Gettin' the mud out - Tokai Love Rock

[MRW55]

I got a Tokai Love Rock (MIJ) last year. Nice guitar; totally satisfied my Les Paul GAS. Put a Faber locking bridge on it and it made a noticeable improvement. My one complaint is the neck pup is muddy a boomy. I've got it lowered below the pup ring (no problem there, I like my pups low). I then swapped out the stock caps with orange drops, .022 in the bridge, .015 in the neck. The bridge sounds fine, but now the neck might be even muddier than before. Any suggestions? I read that these mk II pups are okay. Did I make a bad choice of caps? Thanks in advance for any help.

[NWOBHM]

Shouldn't have made them muddier,especially with .015 orange drops?

[MRW55]

I know. The neck pup shouldn't be muddier going from a tiny .022 stock cap to a .015 orange drop, but it is. I guess another question would be are orange drops a good fit for a Les Paul. I like them in my strats, but I don't know if they're a good fit for humbucker/500 pot guitars.

Anyone else?

[korus]

You've lowered neck pickup but did you raise screws on neck pickup at the same time? If not, try with that. Even the whole screws' heads can go above the cover, just experiment a bit.

[MRW55]

Thanks. Good idea. But I solved my problem switching from modern to 50's wiring. Made all the difference in the world to me with this particular guitar-more articulate and organic. Didn't expect as much of an improvement as I got, but I'm happy.


You've lowered neck pickup but did you raise screws on neck pickup at the same time? If not, try with that. Even the whole screws' heads can go above the cover, just experiment a bit.

[supercollider]

It's tough to find LP neck pups that aren't muddy. If the electronics aren't fixing things I'd say go with a pup swap. Lollar Imperials/ Wolfetone Dr V's are good options.

[jpagey]

Peter Florance Voodoos did it for me.

[headlessdan]

I have a knock off Les(s) Paul as well, and I agree GREAT guitar. Same issue with the neck pickup though. I Dropped it, raised the screws, upgraded the pots...not much change. Thought of swapping out the pickups, but after reading this I'm going to give the 50's wiring a shot. Out of curiousity, why would the 50's wiring get the mud out??

[Structo]

I'm more of a Fender type guy but I read something a few years back.
Now I don't own an LP so don't broil me, but I read that the difficulty in finding a good neck pickup on an LP is because the pickup is sitting right where the 24th fret or double octave harmonic is.
So it apparently is kind of like a dead spot on the guitar.
Not sure how true it is but the few times I have played one I thought the neck pickup didn't sound very good.
Maybe it's just one of those nature of the beast sort of thing. Dunno.
Maybe that is why some guys flip the pickup or do other Greenie type things.

[mtlin]

People swear by this mod to get mud out of LP's:

http://www.lespaulforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=139132

[MRW55]

It has to do with which way the tone capacitor goes from the volume pot to the tone pot and the resulting interaction between the volume and tone controls on both pups. Without getting to much into the electronic reasons why, 50's wiring enables you to maintain more treble (and thus more articulation, at least in my instance) when you roll the volume down. It does make the volume and tone controls interactive, whereas in modern wiring, they are independent. But I'm fine with that. It's a very easy mod to do, and easily reversable. Just Google 50's Les Paul wiring vs. modern wiring and you'll get tons of information.

I have a knock off Les(s) Paul as well, and I agree GREAT guitar. Same issue with the neck pickup though. I Dropped it, raised the screws, upgraded the pots...not much change. Thought of swapping out the pickups, but after reading this I'm going to give the 50's wiring a shot. Out of curiousity, why would the 50's wiring get the mud out??