http://www.guitarsbyleo.com/FORUM/viewt ... 124#p82124
The TL;DR longer story is... Over last year or so I've been digging back into my guitars a lot, both in a playing sense, and working on them, fixing things that always needed fixing, doing proper setups, tweaking stuff that never got tweaked etc. and recently it was my Signature S-500's turn. That guitar has always played very well and after a better setup it plays even better, like virgin unicorn butter. Effortless and joyful to the hand.
The only hesitation I have ever had about the guitar however, and I was reminded of it as I started plugging it back in... compared to almost all other guitars I own, its range of tones was pretty limited. Sure the PTB works nicely, and sure the pickup switching changes things a little bit, but, on the whole, the tonal range between pickup positions is far smaller than, say, a 'normal S-type' guitar. Basically - at least to me and with this example - all the positions more or less "sounded like an S-500" with not much variation. Not that that's a bad thing, and I've loved playing it and have gigged and jammed with it happily over the years, but, it just seemed like more should be possible. My L-2000 has a mind blowing range of tones to lay down between different settings, so it just seemed like the S-500 wasn't 'living up to its potential'.
Now having mentioned this to techs and players, the first thing everyone said to me was "toss the MFD's! why don't you jam _somestupidthing___ in there instead! easily fixed!" however for a number of reasons I had no interest in that.. This Sig S-500 is minty gorgeous for one and doesn't deserve to be 'just another jacked up partscaster', and for another, I LIKE the MFD's, I just thought more was possible.
My first route of exploration was pole piece tweaking and that also was a success... (a topic for a different thread but basically I have all 3 pickups positioned very low for most people, but the middle and bridge PU's have their pole pieces raised back up very high, and I find this makes for a slightly more focused 'stratty' kind of tone and more differentiation between the PU's, while still keeping the MFD character). But still, flip the switch around and the tonal differences and range still weren't that great. Hitting the innerwebz I stumbled on the link above and it seemed like a clever approach - keep all the stock hardware, retain ability to 'sound exactly like stock' but gain the ability to roll that 'resonance cap' out of the circuit... Nothing to lose, easily reverted so...
Cut to the chase, and, I love it. Tone-knob turned all the way up, and its the 'out of the box' factory tone all around. But roll it back to 7-9 ish areas, and a whole lotta new nuances come in. Definitely more character and strat tones and the pickup differences suddenly become much more noticeable. Roll it back further and you're into 'stock tone knob turned down' territory. Between the pole tweaks and this, I can get some 'quack' out of the guitar at the right settings, which just really didn't happen w/ the factory S-500 setup. And I'm thrilled that the guitar remains "97% stock" really and can sound "just like it always has" if I want to. Long live the MFD's.
Now I know some people clip that 'resonance cap' ("C3") out completely and that was supposedly Leo's original setup on the early guitars etc etc but just wondering if anybody else has stumbled on / tried this mod to stick that cap on the empty tone pot lug (well, and you flip the other lug/wiper wires at the same time but that doesn't functionally change what was happening before on those lugs)? I know how stuff works on the interguitarwebz and probably it's called the "BobsGuitar372 Mod" or something stupid like that but really George's post was the only one I've been able to find suggesting it...
TIA
Oh yeah, cuz nobody likes threads without pix.
