
Which ones did you try ?
@@kenweckhuysen9264 I've tried the Duncan Distortion, Duncan The Hunter, Duncan 59/Custom Hybrid, Duncan Frankenstein, Duncan RTM, Duncan Blues Saraceno, DiMarzio Super Distortion, Mighty Mite 1300, and Gibson Dirty Fingers.
The perfect pickup I got for mine is the Duncan 78! Try it if you haven’t yet
@@DrumBuster16 that's one I didn't tried yet. Also the Custom, never tried it. I wanted to buy the Ecclair, which is a JB with A2, some like that, but i already have the RTM that I think it sound kind of like the Ecclair, so I don't know if spending the money on it, it's Custom Shop
For modding beginners or for those like myself who suck at soldering, I recommend going with EMG pickups because they're completely solderless and come with higher quality potentiometers and output jack. I'd also spend the extra $20 for a set of Gotoh locking tuners. In the states a set of Gotoh locking tuners is around $60 , so not much more expensive than the Harley Benton tuners.
Gotoh tuners/bridges are no longer made in Japan. They're most likely made in the same Korean/Indonesian/Chinese factories as Harley Benton's.
Did it fit without sanding or drilling work?
Before resigning yourself to the sound being limited entirely due to the tonewood... something I learned from swapping out the stock pickups from my Steinberger Spirit, replacing the volume and tone pots w/ quality ones made a big difference. The factory ones seemed like they were choking the life out of the pickups.
That would actually be a very interesting topic - only change the pots and see what's the difference there!
I didn't mean here to reduce the sound ONLY to the wood, I just meant that an expensive pickup can't make a 160€ guitar sound like it was 1600€ with the same pickup.
Absolutely! I just wanted to point out that the pots are easily overlooked. I mean, I overlooked them when I did my pickup swap. The Seymour Duncan's I used shouldn't have sounded so "dead." It wasn't until I read about the pots in a Steinberger forum, that the lightbulb went on. CTS are usually what's recommended, but they were too stiff for me (to do pinky volume swells.) Emerson's were recommended, but they sounded too "scratchy," IMHO. I think I went w/ some mini-Alphas. For your Kramer, the 500K Seymour Duncan Yngwie Speed Pot would be slick!
Oh, a quick test you can do to see if the stock factory pot is choking your sound, is to simply bypass it, meaning wiring the pickup directly to the output jack. If the sound improves, that's pretty convincing evidence that the factory pot should be replaced.
Another tonal factor could also be the bridge
Hey dude nice work , i have the same guitar and even got teh same bridge as you ; black Gotoh tuners , and dimarzio super distortion wired parallel ala 80s paul gilbert. Another thing to try - cut off the capacitor on the pot for a much better roll off , they come with the wrong value. Also try the fender half size saddle screws , which sit down below the saddle and its much smoother on your hand ! Rock on !
It's not that big of a sound difference because it's the same speaker... That's what makes the biggest sound difference
The 'tonewood' argument only holds up on acoustics and when not plugging in
The mods I did to mine were a gfs bridge with brass block, babicz saddles, locking tuners, Planet Tone Pasadena 78 pickup, and Mad Hatter electronics wiring kit
@MilianMalivukMusic did you measure the tone stability when using the tremolo with z tuning device? The reason I als, I managed to snad out the nut and with some lubrication it stays about in tune, but still raises at few point above pitch, but to the earnit:s ok, so i am wondering if changing to a graphtech is worthwhile, in a way it stays perfect in tune? Thx
I know what you mean about a decent pickup not saving the sound of a cursed guitar. I have a cheap 7 strings that I am not a big fan of its sound for metal at all, I put an expensive Seymour Duncan on it and it barely changed anything.
I remember this interview with a guy from the Fender Custom Shop, one of the builders. When asked what makes a guitar sounds great, in the middle of the whole answer, he said something like "some pieces of wood, for some reason, do not want to be a guitar...".
Well, I guess there's some truth to it.
The reason why you feel the sound isn't as good perhaps it might be the poly paint...
Although your style is metal/drop tune riffs, you probably could have sensed more the difference in tone of the pickups by playing a clean sequence. . No matter what, regarding the wood, I absolutely agree: if it's a plank of non-resonating wood, you can change whatever you want in terms of electronics, it won't make a night and day difference. The vibration, overtones, sustain do come from the quality of the body. Cheers !
Nasty Cavity...both would makes a great hardcore bands name and is why you should floss!
Mate, this is the content i love, thanks milian
read this as 'thanks a milian' hehe
Wow how cool you’re a ChrisFix fan! Good for you! Nothing like cars and guitars 🤘
By God now I want a Dimebucker on it.
SQUEEEEEEDLY!
I put a Floyd on mine as soon as I got her out of the box. I don't know what it is about them that makes them beg for modding so much!
The tone you attribute to the wood type is actually a product of the guitar's construction. The scale and pickup placement are the main factors in electric guitar sound. All other details only have subtle effects as you displayed in this video!