F100 pickups... time to try new ones?

[myrios]

I've had my Series 2 F100 for over 20 years now, and I've tried and tried to love the unique sounds of the pickups and just can't quite come to terms with them. It is my own ears I guess, but they are missing a transparency or something that I easily get from all my other guitars. Problem is, I love the feel and playability of my F100.

I tried to find an old post on F100 replacement pickups (I'd read one years ago, about how it requires routing, etc.) but can't find it.

Will the switching work with any double humbucker type pickups? What if I put a single coil or a single humbucker in and do nothing to the wiriing/switching. I'm hoping to do a simple experiment, such that will allow me to simple drop 2 other pickups in the holes without doing any other modification.

Any suggestions on pickups? I have a pair of custom humbuckers (made by Rose pickups) but they would require making the holes bigger... I also have a tele neck pickup (single), but don't know if that would work at all with the wiring/switches...

Thanks!
Myrios

[Elwood]

I hear ya,
I can squeeze a little more tone from my F-100 IIE due to the active boost,
..some have done the G200 mod, mentioned here:
http://www.guitarsbyleo.com/FORUM/viewt ... =36&t=1293

I put 4 single coil MFD's in one of mine, tight but they fit.
I haven't tried the stock guts with other humbuckers, I'd be intesested to hear how
that experiment would turn out.

Here's another good read on the F-100's:
http://www.guitarsbyleo.com/FORUM/viewt ... =36&t=3382

cheers,
Elwood

[sickbutnottired]

I am a genuine f-100 lover. I love the playability of my f-100. However, I also feel ya on the sound. I get some good sounds out of mine, for sure. But it is really pre-amp touchy. All in all, my f-100 is kinda like my wife. Hard to get along with but I can't be without her! (kidding, hope she doesn't read this.)

I would be very curious how a mod to a traditional humbucker would sound. Keep us posted if you go down that road.

Elwood, thanks for the post above, very interesting.

[Boogie Bill]

You might want to try using a 10-band or parametric eq pedal with your F-100. I know with my Music Man Sabres, they seem to have a slight peak at around 2Khz, so pulling that slider down 3-5 db takes out the "edge" and leaves the "air". Same thing I found with my Comanches. You might find reading my "Comanches For Dummies" post applicable to your situation with the F-100.

A Z-coil conversion on an F-100 might be an interesting thing to try, though you might still have to deal with the peakiness.

I have known people who put PAF-style humbuckers in their F-100s. It seems to be only a temporary solution--most of the people I've talked to have regretted this decision over the long term.

And if you are using a tube amp, try experimenting with the V1 preamp tube. The MFD pickups, with their wide range and high output, demand that you use the very best tube. Each manufacturer's tube sounds different, so try a few in that socket to see if one gives a better tone.

Best of luck,

Bill

[JonL]

It took me a while to learn how to get a tone I like from my F-100, and now I'm in heaven when I play it. I find it sounds best with the pickups and pole pieces set very high, as high as you can get them without affecting the intonation. Then, to get a clear sound, I roll back the "bass" control quite a bit. The "treble" control varies from about half up to ~80% up, depending on the room and the amp. To get more thickness and drive, I roll in more bass. To clean up and get more of strat / tele spank, I roll off some bass and maybe roll up just a bit of treble. It takes me a few minutes on any given night to find the sweet spot for the tone controls, but once I've got them set, very small changes bring out a beautiful tonal palette to play with. I do find the tonal balance between the neck and bridge pickups to be a little wider than I'd like. Switching between them sounds like two different guitars rather than just altering the character of a single guitar. I spend most of my time on the bridge pickup. When I switch to the neck, it's much darker and mellower, though if the tone controls are set right the neck pickup can provide a fabulous "woman tone."

I use a vintage Fender tube amp with a vintage Fender reverb tank ahead of it. No other effects. I can't get the guitar to be quite as clean, sparkly, and spanky as my 'strat, but I can get close on the bridge pickup. Nothing sounds like a strat neck pickup (except a Legacy or similar), so I can't achieve even an approximation.

Last time I played I was digging on how much I was able to get a tone reminiscent of Peter Frampton's on "Frampton Comes Alive." Pretty cool.

After 40 years of playing a strat, the F-100 is becoming my primary guitar, at least for a while.

[Miles Smiles]

I can squeeze a little more tone from my F-100 IIE due to the active boost,

On my F-100 E, I have to roll back the bass control to about 0-20% to have basically the sound of the passive mode. The boost of high frequencies in the second active mode is quite useless in my opinion.

..some have done the G200 mod, mentioned here:
http://www.guitarsbyleo.com/FORUM/viewt ... =36&t=1293

But the wiring is not to be found there and not anywhere else.

To get a more useful sound on my passive Mahogany F-100, I've already considered to have a 3-way for the humbucker/single coil switch, to have it like it is at the F-100 E, where there's a 2nd single coil position at which the capacitors are out of the way.

[myrios]

Follow-up: okay, so I'm psyched to say the least:

I grabbed what I thought should be a decent test bridge humbucker (GFS overwound mini), put it in and blah, same sort of squashed tone, thought maybe I got a lemon pickup, so I wired it direct to output and BAM, it opened up. So I tried wiring my original F100 neck pickup direct and WOW, totally massive, bright, bassy, thumping.

Conclusion: the F100 wiring is the problem (blasphemy, I know...)

Solution: I got a decent quality standard LP wiring harness, and put it in my F100 with the original pickups. It is now the beast it should have been. Okay, it's not Leo's original creation or concept, and I don't have the split or phase option going, but man, these pickups truly rock now and since the neck/body/trem are amazing, I now have what I've always wanted out of my F100. Later I might try adding a split coil switch if I can figure it out...

[Elwood]

Thanks for the good first hand tone report . I betthat's one of the reasons G-200 owners rave about the sound.
The wiring on those is much more straight forward and the pickups are almost the same.

Early F-100's are the best feeling guitars in fit and finish. Hands down.

[Miles Smiles]

Conclusion: the F100 wiring is the problem (blasphemy, I know...)

Maybe you've always used the out-of-phase mode only.

No, just kidding. Glad to read that you just got, what you were searching for. Such a wiring can be restored easily, if ever necessary - just keep all that switches on a save place.