Can you improve a cheap guitar with new pickups?
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- Опубліковано 15 жов 2023
- Can we take a sub-$300 guitar and turn it into something special, by swapping out the pickups and wiring harness? The @mojotoneofficial team give a stock Epiphone SG new pickups and a wiring harness upgrade.
#mojotone #guitarworld #guitar #guitartone
We had a BLAST putting this video together. Thanks Guitar World! Special thanks to Guitar Pickers of Wilmington, NC as well. 🙏🙏
Last time my band played in Wilmington NC was spring break for the college students' they're was a group of guitar players' 6 to be exact, came into the bar with their girlfriends to check us out' at the end of the night we made them buy us 3 six packs to go and then the female drummer and myself left with all their girlfriends and left them standing there.
Back at the hotel about 3 hours later there was a knock on the door' we'd been partying and was pretty loud' I'm like OK somebody's called the law on us' I opened up the door and there stood 2 of them and the other 4 were standing out in the parking lot' before I could get a word out of my mouth, they asked for my autograph.
Wilmington guitar players. 😂😂😂
Big shout-out to my friends at Guitar Pickers! I had so much fun doing this video. Rock on!!
I've done this on two guitars I own. Hands down improved them dramatically. Quality pickups, pots, and wiring matters.
FYI all CTS pots are made in Taiwan. Overseas just like the pots that come in every guitar, no matter the manufacturer. Most people assume they're made in the US.
Man it really made the mids punch more. Mojotone are killing it with the content lately
Sounds much better over stock pickups. I’m not very good with a soldering iron but would most definitely pick up an sg and do this modification.
I bought a Epiphone SG-400 Pro off of Amazon for $350.00. I am left handed so I as amazed I found it. I put in Seymore Duncan Hot Rodded Humbuckers JB Style and has RS Guitar Works in Nashville do my Pots and resisters. It is now one awesome sounding guitar that I now call my Red Growler. I did put heavier strings D'Adario 11 I believe.
Duncans made my guitar sound incredible!
Seems like it depends on the scenario. To my ear, this didn't make all that much difference. However, recently I replaced the Rockfield pickups in a Michael Kelly t-style guitar with Seymour Duncan mini bucker (Antiquity II) in the neck and a Seth Lover in the bridge. I really love the way this guitar feels and plays like butter, but really hated the neck pickup and was not all that happy with the bridge either (both were Rockfield). I gotta say, now with these new SD pickups, it sounds WAY better on both the bridge and neck. The guitar originally cost around $399 and I put an orange drop cap and a treble bleed. The new SD pickups cost me total around $500, which is kind of a lot to put on an inexpensive guitar like this, but now I absolutely love this guitar.
Im convinced it can be done, ive taken squier strats and teles and improved them with new pickups..
Why couldn't it? The entire premise of this vid is ridiculous.
I've played for 25+ years and do repairs which led to my love of modding guitars. The answer to the question is yes and we all knew that already but it's so much fun to talk about. I have a few of my favorite modded cheap guitars in UA-cam videos and many more on my FB. I got a cheap Kramer and it's pickups were the obvious weak point. I put a Seymour Duncan JB in bridge and couldn't have been happier with the result. I also put in a short post speed volume pot but it wasn't really needed. The guitar itself was only 129.99 and total mods took that to only around 240$. I gladly use it as a main axe right alongside my much more expensive ones and it performs equally well imo. I also have a junker I pulled from a trashcan in multiple pieces, resurrected it with stuff from my spare parts box and it became one of my favorite guitars. It was originally a "First Act" guitar which just makes the end result that much better. Set up, pickups and hardware matter much more than expensive brand companies would like you to believe. Of course not every cheap guitar mod ends up being extraordinary, but the ones that do certainly prove the answer is yes.
Edit: ALSO...great video! I should've led with that to begin with haha. Lastly in case anyone actually read my comment and cares to see the guitars I mentioned in action here is links to those. The red one is the Kramer, the blue one is the First Act I resurrected, it has a vintage DeArmond Goldfoil single coil pickup and I scalloped the fretboard myself as well as a huge list of repairs and parts I had to use to restore its life force. ua-cam.com/video/VGMZl4rmVnI/v-deo.htmlsi=qVTFSQ-AilJmbWZN
ua-cam.com/video/0PoCfIhKFWk/v-deo.htmlsi=yh9vwQI33tVTM52F
Thanks for checking it out!! Rock on!
In my personal experience a quality set up and how you process the sound that leaves the guitar will do a whole lot more than than spending money on pickups. As long as the pickups in the cheap guitar work, its more about playing skills and processing of the signal. IMO
I love the mojotone guys! What a bunch of studs!
Yh, big improvement with lots more string separation and clarity. Would be nice to know how much the original guitar cost and what the upgrades amounted to.
Just bought a js series jackson warrior from there I plan on modding
Yes. Yes and yes. Buy the neck you love with the body/aesthetics that make you want to play more and then upgrade whatever hardware needs it. The pickups are literally where the tone comes from, so mix and match until you are happy. Don't fret so much about the wiring scheme unless you are experimenting or you absolutely KNOW you want 28 sounds.
Also, try different picks.
Day and night !!! 🤘🏻
New pick ups def NOT as hot as the stock 1s. Drove the amp more gently, BUT the clarity was a lot better!
Overall, the “tone” is about the same. There isn’t a huge change. Lower output will decrease the gain going to the amp. I noticed the newer bridge pickup is lower in the body.
Some improvement for sure. Now try changing the tailpiece to a lightweight aluminium / zinc one and prepare to be shocked
That does make a big difference! I was shocked at how bad the original wiring harness was though.
Shocked how much money and time you spent swapping things out and nothing changed? Yeah I get that.
@@Burnt_Gerbil it was a fun day up at the Mojotone Facility that's for sure!
Bro... i really have high cholesterol.
Most of the classic guitars have been around for 70 years. It's not exactly rocket science to make them. Lots of places can do it, especially now that computers and robots do some much of the work. There really aren't any 'secrets' and there's no 'mojo' to making eletric guitars. They are simple designs. Pickups are the same. Metal, copper wire and a magnet. They are, basically, primative things. The differences between very expensive and moderately priced ones, are, about perceptions and, sorry, marketing. Objectively, the differences are minimal. An expensive pickup costing ten times more than a cheap pickup . dosn't sound ten times better, maybe, at most, 10% 'better'.
Think about all the fantastic music that's been created using average instruments, like most of the Beatles music, for example.
You asked so, I think it was a waste of money and time, you can "barely" tell the difference.
I actually preferred the warmer sounds of the original pickups. But there really wasnt much of a noticable difference. Surely not nearly enough that would justify the expense of a pickup swap. Hell, you could get a lot better and more results with a $50 EQ stomp box. Even just adjusting the bass/mid/terrible on the amp does more than a pickup swap.
Why not just buy the high end Epiphones nothing needs to be done with them they have premium electronics hardware and build..have since JC Curliegh Restored Epiphone back to top professional quality in 2019
Epiphones were never ever meant to be a budget brand in the first place and they weren't until Norlin ruined them JC curliegh restored Epiphone back to where they should have always been
barely noticeable difference, impossible to tell without actually being in the room
let’s hear it for psychosomatic tone “improvements”
lol there's hardly any difference before and after...
there is !!
CLEAN your ears OUT!