Deaf Eddie's version of the Jimmy Page Setup
Ah, the venerable Jimmy Page Les Paul wiring setup!
I was involved in a forum thread a while ago were another player was looking for a CORRECT DRAWING of the Jimmy Page four-push-pulls wiring set-up, as is offered on the Gibson JP Signature Model LP. The poor guy had looked high and low and found several drawings, but none seemed correct. Sez he, he finally contacted Gibson and received a schematic for the set up. He then turned that schematic into a simple wiring diagram, a copy of which he e-mailed to me, essentually to "check his work." I found his drawing to be a very good representation of this type of modification, and had posted it here for anyone else who wanted to try this setup.
HOWEVER, as I cannot confirm the origin of the drawing I originally recieved, to insure that I do not infringe on copyrighted materials, I have removed the drawing from my website. There are a few versions of this scheme available on the GuitarElectronics site...
If you check my drawings collection page, you will find more examples of the type of mods that are included in the Jimmy Page mod, which is actually just three or four mods in one...
I also got an e-mail from a player who wanted to do the JP mod to his Epiphone. He had some four-conductor pups, but the JP mod would not work with his three-lug pup selector switch (thanks to Scott Milligan for bringing this to my attention). I took a look, did a little head-scratching, and came up with my own version of the "JP mod." It will work with ANY pup toggle switch, and only requires that your pups have a coil-shunt lead - they do NOT have to be four-wire. This is good news not only for the Epiphone crowd, but for many Gibson players who have standard humbuckers - it's an easy mod to get a coil-shunt lead off of a standard humbucker, but can be a messy, nail-biting horror to try and make them four-conductor. The biggest difference? My version lifts the ground of the neck pup, which puts the tones in a slightly different order. It also only shunts to the screw coil of the neck pup, never the slug coil. Can you hear the difference? I can't... anyway, it still gives you the 21 different combos, and certainly captures the essence of the original Jimmy Page mod.
The TONE CHART in MS Word document format.
I'm also posting my improvement on this setup, which I installed in my new Tele. It's a custom thinline body from CST Custom Guitars (yep, my ol' pal Sherman), cut for two humbuckers, and it has the standard Gibson two-volume/two-tone control layout. It's a killer! Take a look!
The TONE CHART in MS Word document format.
For MY setup (which REQUIRES the bridge pup to be four-wire), I have made a change or two:
I put the coil-shunt for BOTH pups on the same switch (so, you lose the single-coil/humbucker mix tones).
I have used the switch that was freed up by that change to select between wiring the coils of the bridge pup in series (regular humbucker setup) or PARALLEL . In my experience (with my Les Paul Custom, featured elsewhere on my website) I find that PARALLELING the coils in the bridge pup will give you a nice single-coil tone, but is a bit fatter/louder than a straight coil-shunt on that pup - plus, it's still humbucking. So you get a couple of new "all-coils-parallel" tones in the place of the single coil/humbucker combos.
I moved the phase reverse over to the neck pup side, so that when you changed phase, it also changed which coil of the neck pup was active. Here's why: IN phase, the coil closest to the bridge is active, and when you go to the "bridge-pup coils in PARALLEL" mode from there, you get the three coils closest together to sound, all in parallel- very Fender-y. But, on the neck pup solo, I like the sound of the screw coil (farthest from the bridge). So if you're on the neck pup, solo, and reverse the phase, instead of no effect it switches which neck coil you hear...
Check out my LAST word on the subject - my ES-333 four push/pull scheme! Some fun, eh?
