1981 LS-80

[Tim Z]

I finally received the new pots and pups for my LS-80. Thought I would post a couple of pics of the guitar with the new Sheptone PAF's. The pickups sound great and I really wanted an LP with covers on the pups. So the mods I just made were:

- new Faber Tone Lock bridge
- swapped out the stock linear taper pots for audio tapers and new caps
- swapped out the stock pups for Sheptone 8.4k bridge and 7.72k neck

Me happy

 

[singemonkey]

It looks great. How does it sound? And what do you reckon each mod contributed?

I really like the covers on the Sheptone pickups. The only teensy gripe I have with my '09 LS150 is that the Mk.II pickup covers are super shiny. I'm not into distressed guitars and all that, but I could happily get some brushed covers.

Looks like you've got an LP for life there.

Excellent pics btw. What'd you do? It's hanging out doors in daylight, right?

 

[Tim Z]

The pics were taken outdoors in sunlight with my wife hand holding the guitar. I used a Nikkor 300 f/4 afs with a Nikon D300 camera.

The original pots were linear taper, which IMO are horrible in guitars. I have no idea why companies put them in guitars. Basically, the volume on 1.5 was about 95% of the volume on 10. This made it impossible to use the guitar in the band, as I had no easy control of the volume. With the audio taper pots, the guitar is now way more playable live, and the volume changes evenly from 0 to 10. If the original pots were audio taper, I would have left them alone.

The original pups sounded pretty decent actually, but I had recorded some of the demos for Sheptone pups with a friends LP and his Tribute PAF's. I loved the sound of those pups, and felt that they were the most accurate recreation of the original PAF's I had heard to date. Since I really wanted covers on the pups, and someone here told me I could not add covers to the stock pups (12 screws in each instead of 6) and since I did not actually have to pay for the Sheptones (special recording demos deal) I decided to swap them out. As I say, the guitar would have been very playable with either pups in it, but the Sheptones just have a bit more of that vintage vibe and sound going on, and (for my taste) look better in the guitar with covers.

The Faber Tone Lock added a bit more body and sustain.

 

[singemonkey]

It's hard to argue with free boutique pickups. I hadn't realised that the old Tokai pickups couldn't take covers. I always wondered why so many chose to leave them uncovered.

 

[Tim Z]

As an update to this post, I used the guitar tonight with the band for the first time, and WOW, do these new pups ever sound better. It was hard to define the differences when just playing all alone, but with the band the tone is now much more refined and cuts through and mixes better. The guitar sounds much sweeter now and the new pots make it much more playable (now I can turn it down to 7 from 10 and actually have it lower the volume for rhythm stuff) Definitely a significant improvement with these changes made

I wouldn't say the new pups are "free". I still have to do some recording work for them, but at least I don't have to fork out any cash. However, now that I have had a chance to play with them, I wouldn't hesitate to pay for them.

 

[jacco]

Hi Tim, did you change pickups & bridge at the same time?
I am interested to know if you found the Faber bridge to be overall better sounding than the stock bridge.
I put the Faber on 2 guitars (Tokai LS-60 & Greco EGC500) and found on both it added body for sure, don't know about the sustain.
Though I like the full sound of the Faber, I sometimes feel the spectrum is shifted a little bit too much to bass side, losing sparkle.
What do you think now you played the guitar for a longer period?