Replacing humbuckers on an Epiphone "Joe Pass" Emperor II

[Brian]

Anyone know if this is relatively easy to do? Do I have to remove all
the wiring (pots. jack and switch) from the guitar? Or can I use the
exisiting wiring?

[da...@redstoneaudio.com]

I tried several different pups on a pre-signature emperor. Made almost
no difference in sound. The stock pups were pretty microphonic, tho.
You can eliminate that problem, but, unless the II is a whole lot
different from the early ones, it's going to be dark with any pup. I
just pulled the pots out thru the f hole, and attached the new pup
wiring there. I would suggest just do the neck first and see if you
can tell the diff.

Oh, the early emperors and JPs had the infamous Samick wiring, which
has to be fixed, whether you change pups or not. I have noticed that
some of the newer Epi's have the standard wiring. The way to tell is
turn the vol to about 1/3, crank up the amp and then adjust the tone
control. The Samick wiring case will show up as the tone control
acting more like a volume control with the vol set low. If the tone
acts normally, then you are ok.

My experience with changing HB pups in general is that it's not very
fruitful unless you're fixing a bad microphonic problem, or just a POC
pup.E.g., the pups on the D'A 's are just fine (SH).

Another exception is the POC floaters from Heritage. They build such
great guitars, and then put those plastic POC on there. I replace
these with KA handmades.

GL,

dave

[oasysco]

It's a pain to change pickups and do it well on a hollowbody archtop.
I had an Epi JP before they started using Gibson designed humbuckers.
They had Samick something-or-another humbucks. I had a Seymour Duncan
'59 PAF put in the neck and a JB in the bridge. I think it made all
the difference in the world. If I had had one of the mroe recent ones
with the Gibson designed 57's, I wouldn't have swapped them out. I
piad $75 for the job and $110 for the pups.

Greg

[oasysco]

Make that $160 for the pups.

On Jan 29, 11:17 pm, "Brian" <mullan.br...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Joey Goldstein]

The easiest way is to just remove the old pickup(s), snip the wire(s)
and splice the wires of the new pickups. Doing it this way, you'll still
be using the original wiring, pots, switch and tone caps.

But you might want to check the pots with an ohm meter and possibly
replace them. Gibson has sometimes used 300k pots (or lower) on some of
their guitars, especially archtops. Epi might do the same. In my
experience humbuckers sound way better with 500k pots.

The switch and the tone caps are probably fine. Standard cap value for
the tone control is .022mf, and in my experience it's about the best
value for getting a decent jazz sound. Going to a higher value cap (eg.
.047) just makes things boomy when you roll down the tone control. I
don't know anybody who uses a lower value.

I recommend Gibson 57 Classics for jazz.
But be careful. I've bought 3 of them over the years, and one of them
just doesn't sound right. Quality control at Gibson might not be so great.

--
Joey Goldstein
http://www.joeygoldstein.com
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/joeygoldstein
joegold AT sympatico DOT ca