Les Paul Studio. Anyone coiltap 490r 498t pickups?

[bluesrules]

Love my USA Les Paul Studio, the alnico II 490r neck pickup is great but the 498t alnico V bridge pup seems a little too hot for me sometimes...coming from the Fender camp and all.

Don't get me wrong I'm not interested in changing the pickups, they really hold their own with clarity even with distortion. When I test drove the Studio at the music store it bonded with me more than the other Les Pauls that cost 4x more. I'm just hoping to tame the beast. Thinking spitting one humbucker while running the other one full-on may give me some cool vintage tones. No?

My normal tones are clean and slightly overdriven Blues-Rock. Don't need the Shred tones on the Bridge pickup when the gain is turned up but I do like the 498t bridge pup on the clean tones, so you know...want to make something very good, better.

I'm wondering if any of you cats have coil-tapped these babies yet?


Thanks!

 

[Funkwire]

I believe the 490R/498T sets installed in guitars are 2-conductor only. They are available in 4-conductor, but only as aftermarket models.

 

[BPSUL]

On the Gibson website, all the humbuckers that are available in 4 conductor are noted to only be 2 conductor if they came from the factory already installed. So you're probably out of luck... But you never know... maybe its just a CYA type thing and some are 4 and some are two. Pop them out and take a look...

 

[BPSUL]

On a side note - you could always switch out the volume pot for your bridge humbucker... something a little lower value. Gibsons are "suppossedly" wired with 500 kohm pots but they often measure out to 300-350 so I would measure it first - but you can always drop to a 250 or 300k pot and it will take a little of the edge off.

 

[Funkwire]

It might even be as simple as lowering the pickups...give that a try. I prefer that there be some air between the strings and the pickups. I have a set of 490R/498T pups in the six-string side of my G-1275 doubleneck and I moved them way down from where the previous owner had them.

 

[bluesrules]

I believe the 490R/498T sets installed in guitars are 2-conductor only. They are available in 4-conductor, but only as aftermarket models.

BUMMER! I looked at the leads and it's true, 2 conductor.

There goes that plan.

BTW: I tried all pickups heights, life goes on!