The Electra Forums

I have just bought an Electra Outlaw: great guitar, but the pickups sound a little bit muffled - they don't seem to pick up very much treble. Could this be due to the age of the pups? Is there any way of enhancing the highs?
Also, does anybody know if it is possible, or desirable, to split the pickups? Do they sound okay as single coils?

I must admit I havent played the guitar on a decent amp yet - just my little home practicing Vox pathfinder, and also that I am used to the sound of my Gordon Smith, which has tons of really nice highs and lacks real bottom end.

Tijn

Your Outlaw has Super MAgnaflux pickups, which are excellent and ought to give lots of nice tonal range from warm to crisp. Does the tone knob work normally? I'd first suspect that, if it doesn't change I'd guess it's stuck in a dialed-down position. Also, does the 5-way selector switch work? it should give you in & out of phase and series/parallel options.

I don't see a reason not to install a coil tap, I find it very useful with those pickups,a nd they do sound good, but you'll need to be careful- the pickup that goes out of phase (bridge one i believe) needs to be tapped not to ground, but via the 5-way so it can flip-flop as it goes in & out of phase, or your coil tap will not work correctly.

But you're right, check with a known good amp first. Keep us posted how it goes!

Thanks for your info so far - the tone knob works, but its range is from 'not very crisp' to very very dark.
Also, the 5-way selector doesnt give that much variation - the three positions in which both pickups are selected sound pretty much the same to me.

Anyway, tomorrow I will try the Outlaw on my Fender Vibrosonic. Should make a difference, but will it be enough...?

Pix? I got a wonderful x-740 a week ago from Thorny....my bridge pu isn't original, but the neck is and sounds great. BTW, I've noted on mine and in pix of these that the neck pickup polepieces don't line up under the strings, especially on the treble side....is yours like this? I adjusted pu height and polepieces on high e and b to compensate, sounds great.

My guess is its the tone pot value. Both of my Outlaws had 50K pots installed rather than the standard 500K for humbuckers. I have several other MPC guitars that where this way as well (but some others had 500K) so looks like they came from factory this way. These 50K pots really bleed off alot of treble making the pickups sound very muddy. Simply replace the tone (and vol.) pots with 500 or 250K and they will be much brighter and stronger.

Thanks for all suggestions - will look at the pickup positioning (I think this is OK, but still). The 50k pot suggestion sounds promising - is there a way to verify this?
Have tried the Outlaw on the Fender amp and it sounds much better, however I still have to use the bright switch AND dial in some extra treble.

I will try to come up with some pics shortly. (to me it looks beautiful - but I'm no expert)

My Outlaw also has some tuning problems - seems like the nut is the problem, but also two or three of the tuners are not working very well (feels like there is a 'bump' when I turn them). I checked out Grover tuners and you can order tuner sets that look like the ones I need; but I would like to be sure which type are on the Outlaw.

the rating of the pot should be engraved on the can somewhere, usually on the side.

I already checked the pots - they are indeed 50ks.
Will get them replaced. Thanks!

Still no pics though.