NAD - My AFD Has Arrived - FINALLY!

[surfnorthwest]

The VM is much more open and Fenderish sounding.

[Slashwannabe1]

Where do you think the pickups should ne on a Les Paul to make it sound fat then? Back before high gain amps people often had their pickups as close to the strings as they could. I´ve heard that having the strings too close can mess with the intonation on the guitar.

What I've noticed in my pickup forays is that initially I used to think closer the better but recently I've found out that a magnet too close ruins your sustain & string vibrations. Now a bridge pickup sitting close to the string isn't really a problem because at that point on the guitar the pickups magnet has litte effect on string vibration, while a neck pickup set too high can eat your tone & sustain.

Since setting my neck pickup lower I've noticed several things from it...my tone has been much more balanced, more sustain,clear & juicy tone and my ear seems to think actually more distortion/output because the strings are louder from not being held back by the pickup magnets being so close.

What you lose in output by having the strings close you'll gain in sustain and louder strings which to me seems to give more clear gain/distortion and juicy tone. You'll notice even with the guitar unplugged that it seems to be louder and more life to it...even with old strings like mine had when I did it lol

Also where you can control the tone from being thin or fat is when you adjust one side of the pickup higher or lower....for instance if you adjust the bottum side of one pickup higher than the top half of that same pickup you'll have a thinner sound, likewise if you adjust the top half of a pickup higher than the lower it will be more bass & fat. I keep mine equally set for a perfect balance between highs & lows.

I actually figured this out when my buddies SG had a more Slash tone than I had with stock Gibson pickups, then I kinda figured it had to be pickup height I was having wrong because the Alnico 2s should nail that tone...lowered the neck pickup and tone on all the pickups increased 10x.

This is what Slash uses 1/8 inch for the bridge and 7/32 inch for the neck, measured from the highest fret on your guitar pressed down, so measure from the bottum of the string with fret 22 for instance pushed down. I was suprised when I measured that my bridge pickup was the same as Slash's height, but lowering the neck to his specs is what opened up the sound for me in all phases of my guitars tone & playability.

Oh and this is one of my attempts at the #34 kinda tone with the VM...



Theres a couple things I need to dial in, I've been messing around with the presence a bit as well as volume levels, but overall in person and on my computer speaks and headphones it sounds an awful lot like it. I'd recommend anyone listening to it to use headphones and the stock Windows EQ settings. (it sounds horrible on my sisters computer rig that I'm listening to it on now lol...but in person and on my machine its great). Definitely a decent pair of headphones will do it jutice.