Miracle Man / Warpig set into Epiphone Explorer

[Dave Sloven]

the motherbucker is definitely hotter than a pig
good news is that it's that the excessively dark tone is probably the pickups fault
I had that pup for a short period in my jap les paul copy (that had about 23 pickups)

That is good news.  When I saw the info on the rating I thought I might be swapping in a more expensive version of the same basic problem but the compression seems to be a large part of its darkness problem.  There are simply no dynamics at all with the MB.  I like the output and the sustain, but I am hoping a large part of the sustain is from the heft of the wood and the design (i.e., the bridge and tailpiece sitting nice and low) rather than just an artifact of all that compression.

I saw somewhere that you had a MB when searching for comparison between the MB and the A-pig.  Glad to hear that you don't regret ditching it for a BKP set!

Here's a photo of my current pickups:

[ericsabbath]

I think the motherbucker replaced an alnico 8 duncan custom
it sounded similar to the custom 8, but was darker and even more compressed
then I swapped for a holy diver and also put a cold sweat in the neck
that was my first bkp set
the diver was a huge improvement over anything I had before
the warpig has a lot in common with the diver, but sounds bigger and flatter

I recently sold a warpig to a friend and installed it in his gibson faded V w/ ebony scale
not a bright tone for sure, but didn't sound dark either
with an overdrive pedal, it had a lot of cut
I liked it with fuzz as well

you shouldn't have a problem playing  some Ratos de Porão with the proper dirt pedal
saw them live in 2004 and 2007
killer shows
I think the guitarist had a jcm 900 and his fernandes les paul copy with emgs

[Dave Sloven]

I get a pretty good RDP tone out of my SG with the A-bomb in it, straight into my Peavey 6534+ with the volume and tone pots on the A-bomb at full blast.  I plan to get a Maxon OD-9 when I am in Sydney in a couple of weeks from now, that will tighten things up a bit.  I could get a heap of other tones out of the Nailbomb but straight up RDP is the sound that seems to come most naturally to it.  :)

I'm hoping to get some Venom and Sabbath out of the A-pig in C# as well as some Autopsy, Terrorizer, etc with the right EQ etc  :guitar4:

P.S. I just tried out the Explorer with the Mighty Mites through the Peavey and the tone could best be compared to Celtic Frost's Morbid Tales album with the volume and tone on full.  It's that dark.  It did a pretty good 'Procreation of the Wicked' though.  I haven't worked out how to EQ the amp and SG to get that tone out of them yet.  But you'd hope that your base tone was a bit brighter than that!

P.P.S. I just got out of bed with a sore neck, back, and numb hands, largely as a result of playing this guitar for less than an hour last night. It reminded me of why I moved to the SG - largely ergonomic problems which resulted in symptoms that for a long time I thought were carpal tunnel syndrome (and led me to give up playing for years).  I might need to get rid of this axe.  I'll test the pickups out in it but I think I won't spend too much money before picking up a second SG, even if it is a cheapie Epi.  I really don't want to go down that road again, even though I do like the sound of this guitar (which arises in part from its heaviness).  I can get around the weight problem by wearing it really low, but then I am in a bad position for my wrists ...

[Dave Sloven]

Well, I have mounted the Warpigs in my Explorer.  It required a little bit of woodwork inside the pickup cavity with my Foredom SR Flexshaft to ensure that the baseplates cleared easily, but all was easy enough.  With the installation, the coil with the wire coming from it should be closest to the neck on the neck pickup and closest to the bridge on the bridge pickup, right?  I just wanted to check that before soldering them in.  With allen bolts in both coils I find it a bit confusing - have I got them in upside down?  (here are some photos - they look good with the black allen bolts, a big aesthetic improvement on the plasticky looking Mighty Mites for sure).  It's not mahogany inside, anyone know what this wood is?  Epiphone markets it as 'korina'






Also, for those curious about the Mighty Mite Motherbuckers (both were marked as such on the back) here are some photos of them out.  The red and blue wires must be equivalent to the white and green wires on BKPs, as they weren't connected on this guitar.

[GuitarIv]

Nice! Difference in sound, first impressions? :)

[Dave Sloven]

Nice! Difference in sound, first impressions? :)

I don't have them soldered in yet, I wasn't sure that I had the neck pickup in the right way.  I checked with Ben though and he reassured me that I do - the pickup wire to the pot coming off the screw coil in each case.  I have them set up then the standard way (i.e., neck screw coil toward the neck, bridge screw coil toward the bridge).

