Want to see a modded Luke with passive pickups?

[spkirby]

Fellow forumite Dodgeball came over last night for EBMM chats and a jam or two - played along with a few backing tracks and such.

Anyway of more interest to you guys will be his Buttercream Luke that he has converted to be passive with Bareknuckle pickups. Clever chappie that he is, he also converted the tone knob to control the volume of the single coils and the humbucker to truely be split (something you cannot do with EMGs).

He now has a super versatile guitar with strat sounds, LP sounds and that percussiveness you dont get with active pickups, but all in a Luke body...it was very impressive and sounded monster.

I'm sure Dodgeball will pipe in with techie details as he's way more nerdy than me when it comes to that stuff but for those of you who are afraid to mod your guitars remember it is possible to do without taking chunks of wood out of your axes! Enjoy the pics:

Cheers
Steve

 

[the24thfret]

Don't know much about it... but I'm all for modding! Doesn't look half bad too. Any sound clips?

 

[steveh]

I'm seriously interested in this. I bought Steve's blue Luke last week. I'm very happy with my EVH (and, to be honest, play far more acoustic guitar these days)but am a complete sucker for nice woods and the flamed neck on that Luke just slayed me. I also have a hankering for the ultimate HSS guitar, lusting afrer the best of both worlds. ANy way, who needs excuses to buy more guitars?

I've been playing the Luke for the last week or so and am very impressed by the feel - I was worried from what I've read here that the neck may feel too small vs the EVH/Axis but I don't find that to be the case for me at all. In my hands the slight 'v' feels very comfortable as well. The trem is also a real improvement on the Floyd since I like to use it for some subtle vibrato a la Gilmour and Beck (did I mention that I saw Jeff Beck at Ronnie Scotts last Satruday...?! And Colauta was on the drums!).

However, I have come to the conclusion that I just don't get on with the EMGs at all. To me, the single coils sound way different to stock singles (lack of noise excepted) - they sound thicker and less bright/top end sparkle. Presumably your mate didn't get on with them either?

I'd be really interested in some more detail about how this guitar sounded, especially vis-a-vis all of the other guitars you have there...going to Steves was like the Musicman Santa arriving early - a cornucopia of MM guitars including a fabled Dargie Luke; only Dave B has a guitar room to match. Steve also has some smoking Cornford amps, of which I'm a great fan.

So, what's it sound like? Is it the ultimate in versatility? Are you going to be modding either of your Lukes???

Cheers,
Steve

 

[Charles]

That looks insanely unique. I love seeing instruments that are just really unique.

 

[beej]

Well done

 

[spkirby]

However, I have come to the conclusion that I just don't get on with the EMGs at all. To me, the single coils sound way different to stock singles (lack of noise excepted) - they sound thicker and less bright/top end sparkle. Presumably your mate didn't get on with them either?

So, what's it sound like? Is it the ultimate in versatility? Are you going to be modding either of your Lukes???

Cheers,
Steve

Steveh, I must put you in touch with Dodgeball directly to discuss how he did it, but like you he wanted something a bit more alive and percussive than what the active EMGs were giving. I.e. they were too smooth and not "alive enough" if that makes sense.

Now dont get me wrong I personally love the EMG's in the Luke and dont intend to be changing my Lukes for now, but then I like to play through my effects board and thats where the Luke shines (with effects) and I'm not short of passive pickuped EBMM's either

But I was super impressed with what Dodgeball did, he's made a truely unique instrument and the pickups sounded excellent. The way he wired it up he's got amazing versatility and a wider range of sounds than you'd normally get from a standard Luke. I think you would have been blown away too.

Dodgeball where are you?

Steve(k!)

 

[ba2m]

great! very neat!

i am interested with this mod, but did he has to route the pick up cavity(i heard the emg's size is different to the passive one)? can we put the EMG's back to the guitar?how to block the noise from passive pups?

but it's a great job i think.. (tough i prefer the original volume knobs)

congratulations,
abraham

 

[mr.b]

nice transformation!

what Bareknuckles has he put in?

 

[tommyindelaware]

emg also makes passive pickups that will go straight in w/o any routing.
don't forget the new pots.....

 

[Dodgeball]

SpKirby, thanks for the kind words.

First time I've seen one of my axes up on the web, (without me playing it) kinda cool.

Glad you all like what I've done here.

First up there has been no routing and the change is reversable, I still have the EMGs and the Luke wiring harness for the future but I really don;t think I'm gonna go back to them. I done the change myself on the dining room table.

Being true passives there is some noise and you can;t get around that other than to include a silent circuit or get noiseless passives but i don;t mind the noise, it's not intrusive and the tone is exactly what I'm after.

Yeah Tommy is right I needed new pots but it's no big deal.

As for versatility, like Steve mentioned I done away with the tone control and replaced it with a volume for the singles. The first pot is still a master volume tho, it just means that if I select pos2 on the switch (bridge bucker split and mid pup) I can roll down the volume of the middle pup for a strat bridge kind of sound or set the mid pup volume for anything in-between.

I put a BK Crawler in the bridge with two Slowhand singles.

Cheers

 

[ivanmihaljevic]

Looks cool, but I prefer the standard look of the Luke
I'm really interested how it sounds...

 

[PBGas]

Wow! Nice work!
It's nice to know that other than changing/soldering the pots that you didn't have to route anything.

 

[Thetomsk]

Passive shenanigans

I recently bought a Luke that had a passive mod carried out.

With a paf joe and two stacked cruisers.

Slight routing carried out, with the two single emg slots needing to be routed to accept the dimarzio's.

Soundwise, i have never been a fan of emg's and have played several active luke's, i much prefer the sound now.

I would always recommend this, but if you can find pup's that fit, you could re-activate (boom boom) the active circuit if you wanted to sell.

 

[GWDavis28]

Holy thread resurrections!!!

You have any pics??? Let's see it please.

Glenn |B)