I was looking for an archtop. I finally bought a second-hand Epiphone ES-339 Pro. I also tried the Sheraton 2, which has a better look, but I prefered the 339 neck and overall comfort.

I was not satisfied by the pickups, the Epiphone humbuckers with coil tapping. I don't fight these pickups bad, but I find that they lack some personality. That, and I find the bridge pickup a little week. Finally, the coil tapping just brings more weekness. I never was convinced by coil-tapping.

I was curious to try some P90 pickups. A review written by Joe Gore made me discover some humbucker-sized pickup sete : P90 review roundup. I chosed the GFS Mean 90 set, since they seems to be good enough for their low price. A set of Gibson or Seymour pickups would have costed as much as my cheap second-hand Epiphone !

As I replaced the humbuckers by single-coil pickups, I have to replace the push-pull potentiometer by simple ones. In the movement, the hard and noisy pickup selector can be replaced too.

Just about to begin, I realized the first difficulty. Unlike a solid body, there's no access from behind the body. Electronic parts must be removed from the holes.

I removed the pickups, and after that the potentiometers, the pickup selector and the jack input. Some advices on internet to tie components with some threads, to be able to replace them in the end. I tried that and only got a lot of knots.

Next is the pickups and potentiometers replacement. As I am not a great solderer, it's not quite easy. But it was the easier part :-)

It is now time to reintegrate all components into the body. The pickups are the easy part. I then mounted one string to be able to test all that. There's sound !

Installing the others components is somewhat harder. You have to have very thin fingers to work inside the guitar body. I found easier to put the threads through the holes at this time to place the components. To get the thread in the body, a crochet works fine. Once you get the thread through the hole, a small knot on the part and it finds its place easily.

Once done, I was badly surprised : I switched the volume pots. But the tone pots were not, so there's no way I let this like that ! I have to remove the components, mark them, I put them in once again. Second time is easier. Small tip : a bit of colour on on the pots help to put them in the right place.

But another bad surprise was coming. I bought cool Duesenberg buttons to replace the ugly black ones. I discovered that not all buttons fit on all potentiometers. Once screwed, they do not fit straight. These buttons are for solid pins and my knobs have notched axes. When I install them, they are all wrong... I tried to use the sleeves to go into full axes, but after that the buttons no longer fitonto the pots at all. In the end, to get the buttons straight, screw the button in the palm of the potentiometer shaft . This requires aligning all the knobs in order to get the buttons aligned, otherwise it looks like crap !

Then, the test ! These pickups sound fabulous ! In clean sound, it has a share of slamming as simples, but not cristal clean. It is rather full of body, I love. The neck pickup has lot of presence. The intermediate position is absolutely superb. Crunch or a fuzz, they are punchy. Thing I did not expect, saturated or heavily saturated sound it sound great also. In the end, these pickups brings a great versatility.

I recommand these !

The Owl is an open-source programmable stompbox. It is now available after a successful kickstarter campaign.

Here is my first patch for the Owl : PsycheFilter

This is a filter inspired by the Moog VCF filter, with cutoff and resonance controls.

The resonance can be modulated with controlable speed for a psychedelic effect.

The sample shows some presets:

• clean sound: bypassed, fat or treble filter, modulated
• fuzz sound: bypassed, fat filter, modulated

The patch controls are:

• Resonance : the resonance amount
• Cutoff : the filter cutoff frequency
• Modulation : the modulation speed
• Level : the dry/wet mix