Gibson Custom Shop CS7 - Magnificent Failure

[@christopherjbutler]

I am so glad to see new videos on your channel,as your series on pickup wiring and controls from 10 years ago are my bible of understanding of the subject. Glad to know you and your business are still going strong. Love your channel and the absolute mastery of all the details of each of your video subjects and your ability to demonstrate it all.

[@Riverdeepnwide]

I've had about five of these insulation/cold solder/broken contact occurrences just this year, no Gibsons, but I do remember a couple of offshore Jacksons, an Ibanez, can't recall the others. Sometimes just the meter battery voltage passing through the weak point will heat it enough to see the resistance rise. I love your videos David thanks man.

[@melodicdreamer72]

I would have guessed the volume pot being the problem...'Really appreciate the videos you've been uploading!

[@robnamowicz8073]

Wait a minute? "Sympathetic microphonic vibrations" are what my guitar tone is dependent upon! I can't do without those! Thanks Dave for your help with my heaps, you make guitars great! All the best!

[@jaakkokunnas]

What an interesting occurrence, thanks for the video 👍 An easy way to break the solder connection between the pickup cover and baseplate is to use a spatula - the lump of solder will split quite easily even unheated. No solder removal is required, and the same lumps of solder can be simply melted together when reassembling the pup.

[@gralnrath]

In this case, shortcuts like you've described can be damaging. I've seen dented covers from people doing that. Those people may...or may not have been me. The solder also does not always break away easily, especially if the solder was actually applied properly. The largest reason the solder blobs pop off at all is because they're not applying enough heat to the solder joint at the factory. They're using the same time and technique as they would for a wire joint, but a pickup has much more thermal mass, so the joints on the pickup cover are often cold, hence why they break easily. You would not be able to pop off David's joint with a spatula. Going through the proper de-solder / re-solder procedure is the right way to do this and ultimately doesn't really add any time if you've got a proper soldering station setup. Reusing old solder is also bad. Probably fine for guitar work, but reheating the same solder blob too many times can cause it to make bad connections. I wasn't allowed to do that at work where I was soldering airplane parts.

[@walterw2]

@@gralnrath there's a trick to it though! you clamp the pickup in a big padded vise, upside down and held endwise, then you take a basic 1" putty knife held sideways over the pickup to just catch the solder joint on a corner of the knife and give it a couple careful whacks with a hammer the putty knife will chop right through the solder blob without bending the cover or going anywhere near the coil wires, easy peasy! i learned the trick from a video which i can't find now but it was almost hilariously easy +1 to not just re-melting the old solder after, you want fresh solder with fresh flux in the mix or it won't make a good joint

[@gralnrath]

@@walterw2 I appreciate the advice but whacking pickups with a hammer is too far for me. It would save me what...a minute? I'll just pull out my soldering iron and calmly remove the cover. Easy peasy.

[@J.C...]

You can cut solder with a razor blade lol. No need for a hammer 🤦

[@brianmascarin3875]

I had a custom shop Strat on the bench yesterday, neck pickup was polarized in the same direction as the bridge pickup but wound in the same direction as the middle pickup. So in the neck/middle position theyre out of phase with no hum cancellation. Untouched factory wiring. It was an easy enough fix but goes to show that Fender can make goofy mistakes just as well as Gibson. I had a similar problem to this once with the neck pickup on an SG. There was a tiny bit of hot conductor exposed where the braid was soldered to the chassis. All it took was a microscopic bit of expansion and it would short to the braid.

[@A2Guitars]

Yup, it happens. I recall one Dimarzio and one Bill Lawrence many years ago that had their wire colors mixed up. Since then, I always check phase individually before installing (especially in hollow bodies). And we’ve probably all run in to a cold solder joint on Fender pickup ferrules at least once or twice, so yeah, certainly not just Gibson.

[@caseykittel]

9:52. That’s cool. Does seem safer for human use. I was just thinking about getting some everclear for cleaning around food surfaces and thinning out for use on skin as disinfectant.

[@J.C...]

I have an intermittent ringing noise I can't find. It's the guitar, imo. Moved pickups from 1 guitar to another and it didn't follow the pickups. Not sure where to go at this point.

[@profane_kvetch]

Gibson quality at its finest!

[@styrenebuilds6851]

As he stated 2nd time in 30 years

[@Sollazzon]

Iteresting! Never seen anyting like that.

[@sempercompellis]

where have you been?

[@gengar678]

Brilliant find. Just wondering how were you measuring at the beginning of the video, i did not see where you connected the measuring cables?

[@A2Guitars]

I was measuring through the 1/4” cable. I have an interface built in to my bench to switch between mic/cable/probe input and tuner/amp/meter output.

[@gengar678]

@@A2GuitarsThanks for the quick reply. Thats something I would love to have. Could you tell me where to find how to do that?

[@A2Guitars]

It’s a switching system I built a long time ago. Great tool to have at the bench, and a simpler version could be made with just a few toggle switches to select input and output from the box to cables, probes, amp, meter, etc. Guitar Bench Control Switch kzbin.info/www/bejne/o2bdo3SBrtqLfKM

[@fredmueller9919]

You stated during your video that you like to use some chips of wax when you solder the pickup back together. I’m assuming these are non-potted pickups and you’re just using some small chips of paraffin wax across the top of the pickup bobbins and between the cover. Then you heat up the pickup cover to soften the wax, squeezing the cover and back-plate together and then re-solder the back plate to the cover. I’m assuming You’re using the wax to keep the cover from vibrating and to minimize the possibility of making the pickup develop microphonic issues I have a 1976 les paul custom that I think it has non-potted T-top pickups that have unfortunately become microphonic. I would like to fix this problem I am having with my les paul. I would appreciate if you could give me some further details about this and if this is how you would correct this problem I’m having. Thanks for your time.

[@onbedoeldekut1515]

Good old AUTHENTIC QC issues!

[@akasgsvirgil9503]

I encountered this issue two years ago. It was a Chibson, not an actual Gibson. So, how sure are you this is an actual Gibson instrument? If I were you, I'd check that guitar and make sure its not a Chibson. The guitar I worked on was a Les Paul Standard. What gave it away as a Chibson was the fact that it was brand spankin new and it had 250k pots for both tone and volume. In non Custom Shop or Historical models, Gibson only uses 300k linear-taper for volume and 500k audio taper for tone. This has been the way of it at Gibson since 1990. Plus, the wiring and the soldering looked like a toddler did it.

[@J.C...]

Unforgivable? Pshhhhhhhttttt. Don't be a Karen, David.

[@JohannesLabusch]

"Every company can make occasional mistakes" ... but if you want consistent screw-ups, only a Gibson is good enough.

[@csnide6702]

Exactly why i don't have any more Gibson products. If I want a "Les Paul", I'll get a Chibson.

[@leoahearn7382]

Yep that’s CUSTOM all right….

[@arthurblackhistoric]

You're doing it all wrong Dave! Send away for a new pickup, and charge the customer accordingly for it. BTW, Solder is pronounced sol-der. The "L" is not silent, at least it wasn't when I went to school.