To mod or not to mod….

Dominic

OilCityPickups said:

BillDL said:

Sometimes a cheap set of pickups can sound great in a budget guitar and not very good in an expensive one, and vice versa. The pickups usually need to be a good match for the guitar to sound good.  You can throw a lot of money down the drain by seeking the holy grail of pickups.

Absolutely ... the very first thing to do is get everything else about the guitar 'right' and playing just the way you want it BEFORE you think of pickups - if indeed you need to after sorting everything else. Now the price of the guitar or its manufacturer don't come into that equation ...

Here's how I do it.
1. sort action and playability - you can think a guitar has the wrong pickups if you are hampered in actually physically producing the notes you want clearly ... so a good set up starts it all rolling.
2. Get the pickups you have dialled in right as others have said - it can be you just need heights sorted. 
3. I always make sure it's not a poor choice of strings that is hobbling a guitar ... 
4. Upgrade your pots jack (caps are pretty much irrelevant apart from value - paper in oil is just snake oil). This will not change your tone much if at all, but if you are going at some stage upgrade your pickups ... then you wouldn't put a better engine in a hotrod without upgrading the brakes. 

Most of all don't run your own gear down .... an Epiphone LP is a fine guitar and it's not the instrument that matters, it's how you play it.  

I keep telling my wife that ,
She said that with an instrument like mine I was lucky to be in the band !

OilCityPickups

monquixote said:

OilCityPickups said:

guitarjack66 said:

But then tale the sad case of Aluminium -  pronounced phonetically Al-u-mini-um - but somehow mangled into Alumi-numb 

And how many presidents have addressed their fellow 'merkins' ... 

Unfortunately it's the Americans who are right on that one.

On the Merkins thing yes certainly  

monquixote

OilCityPickups said:

monquixote said:

OilCityPickups said:

guitarjack66 said:

But then tale the sad case of Aluminium -  pronounced phonetically Al-u-mini-um - but somehow mangled into Alumi-numb 

And how many presidents have addressed their fellow 'merkins' ... 

Unfortunately it's the Americans who are right on that one.

On the Merkins thing yes certainly  

Humphrey Davey called it Aluminum because it's made from Alumina.

The Americans retain the original spelling and pronunciation but the British one got corrupted.

I find it weird that it's always used as an example of American stupidity without fact checking.