Hi David,

There is no way from looking at them from the top. The 'screw coil' is the side where the hook-up wire comes out from underneath. On the bridge pickup, the wire underneath should come out next to the bridge. On the neck pickup, the wire should come out from next to the neck.

Hope that is clear enough. Hope you like them!

Kind Regards,

Ben
--
Ben French

I'm out all day tomorrow - when I travel to the city I usually hang around for a gig in the evening as it is over 40km each way - but I'll solder them on Saturday.  I have to take in the SG for a warranty repair in the morning and no time to do this and have a test before that.

I also need to have a tech look at my Peavey as it sounds somewhat odd since I came back from Sydney, very fizzy but also almost like it has a reverb installed (which of course it doesn't), so something might be wrong in there.  I'm wondering if it is to do with a cold bias of the tubes.  Also the ISP Decimator G-String does not seem to have any effect at the moment, but that might be because I don't have the effects loop side of it plugged in, only the guitar side.

[Dave Sloven]

Well I soldered the pickups in, cleaned the guitar and fitted new strings but must have made some kind of mistake with the soldering as I have no sound at all.  I did notice the following strange phenomenon though when tuning it.

1. The inbuilt tune in the old Roland Cube 30X did not pick up any signal
2. The TC Polytune acted as if everything was normal and allowed me to tune just fine.

I'm assuming that the Polytune was picking up a signal via the guitar lead rather than ambient sound from me strumming the guitar, so maybe this indicates that the jack is wired correctly at least?  Maybe there is a problem with the red leads?

I will have to buy a mulitimeter and check it all out.  The big problem with Explorers is that the cavity is very cramped, so maybe I damaged a solder joint when trying to get the pots back in?

[GuitarIv]

Soldering can be a pain in the arse, especially when you have a cramped cavity and taking some time and effort to do everything in a clean fashion is rather a must, which I had to find out the hard way. I'd suggest you to double check everything and go through all the connections and solder joints again comparing them one on one with the wiring diagram; I have often redone a soldering job from scratch again. Still the results are worth it so just be patient, the time you spend on making everything bullet proof will keep you from having to open up the guitar all over again.

Oh and I'd recommend you to do the simple screw driver - amp test before retuning with strings, tap the pole pieces of the guitar with a screwdriver whilst being connected to a running amp and see if you get a signal. When the bridge is selected both coils from the bridge humbucker should give you a scratching noise when you tap them with the screwdriver, the neck humbucker coils should remain silent. Then flick over the switch to the middle position and see if all coils respond and in the neck position only the neck humbucker should give you a signal.

Good luck, cheers!

[Dave Sloven]

Oh and I'd recommend you to do the simple screw driver - amp test before retuning with strings, tap the pole pieces of the guitar with a screwdriver whilst being connected to a running amp and see if you get a signal. When the bridge is selected both coils from the bridge humbucker should give you a scratching noise when you tap them with the screwdriver, the neck humbucker coils should remain silent. Then flick over the switch to the middle position and see if all coils respond and in the neck position only the neck humbucker should give you a signal.

Good luck, cheers!

Cheers, yes I did this last time but I forgot this time mainly because it was getting colder in the garage and I wanted to get inside out of the cold, so I inadvertently skipped a step.  Still I shouldn't need to remove the actual pickups so the new strings and the bridge etc can stay in place while I open up the body cavities as necessary.

What I need to go out and get tomorrow are a desoldering 'sucker' and a multimeter.  The solder seems to be of a higher melting point though and I'm not sure that it will be easy to remove.

What is frustrating about all this is that I was planning to install a full custom harness anyway but just wanted to test it with these 500K pots to see if they are adequate or whether I should request 550K or even 1meg pots in the harness (made by the same guy who made my SG harness).  So I guess I was rushing a bit just because I wanted to give it a quick test

[GuitarIv]

Hahaha, I know that feeling bro, the urge to get everything done asap so you can have a result, I screwed a good soldering job up more than once out of that reason ^^

[Alex]

I just got my Epiphone Explorer out for the first time in a while as it appears my SG might be experiencing an earthing problem and I was getting a lot of noise on cleans on two different times through both pickups and then it went away later.  Changing straight from the SG to the Epi there was no problem with the Epi so that eliminates the cables, PolyTune, and amp as sources of the problem.  I will have to look into it tomorrow or Saturday.

