So a few months ago I bought myself a Les Paul Axcess stoptail. I've been wanting one for a while and when a used one showed up on eBay I snatched it as quickly as I could. It's a truly awesome instrument - everything that's awesome with a Les Paul and with all downsides adressed. It's much thinner and lighter, it has a bellycut for comfort and the heel is sculptured so it's much easier to reach the higher frets. Naturally I wanted to put in BKPs in it.
I have another Les Paul, a standard, that I had Rebell Yell's in. I bought a new set of The Mule's and the plan was to put the Mules in the Les Paul standard and move the RY's to the Axcess. Most Axcesses have push/pull pots for coil splitting but for some reason mine didn't. When I ordered the Mules I also ordered two push/push pots and two CTS 550 volume pots. There must have been cheap pots in there standard that had a gap from 100% dropped to 90% volume. It wasn't smooth all the way so they had to go.
First setback came when the Rebell Yell's in the Les Paul Standard was only 2 conductor wiring so it wouldn't be possible to split them. Bummer, and I ended up putting the Mules in the Axcess and leaving the Rebell Yell's in the standard. The mules sounded really good, naturally, but the coil splitting wasn't great given that they are not that high output pickups. So I ordered myself another set of Rebell Yell's with 4 conductor wiring to put in the Axcess and a Riff Raff bridge to A/B against the Mule in the Les Paul standard.
So when the new pickups arrived I put the Mule in the neck and the Riff Raff in the bridge of the Les Paul standard. This is just an awesome combination of just a great old school rock guitar. I love it and it's just stayed like that. The new Rebell Yell's went in the Axcess. Instantly, there was something that just wasn't right. The bridge pickup was really ice-picky. I had to run the tone between 1 and 2 to get it acceptable and the neck pickup was quite dark and muffled. The pickups was quite uneven and I had to run the bridge pickup really close to the strings and the neck pickup really low to balance them out. I also couldn't roll off the volume either and it was only sort of usable tones between 8-10 on the volume. Hmm, very strange. I really liked the Rebell Yell's in my other Les Paul. Maybe it's just the thinner nature of the Axcess that was playing up? Maybe the Alnico V is just too bright in this guitar?
Thinking of my next step a set a used set of Abraxas came up on eBay and I grabbed them. Instantly things was much more balanced but the volume roll-off issue was still there. After some more investigation the Axcess had 50's wiring and when moving back to modern wiring everything became much more too my liking. The range of the volume knob is much wider and I much prefer the slightly darker tone that comes with the modern wiring compared the all the bass disappearing with 50's wiring below 7 on the volume. Tone wise the Abraxas was really good. Everything that's good about the Mule and with the higher output they split much better. Also, when I say split - I use series/parallel switching so regardless of setting there's no noise. If there's one thing I didn't like about the Abraxas is that it's sort of too generic. It's just an overall great tone with both the neck and bridge and both in series and parallel. But I was missing the in-your-face punchiness I remember from the Rebell Yell's in my Les Paul Standard.
So after thinking that maybe it was the 50's wiring that played up, and by now I've also got a set of paper-in-oil capacitors from BKP. A 0.022uF for the bridge and 0.015uF for the neck to make sure it wasn't the modern Gibson bumblebee fake ones that has been playing up. I also got a treble-bleed kit to possibly combat the roll-off issue. Yesterday I sat down and replaced the pickups again. And once again, all the issues with the bridge being ice-picky and the muffleness of the neck was there. The capacitors didn't fix it and neither did the treble-bleed. cr@p. Ah well - as a possible fix I thought I'd put the Abraxas neck in there and maybe that will balance things out. When I went to remove the neck pickup I saw the label "bridge". Doh! I've managed not once, but twice, with the Rebell Yell's to mix up the bridge and neck pickup. No wonder they wheren't sounding right and off balance. So after switching the pickups around - TADA!!! It's all there. Everything I ever hoped for with this guitar. Every bit of awesome I could imagine. Both the neck and the bridge shine with clarity both clean all the way up to the highest gain. I've played for a couple of hours last night and 4 hours today and everything just sound fantastic. Rebell Yell's must be just be made for Les Pauls, at least when you get the neck and bridge pickup in the correct location.
So this is now exactly the dream Les Paul I wanted. I ditched the treble-bleed in the end so now it's the Rebell Yell set, two BKP push/push 500 tone pots for series/parallel splitting, two CTS 550 volume pots, paper-in-oil capacitors in modern wiring, 0.022uF for the bridge and 0.015uF for the neck. It's now an awesome guitar anyway you turn any dial or switch any knob and I'm so happy I figured it out in the end.
