The New Monique Project: new pickups, new wiring, new look

[k o y l]

Héhé yeah... but you can add that a lot of fast Telephone songs have pretty stupid lyrics if you consider them without the music ("ça c'est vraiment toi" is the perfect exemple!)
One fast song that's great in French is "Les Ecorchés Vifs" by Noir Désir.. the strong meaning is there, the words sounds awesome on the music.... but it's true that the guy is a genius at writing lyrics.

Les Rita Mitsouko have great lyrics on fast songs too... but apart from them: nothing !

Another thing, and I think it's cultural, is lyrics in English translate very bad in french.. if you sing 100% by Sonic Youth in french, people would throw things at you and laugh to death.. and if you want to express the same feelings in French, it would need way more long and complicated sentences.. and the music would have to be very different.

Another reason why I write in English: I won't be in the next Apple commercial if I sing in French.. 
(I'm joking but I feel like it's one of the only for a band to have big coverage fastly these days... A french band "the hushpuppies" is now very famous only because one of their song was featured in a TV ad... )

[Gordon]

Les Rita Mitsouko have great lyrics on fast songs too... but apart from them: nothing !

Don't forget Tété, which has an amazing pace in his singing. And he's an amazing writer too!

[k o y l]

Les Rita Mitsouko have great lyrics on fast songs too... but apart from them: nothing !

Don't forget Tété, which has an amazing pace in his singing. And he's an amazing writer too!

yes , he writes great lyrics. 

[dain]

Les Rita Mitsouko have great lyrics on fast songs too... but apart from them: nothing !

les ritas mitsouko ROCKED!  that's what i'm talkin about!  i BOUGHT those albums BECAUSE they were in french!

same with franqois hardy!  i would proabably buy an ipod if the music was in french!

[eupat]

this is a great example of what I like in french music :
deportivo - 1000 moi-même

[k o y l]

this is a great example of what I like in french music :
deportivo - 1000 moi-même

I liked the 1st album very much, especially the lyrics... but didn't buy their 2nd one because it's seems too much like they made the 1st one again.

Les Rita Mitsouko have great lyrics on fast songs too... but apart from them: nothing !

les ritas mitsouko ROCKED!  that's what i'm talkin about!  i BOUGHT those albums BECAUSE they were in french!

same with franqois hardy!  i would proabably buy an ipod if the music was in french!

... you have to admit Françoise Hardy doesn't RAWK as hard as the ritas mitsouko... 

[eupat]

this is a great example of what I like in french music :
deportivo - 1000 moi-même

I liked the 1st album very much, especially the lyrics... but didn't buy their 2nd one because it's seems too much like they made the 1st one again.

at first, I didn't liked so much the second album, but after several listenings, it's very good.
I saw them last month, and it was an amazing gig !!

[dain]

... you have to admit Françoise Hardy doesn't RAWK as hard as the ritas mitsouko... 

hardy rocked as hard but in a different way.    were'nt a lot of stereolab's songs in french, didn't hurt their marketabliity much 

[k o y l]

I'm forced to wake up this thread because new things happened...

I decided top change the pickups on the guitar.
I can't get into the Jm-HC and prefer my JM-V on my other Jazzmaster way much. This one is already sold.
I still like the Jm-FatT but I'll use this guitar in my noisypostpunkposthardcoreindustrial song oriented project and it dooesn't correspond well to the music.

What I did last week is trying every way possible to try to fit the DeArmond 2k originally destined to my White blonde JM project: I've really fight with them to make them fit without routing the guitar (not that I don't want to, but the thing is it requires a very special routing and I'm not sure to like the pups !) but it just can't be done.... so I'll sell those soon.
l finally decided to choose more or less the same pup configuration than the one on my OTM Jazzmaster, in a cheaper version (no Novaks this time): I'll go for a Phat Cat bridge and an AVRI neck pup. I'll also experiment with different wiring configurations.

The white blonde JM won't have the DeArmond 2k: I decided to wait till I have the money to buy TV Jones pup and a custom guard for them.

[k o y l]

So: I received the Phat Cat last week and did the wiring.

In order to have to not route the body too much and to have the PC holding stronger in place, I unscrewed the pole pieces so the enter the pup cover holes. I had the file those holes a bit too to make them fit..

I routed the JM body too...

