der
Member
- Joined
- Mar 2, 2010
- Messages
- 7
Lb 63
Just to be clear, I did the Acouti-Phonic only mod, no hexpander. Ok, More pics to come, but the installation was easy if you can solder and follow directions.
Only one Jack, but you change from the mono factory jack to a stereo on. You remove the Jack plate, and desolder the leads from it. Install the stereo Jack that comes with the Acousti-Phonic kit, to the plate. Here is the first decision branch, You must choose:
Do I want the Mag Pickups to be wired directly to the jack, or through the Acousti-phonic.
To decide this, you should think about two things; Do you believe the tone of the mags is altered by being sent through the preamp? or Do you like the idea of plugging a mono cable into the stereo jack and having a blended output of piezo/mags?
I am a tone junkie, but tone is subjective, so you might want to try both ways. I tried both ways. the Mag tone wasn’t noticeably different whether running through the preamp or not. ( I asked the opinion of 5 different people and hooked up an audio analyzer too. I am paranoid.)
So…
if you feel your tone IS adversely effected, you reconnect the leads from the old jack to the new one, on the tip and sleeve connections.
If you like the idea of grabbing a standard guitar cable, and having an impedance matched and blended piezo/ mag signal come out of your guitar, solder up the prebuilt wiring harness from your kit.
Now, you are right, the control cavity in the Axis, is freakish small. You can get everything in but man is it tight, and you must be certain not to short anything. I jammed all this crap in to test to see if I liked it before I made any permanent changes to my Axis. I tied the Piezo volume leads together for max output again just to be sure I liked this stuff before I drilled a hole in this red beauty.
The LB63 Floyd is the exact dimensions of the Musicman Floyd so it mounts without modification to the guitar. (the saddles are a bit longer, so you have to have them back a speck further when you match intonation, but this is no issue.
The one permenant mods you must make to your guitar to make this work is
1 hole between control cavity and bridge cavity to accomodate the wires from the piezo bridge to preamp.
I made two other Axis-altering permenant modifications:
1. I drilled a hole in in the top to add a vol control for Piezos, I thought of a few ways around this we discuss if you want, but I have had this guitar since 1997 and I was serious about making this change permenant. If the Piezos were ever taken out, you could make this a tone control easily.
2. I made the cavity slightly larger by cutting out in between the screw holes for the cover. It is a slight mod, not even noticible whtn the cover is on, but it gives you a whole bunch more space.
What else do you want to know?
Just to be clear, I did the Acouti-Phonic only mod, no hexpander. Ok, More pics to come, but the installation was easy if you can solder and follow directions.
Only one Jack, but you change from the mono factory jack to a stereo on. You remove the Jack plate, and desolder the leads from it. Install the stereo Jack that comes with the Acousti-Phonic kit, to the plate. Here is the first decision branch, You must choose:
Do I want the Mag Pickups to be wired directly to the jack, or through the Acousti-phonic.
To decide this, you should think about two things; Do you believe the tone of the mags is altered by being sent through the preamp? or Do you like the idea of plugging a mono cable into the stereo jack and having a blended output of piezo/mags?
I am a tone junkie, but tone is subjective, so you might want to try both ways. I tried both ways. the Mag tone wasn’t noticeably different whether running through the preamp or not. ( I asked the opinion of 5 different people and hooked up an audio analyzer too. I am paranoid.)
So…
if you feel your tone IS adversely effected, you reconnect the leads from the old jack to the new one, on the tip and sleeve connections.
If you like the idea of grabbing a standard guitar cable, and having an impedance matched and blended piezo/ mag signal come out of your guitar, solder up the prebuilt wiring harness from your kit.
Now, you are right, the control cavity in the Axis, is freakish small. You can get everything in but man is it tight, and you must be certain not to short anything. I jammed all this crap in to test to see if I liked it before I made any permanent changes to my Axis. I tied the Piezo volume leads together for max output again just to be sure I liked this stuff before I drilled a hole in this red beauty.
The LB63 Floyd is the exact dimensions of the Musicman Floyd so it mounts without modification to the guitar. (the saddles are a bit longer, so you have to have them back a speck further when you match intonation, but this is no issue.
The one permenant mods you must make to your guitar to make this work is
1 hole between control cavity and bridge cavity to accomodate the wires from the piezo bridge to preamp.
I made two other Axis-altering permenant modifications:
1. I drilled a hole in in the top to add a vol control for Piezos, I thought of a few ways around this we discuss if you want, but I have had this guitar since 1997 and I was serious about making this change permenant. If the Piezos were ever taken out, you could make this a tone control easily.
2. I made the cavity slightly larger by cutting out in between the screw holes for the cover. It is a slight mod, not even noticible whtn the cover is on, but it gives you a whole bunch more space.
What else do you want to know?
