My P-Rails Project

[DoronEsh]

OK, so I went and bought the P-Rail set and had my friend and guitar builder Yair Smoilov install them in my very old LP lookalike.

I had this guitar since I was 18 (and that was 1983, so you can go figure...). It is Japanese, and it used to have single coils under HB chrome covers. I changed those a couple o' years ago to MightyMite coverless HBs, and as things go, and as this guitar is my 'experiment' guitar, there came the time to play the P-Rails game.

A major part of the P-Rails game was installing 4 Push-Pulls to get all 4 sounds (Single Coil, P-90, 'PAF' and 'HB') with Phase and Series/Parallel. Mind you, I didn't want to have the ability to control each pup individually. I was content with controlling the guitar sound as a whole. It might be interesting to try and play middle position with a HB at the bridge and a P-90 at the neck, but it seemed too complicated to me, with too few advantages, the above setting seeming to be the only gain, while the cost was 2 new holes in the body of the guitar.

I used Hermetico's 'Full LP Tone 2' scheme ('Inside' are the Rails, 'Outside' are the P-90's).

Sound good so far.

Here are some pics. I have to go to sleep. More commentary later on. Hope to post clips later on this week or the next.

Doron aka The DoDo

[DoronEsh]

And this is the scheme.

THX Hermetico. You're the greatest...

[penguinmessiah]

I like it. I recently purchased a set of P-Rails and that would just about be my dream set up. In the end, however, my inexperience with pickups and soldering had me opt for the Triple Shot instead.

Push Pulls are a much classier way of achieving the same result as the Triple Shot and had I any balls I would've done that instead lol.

Just gotta wait for my order now

[penguinmessiah]

You can still complement that triple shot possibilities with some pull/pushes (by example, a serializer and one out-of-phaser).
LOL.

Sweet. Maybe one day when I've learned how to solder without setting myself on fire I'll consider it

Also, hermetico, despite having never actually responded to your posts I've been lurking the forums for a long time doing research into the triple shot and P-rails and I'd like to thank you for your very helpful and informative posts. I've learned more about guitar electronics in the last month than I have in my life!

[DoronEsh]

ArtieToo is the real guru.
I'm only applying what I learned from him (and others).

You're still the greatest and the fastest. I mean, you sometimes post an answer, incl. scheme, before the question.

[chase]

Yeah, you're a big help hermetico, and very generous with your time. So is ArtieToo.

[NoOnesFang13]

ArtieToo is the real guru.
I'm only applying what I learned from him (and others).

speaking of which... where is Artie? i dont think i have seen him post in a while... either that or i missed them

[DoronEsh]

So, I've been foolin' 'round on and off with the guitar for the last 2 weeks (day jobs, ya know...). No giggin' yet. My observations, so far and in a nutshell, are:

1. I've got 24 sounds instead of the 20 I thought I'd have, as the phase switch changes sound both when pups are series or not.
2. Rails are much weaker than any of the others (P-90, "PAF" and "HB"). I've got another guitar with coil-taps, and the difference is not that big over there. Is this due to the fact that P-90's are more powerful than the Rails?
3. The P-90 sound and the "PAF" sound (rails and p-90's are wired in parallel) sound pretty much the same. P-90's are a bit more 'open' and trebly, and that's that. In fact, the "PAF" sound is even a bit weaker than the P-90 sound, contrary to my initial belief. Is that, again, because of the power gap between Rails and P-90's?

Is that the same with any of you guys, or am I doing somethin' wrong?

Sound clips to follow...

Doron