My first plan was to keep the PC as it is but when I installed it I still had to snap the mounting tabs off.

The wiring is a little special.
There are 2 3 pos switch:
- 1 is the trad pup selector. I put it in place of the volume pot.
- The other one is a on-on-on 3 pos switch and it selects the output of the pup selector to go to the volume pot OR Direct to the output OR to a 0.001 cap then to output
There's only a vol pot.
I kept the piezo but replace the 1meg volume pot by a 1 meg resistor.
I changed the kill switch for a bigger one.

it looks like this inside:


The Neubauten sticker didn't survive the mods: it went half off when I removed the guard (it was a very bad quality sticker). I removed it but it left a huge amount of glue on the guard: I tried every thing to clean it but nothing worked ! So I cobered it with gaffer tape. 

All was ready, I was just waiting for the AVRI pup and installed it as soon as I found it in the mail box yesterday.

I played it and the results are kind of odd.
I read everywhere the AVRI pup are on the harsh side but it's darker than my novak neck on the OTM Jazzmaster.. ...  Maybe that's because I didn't put a treble bleed mod in this guitar.. I'll put one and see.
Otherwise this AVRI pup is sounding nice, The Phat Cat too... both are a little bit too much on the dark side to me but not too much..
The middle position is way too thin sounding.. I suspect the pups to be out of phase... Will it make a difference if I physically reverse the AVRI pup ??

All position on the On-On-On switch works but the cap is too big: the sound is good on the PC but too thin on the AVRI.
I can't hear no difference between the direct sound and the pot sounds when the pot is at max.. which is kind of weird..

Oh and here is how it looks now:

[theworkoffire]

Great! Looks exciting. I'm not surprised you can't hear any difference with a 1meg vol pot. If you had a 250/500k you'd hear it more, I'm sure. Maybe you need to think of something else to do with that position?

You know you don't need any of those ground wires with your guard being shielded...

The ones that go from the jack to the vol and from the vol to the switch etc. are just duplicating the signal path through the guard and taking up space.

Good luck getting it sounding right! 

[ohm-men]

If the middles sounds too thin, then the pups are likely out of phase as you said.
You can swap the hot and ground on the AVRI pu. I did a simelar thing on a Tele (SD QP bridge with stock US std neck) When wired up correctly, the mid was way too thin, so I swapped the Hot and ground on the neck pu and the result was a very nice sounding mid position.

[k o y l]

Great! Looks exciting. I'm not surprised you can't hear any difference with a 1meg vol pot. If you had a 250/500k you'd hear it more, I'm sure. Maybe you need to think of something else to do with that position?

I'll see after I have put the treble bleed thing.. because I think I never used the right cap and resistor values for that and it might add a slight amount of treble even when the pot is on 10. I'm thinking this because the treble blled is supposed to re-inject the amount of treble that is lost when the po is down so you have the same sounds atless than 10 than on 10... and I recently notice that on my OTM JM, when I put the volume down with a fuzz I have the same kind of results than with the bass cut switch  on the Aria, which is really cool because when the vol. is on 9 I have a very clear but still Hi Gain fuzz sound  that allow me to play complex sounding chords and hear every notes of it and when I put it on 10 I have the huge thickness coming.

And with the direct/pot sound available with the switch, I can go from a volume down sound to the direct (equivalent to vol on 10) sound very quickly and without looking at the knob.

You know you don't need any of those ground wires with your guard being shielded...

The ones that go from the jack to the vol and from the vol to the switch etc. are just duplicating the signal path through the guard and taking up space.

yes i'm a little paranoid at times..   

If the middles sounds too thin, then the pups are likely out of phase as you said.
You can swap the hot and ground on the AVRI pu. I did a simelar thing on a Tele (SD QP bridge with stock US std neck) When wired up correctly, the mid was way too thin, so I swapped the Hot and ground on the neck pu and the result was a very nice sounding mid position.

Thanks, I 'll try that. 

[eupat]

very nice!
I like the kill switch, looks like a mini pinball button 

for the glue on your pickguard, you should try to buy in a pharmacy some sort of alcohol used for removing "elastoplast"

[k o y l]

Thanks. 

I tried everything on the glue: Medical alcohol, nail gloss cleaner, I even tried to sand it but all it did is put the glue in another place !    I think this thing is alive...