Current production F-100 - Any thoughts?

[Handyman]

Recently picked up a used but very recent F-100. I was surprised how different the new production pickups are compared to the early 80s version - much hotter, and much much less treble.

So far I'm digging it, though I'm really missing the bass cut knob when using the neck pickup by itself in humbucker mode - the amount of low end can be overpowering. I'm so used to rolling off some bass when doing this with my Comanche that I find myself reaching for the non-existant bass knob.

Anyone else spend much time with the recent F-100s? I've not been able to find much info about them.

I'm toying with the idea of having my local tech take a drill to this guy to add a hole for a passive bass pot. Simple enough, but I'm nervous about doing an irreversible mod to such a nice instrument.

I also noticed that G&L moved to 500k pots relative to the 250k seen on the vintage version - maybe they're trying to reduce loading on the updated and much ,much higher impedance pickups?

[Challenger]

I've got two vintage F-100's and one contemporary F-100. Your thoughts on the contemporary one are correct. The two humbuckers together sound fantastic . The neck humbucking pickup is warm and dark and lacking on the high frequencies. I always leave the tone control up all the way. I can't think of an instance where I would ever want to turn it down.

G&L should have put the PTB system on the guitar. I do miss the separate bass and treble tone controls. On the other side, the single coil settings sound much better than the vintage. The vintage are muffled and bassy in the single coil setting. While the contemporary one has a more balanced sound with better highs in the single coil setting.



Pictured are my 1980 in Candy Apple Red Metallic, 30th Anniversary special edition, and 1983 in Clear Blue.

[Handyman]

Thanks for confirming that I'm not crazy!

I agree with your assessment - the modern F-100 pickups sound great together and in the bridge position, but the neck solo-ed really could do with the PTB system. And the single coils settings are pretty great as is, too.

I played around with building the G&L passive bass control on a breadboard and plugged my F-100 into it. Wow! Just what the neck pickup needs!

I've decided its time for some minor F-100 surgery. I've ordered the parts for putting in a PTB system in. The volume and treble pots are far enough apart that I should be able to put the extra pot directly in between the existing two.

I'm excited, I'll have to put up some pictures of the project as I make progress. Fairly straight forward rewiring job, I just need to make sure I manage to drill the new hole in the control cavity EXACTLY half way between the existing ones.

[cho]

Handyman, Great idea to add the PTB! Another option: use a concentric stacked pot, with two controls. Then you won't need to drill any holes.

Yes, please post pics when you are done!

Challenger, Great looking collection! Is that a 30th anniversary?

[Challenger]

Great idea on the stacked concentric pot. The tone control is already the splitter for the pickups when pulled out. So, you would probably need to make the volume control the coil splitter and the tone control set up for the stacked tone control.

Yes Cho, you have a good eye. That is indeed a 30th anniversary F-100.

[Handyman]

The concentric pots are a clever idea, though I'd have to make a compromise somewhere to do that due to the availability of 1M reverse audio taper pots. Doing a concentric I could do this:

- Volume and treble on a 250k/500k concentric pot
- This means the 1MC bass pot would go into the other hole, leaving me without a push/pull pot for single coil mode. Alternatively I could use a normal audio taper pot, but the bass control would operate backwards.

Being an electrical engineer, I couldn't help myself - I plotted frequency response curves of the pickups with various configurations. Given the relative darkness of the neck pickup, I wanted to make sure that I didn't further attenuate the trebble response with the control changes.

I also came to the conclusion that the PTB system really needs a 250k volume pot to get much bass cut at all - and the F-100 comes with a 500k one out of the factory. Swapping the volume from 500k to 250k while keeping everything the same reduces the -3db point of the pickups on the high end quite a bit, sadly.

To offset the extra loading, I'm going to use a 250k no-load pot, which takes the treble control entirely out of the circuit when turned fully clockwise. This will keep the loading on the pickup exactly the same as the factory at high frequencies - yay!

Otherwise, this'll be just like an off the shelf PTB system you'd find on a S-500 or Comanche - 250k volume pot, 1M reverse audio bass pot, and same capacitor values.

I'll be able to move the single coil push/pull pot to the volume knob - Bournes makes a 250k push/pull audio taper pot of the right size.

Anyway, I'm excited. Maybe I'll be able to get started on this sometime next week.

[Challenger]

Handyman,

Did you end up doing some mods on your F-100? Just curious how things turned out.

Challenger

[Challenger]

Had the house to myself and was messing around on the current production F-100. I found that you can brighten up the neck pickup in the humbucking setting quite a bit by turning the volume knob down considerably on the guitar and turning the volume up on the amplifier.

[Handyman]

I recently finished up my work on the F-100, I'll have to post some pictures.

Being an engineer, I couldn't help but do some modeling of what various component values would do to the guitar's frequency response. Basically, I wanted to make sure my changes wouldn't roll off any additional treble.

So here's what I ended up doing. With all the knobs "all the way up" this has a frequency response identical to what my stock 2014 F-100 has :
- Shielded the control cavity with copper foil. This GREATLY reduced picked up noise.
- Replaced the 500k volume pot with a 250k pot with a 200pf trebble bypass cap, similar to what one would find on a Comanche. This makes the volume knob more useful by sucking less treble when decreasing the volume.
- Added an extra pot for the passive bass knob (1M audio taper in parallel with 0.0022uF cap). Used a push/pull pot for the coil split switch.
- Swapped out 500k tone pot with a 500k no load pot. By using the no load pot, I "pay" for the additional loading of the 250k volume pot, but keep the high frequency loading of the pickups the same as stock.

I couldn't find a push/pull 1M reverse audio tape pot, so my passive bass control works backwards rotation wise relative to normal. Oh well.

Someday I might get a proper 1M reverse audio pot from G&L's store and make the volume knob push/pull instead, but I'm happy with it.

I managed to drill out the hole for the extra pot without destroying the guitar, thankfully!

I'm finding the passive bass controll REALLY, REALLY useful, especially when using the neck pickup in humbucking mode.

Pictures coming soon!

[Handyman]

Here are the photos! I wasn't smart enough to take "before" photos - imagine two knobs, and a totally unshielded control cavity.

Since this is a recent current production instrument, I was able to buy one extra matching knob from the G&L online store.

[mikemjr12]

That looks awesome! Would be very interested to hear it in action!