MM St Vincent - anyone changed the pots?

[jamesm586]

Bought the MM SV and love how it looks and plays but just cant get on with the lack of treble/sparkle (coming from an all Fender JM/Tele/Strat owner) and to my ears sounds like a guitar stuck on the tone wound down by half. Really like the mini humuckers so not interested in changing them just boosting the treble/top end without having to use eq pedal or winding the treble up on my Fender amp. So my question..

Has anyone successfully changed the pots from the 250k to 500k and if so has it made much of a difference - good or bad? I see from another message board someone was trying this but not clear whether possible with the terminal board/wiring that MM use in the guitar. I want to go get this done professionally but after some guidance to give the repair shop etc if anyone can share their exp etc.

Also any of you changed the tremolo to floating? And no I'm not trying to recreate a strat ;-)

Cheers

 

[tbonesullivan]

You can try it, but you aren't gonna get the jangle/sparkle of single coil pickups out of humbuckers, even mini humbuckers.

 

[bmorepunk]

It's possible, but it will require finding the values you want in the physical configuration that matches the ones in there. Then you desolder the posts from the through-hole solder points and solder the new ones in there.

On the soldering, you'll need an iron with decent enough temperature control that can dump enough heat in there fast enough so you don't damage the board by holding the iron on too long. This will mostly be a problem with the ground/case contact that leads to the pot. I'd use metal clips to sink some of the heat on the back side.

 

[godsdominatrix]

I just received a Polaris white SV today, and this thread is what I'm looking for.

Coming from a Jaguar with standard 1 megs, I find the pickups in the SV a bit dark.

On one of my guitars I have a pair of DiMarzio humbuckers; when I split them they sound like great single coils, and they run on 500k. In fact, I've gone years playing them as singles.

I wonder if one solution might be to split these mini-humbuckers. But everyone here is talking about the soldering board that just seems dangerously impervious to modding.

Maybe the only solution is an EQ pedal.

If anyone else has modded the SV with 500k or 1 meg with positive results, let us know!

 

[Magic Jason]

Buy a treble booster. Easier, cheaper.

 

[beej]

Or turn up the treble on your amp? I change my amp settings depending on which guitar I'm using.

 

[Magic Jason]

Or turn up the treble on your amp? I change my amp settings depending on which guitar I'm using.

I've got different "complete set-list" banks (for the same songs with the same band) in my Headrush depending if I use MM90 or humbuckers.

 

[jamesm586]

I just received a Polaris white SV today, and this thread is what I'm looking for.

Coming from a Jaguar with standard 1 megs, I find the pickups in the SV a bit dark.

On one of my guitars I have a pair of DiMarzio humbuckers; when I split them they sound like great single coils, and they run on 500k. In fact, I've gone years playing them as singles.

I wonder if one solution might be to split these mini-humbuckers. But everyone here is talking about the soldering board that just seems dangerously impervious to modding.

Maybe the only solution is an EQ pedal.

If anyone else has modded the SV with 500k or 1 meg with positive results, let us know!

Hey mate, did you keep your SV? I still have mine (same white one as yours which looks amazing doesnt it and neck a dream) and never got around to trying anything different so still sits sadly in the rack and gets little use compared to jazz and jag most the time. Coming back to thinking about changing those pots or maybe getting them coil tapped (do they have the right wire you need to do that do you know?) when next in for service. The pot change and that board does sound risky though so not sure I want to risk someone doing it!

 

[NickNihil]

I changed the pots (maybe just the tone-can't remember) to 500k in my stealth black STV. I think it was worth it. A bit more chime and attack without losing its original mojo. I was able to get the appropriately sized pots through MM customer service and a local tech was able (with a little difficulty) to get it on the guitar's circuit board so I didn't have to rewire the whole thing. It all cost, with the pot and the labor, about $150 total.

 

[jamesm586]

I changed the pots (maybe just the tone-can't remember) to 500k in my stealth black STV. I think it was worth it. A bit more chime and attack without losing its original mojo. I was able to get the appropriately sized pots through MM customer service and a local tech was able (with a little difficulty) to get it on the guitar's circuit board so I didn't have to rewire the whole thing. It all cost, with the pot and the labor, about $150 total.

Thanks Nick! Really useful to know. I got in touch with MM and led me onto finding the right tone pot here in the UK. Bit of a wait on it but hopefully worth it.

I'm being greedy but thinking would be great to add a coil split mod but not wanting to do any drilling for extra switches, so thinking of a push-push or push-upll on vols or tone to activate. MM did not know if any sort of push-push or push-pull switches would fit (guessing they need to be quite shallow etc) though so this might be a bit of an adventure to try find out.

If anyone has coil split out them please let me know your recommendations!

 

[godsdominatrix]

I never got around to it. I play the St V for some things but mostly because I love the feel of the guitar. It sounds great dirty, but I don't like the clean sounds so much, so I only use it to record dirty sounds and to look cool on stage. I'm considering the 500k trick that Nick did with his Stealth, but 1 meg might work better for me, because I also play a Jaguar with Antiquities. I think if I went with a 1 meg I could at least turn the tone down to taste. If that's not the ticket, then I might try the other DiMarzio mini-hums or try some of the more boutiquey options, but I think if I want this guitar to work for me then the 250k pots are the first to go.

I might just take the circuit board out completely and use a pair of 500k or 1 meg pots with a Schaller Megaswitch that would give me the outer pickups in the middle position.
I agree with Nick that the only guitar I've enjoyed the middle pickup with has been the St V, but it's still not my go-to. The bigger question for me is the out-of-phase position. On the St V the out-of-phase sound is all 3 mini-hums; I use this sound on my 3-pickup Jaguar, and I can't decide if I like all 3 pickups on or just bridge and middle on to get the out-of-phase "quack" sound: both are good. But on the St. V all 3 pickups sounds really dark and unusable. Instead of a bright "quack" it's more like a muted "quock" (amIright?). So I'm hoping that with 500k or 1 meg pots I can get some of that quack back.

I know the St V may not be the best guitar for it, but I really need it to do a convincing Nile Rodgers HitMaker / Prince Tele / Marr Jag sound. It doesn't have to be perfectly those things -- my 3-pickup Jag pretty much does it already (and so does my Squier with a pair of humbuckers split to single coils) -- but I'm so bored with playing the Jag.

Ok, so I really just wish the St V was a short scale guitar that could do chimey cleans and sound great with a muff. Since short scale surgery isn't a thing, I'm happy just finding the right electronics to get me where I need to go. It's a beautiful guitar, but I want to play it and not just admire its design.

 

[St_G]

There's a kernal of truth in this statement that has been stretched to VERY misleading proportions. Will you always get the MOST chime and jangle from single coils, all other aspects of their design being equal? Yes. But you can get plenty of chime and jangle out of any style of pickup.

I will say, though, that you're going to struggle getting much out of the stock Dimarzio mini-hums in the St. Vincent. Not only are they wired into pots that are too dark by half, but they're overwound to near the absolute limit of their bobbin size and the end result is a big mid-bump and very reduced highs.

A lower output minibucker will sound a great deal more open. A Firebird pickup arguably moreso (but in a different way). And there are interesting things being done in the same shape by both Lindy Fralin (the Mini Big Single) and Tom Anderson (the MC) that are worth investigating, imo. But that's definitely a more expensive route. Starting with the pots is smarter.

You can try it, but you aren't gonna get the jangle/sparkle of single coil pickups out of humbuckers, even mini humbuckers.