Having another play of the Epi though reminds me that it is a very dark guitar compared to the SG, even though it has 500K pots and what looks like an orange cap in there (the previous owner rewired it when he installed the Mighty Mite pups).  Now these pups are pretty cr@ppy (especially for mids), but I am wondering if when I install the A-pigs whether I should upgrade to either 550K or 1 meg pots and what cap value I should use?  What have people generally used with Warpigs in a dark sounding guitar?

One great thing about the Epi though is its sustain, which I think is due in part to the heavy thick body but also the fact that the bridge and especially the tailpiece sit real low with no problems.  The tailpiece is flat against the wood whereas my SG has its jacked up.  Although the Explorer doesn't need topwrapping the strings to achieve this I am more and more convinced that I should topwrap the SG's strings so that I can lower the tailpiece as far as possible.  It also convinced me that with the proper pickups, pots, and caps that this will be a great death metal and grindcore guitar that I don't need to worry about scratching up (resale is nothing special and the poly finish is pretty tough anyway). The gold hardware looks a bit tarnished and there is a ping in at least one of the strings when you tune it (hopefully it is the nut, not one of the grovers) but overall these Korean made Epis are decent bar the electricals.

The old srewed-down-tailpiece/strings-wrapped-over discussion.

I've tested it, it makes no difference.

[Dave Sloven]

The old srewed-down-tailpiece/strings-wrapped-over discussion.

I've tested it, it makes no difference.

I'm thinking it might make a difference on my SG simply because the tailpiece is up really high at the moment.  The break angle on the strings from the back of the bridge to the tailpiece on the Explorer is so shallow already that I think it would do more harm than good.  Did you test it on an SG?  The one 'conclusive' test I saw on youtube that showed it made no difference used an Explorer, which I thought was kind of silly as it already had the tailpiece right down. I expected the simple change from regular to top-wrap to make next to no difference if not combined with adjustments to the tailpiece.  What I am interested to see is whether lowering the tailpiece to the wood makes a difference.

[Dave Sloven]

On the wiring problem, here is the three pots.  I think that black wire might be an earth loop, not sure.



On the other hand the jack looks pretty normal.  Judging by the amount of wood particles I found there I'm assuming that I am the first person to remove it since it was installed at the Unsung factory in 2006.

[Alex]

The old srewed-down-tailpiece/strings-wrapped-over discussion.

I've tested it, it makes no difference.

I'm thinking it might make a difference on my SG simply because the tailpiece is up really high at the moment.  The break angle on the strings from the back of the bridge to the tailpiece on the Explorer is so shallow already that I think it would do more harm than good.  Did you test it on an SG?  The one 'conclusive' test I saw on youtube that showed it made no difference used an Explorer, which I thought was kind of silly as it already had the tailpiece right down. I expected the simple change from regular to top-wrap to make next to no difference if not combined with adjustments to the tailpiece.  What I am interested to see is whether lowering the tailpiece to the wood makes a difference.

No, I had this on two guitars (indeed my SG, and my ESP Eclipse). If you topwrap the strings, you're anyway reducing the angle again.

I think the only guitars where it makes a difference are ones where a problem with hardware/screws & bolts actually exists (too lose, not deep enough in the body, something like that); maybe what happens is that it can be compensated a bit by screwing it down completely.

What did make a difference was putting in an aluminium tailpiece. Quite surprisingly clear difference actually.

[Dave Sloven]

I cleaned off some of the soldering mess on the back of the two volume pots and resoldered the black and bare wires to each pot and then before putting everything back together plugged in my Roland test amp and bingo! I get sound THEN I tighten up the pots, reinstall the knobs, and plug it in again and NOTHING!!!  I think there might be some kind of problem with the jack BUT the multimeter I bought is next to useless as I found out today that it doesn't have continuity testing ... will take it back to the store and hopefully be able to change it for the other much more expensive unit they have (was really hard to tell what model I had, the multimeter is incredibly poorly labelled and does not have even a model number on it, even though the booklet cross-references all these model numbers :-/

The pickups sounded amazing for the few seconds I heard :(