SEYMOUR DUNCAN LIBERATOR
SOLDERLESS PICKUP CHANGE SYSTEM WITH VOLUME POT Changing pickups is one of the most popular ways of modding the tone of an electric guitar but it’s not without its difficulties. Assuming the new pickup is the same size as the original – so there’s no woodwork involved – the hardest part is unsoldering the old unit and soldering the new one.
The Seymour Duncan Liberator lets you change pickups as often as you like without damaging other parts of your guitar, as such it’s an essential part of any hot-modder’s arsenal…
The best way to understand how the Liberator works is to think of it as two products loaded onto one compact circuit board. Firstly, there is a volume pot, which is available in either 250k version for use with single coils or 500k for use with humbuckers. This replaces one of your existing volume controls and is connected up by simply pushing the wires into the correct holes and tightening using the supplied mini screwdriver. The same screw terminal system is used for the second part of the Liberator – a strip that houses 10 terminals (or ‘stations’ in Seymour Duncan’s literature). Each terminal has a corresponding fixed wire and these are colour coded to match the wires found on four- conductor cables on Seymour Duncan humbuckers (fig. 5).
The idea is that you solder the Liberator wires where the existing pickup wires go. Thereafter,
Unless you’re experienced with a soldering
iron, it’s easy to create a ‘dry joint’ that looks as if it’s OK but is really only held on with melted flux. This will degrade your tone and will probably start to crackle, especially when the gain is cranked up. Soldering earth wires to the backs of pots is
particularly difficult because it takes longer to heat up the casing and you can accidentally fry the magnetic track inside the pot if you over-cook it. The more times you change pickups, the more
surplus solder you tend to end up with on the back of the pots and the more chance there is that you’ll burn out one of the other components. (I’ve also lost count of the number of times I’ve burned my fingers but that’s another story.) Enter Seymour Duncan with the Liberator, a system that let’s you change pickups without soldering. Installing the Liberator will normally require some soldering in the first instance but if you’re not handy with a soldering iron, why not get a repair shop to put it in for you?
Fig. 5
colour-coded for your convenience to match two Seymour Duncan humbuckers, they don’t have to be used that way. You could equally well use them to wire up three single coils, for instance. As long as each pickup wire ends up in the
right place, it doesn’t matter electrically which terminal you use. That said, consistent colour coding will certainly help you and anyone else looking into your guitar to understand what’s going on. You may also be wondering what those gold patches are around the pot area of the board. They’re earth points and believe me, they’re a lot easier to solder than the back of a conventional pot! The Liberator is a great product and one I’ll be
using over and over as we explore new and more adventurous mods.
Should I buy one? As far as I know, this is the only system you can buy that lets you change pickups as often as you like without running the risk of damaging other parts of your guitar, as such it’s an essential part of any hot-modder’s arsenal. SRP: £29.95 Contact: Aria UK Ltd Tel: 01483 238720
Next Month: How to make a guitar that sounds like Brian May’s Red Special and see the start of my custom build guitar project. PM
YOUR ON-LINE LIBRARY Fig. 6
you connect your pickups to the screw terminals, rather than having to solder them in place. This makes changing pickups much faster and easier (fig. 6). Although the supplied instructions are straightforward enough, there are a couple of points I’d like to emphasise. Point one, the volume pot and the connector strip are on the same board but they are not wired to each other – it’s the wires you connect to the terminals of the pot that determine where it is in the circuit. As a result, if your guitar has more than one
volume control, it makes no difference electrically which one you replace with a Liberator (but you might find that one position is physically easier to reach when you’re swapping pickups). Point two, each screw terminal and associated lead is independent. So although they are
Nice chaps that we are, we’ve put a reference library on-line for you. Go to www.
playmusicpickup.co.uk and you can download these illustrated mini-books for free today: THE HOT-MOD PICKUP PRIMER
•
Learn how the magnetic pickups on guitars and basses work, the key pioneers in the history of the pickup and the factors that make one pickup sound different to another. THE HOT-MOD SETUP PRIMER
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What to look for when ‘sighting’ a guitar neck and what you need to do to make any guitar play faster and sound more in tune than it did before. THE HOT-MOD GUITAR TOOL GUIDE
•
We never want you to start a mod without knowing exactly how to finish it, so this is our comprehensive guide to tools and materials, with pictures. THE HOT-MOD NECK TILT
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All the information you could ever need to know about adjusting the tilt of a bolt-on neck for optimum action.
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