The old masters didn't have fancy rigs, lots of pedals, crazy modeling amps—sometimes they didn't even have an electric guitar. I'm not planning to become a Tone Luddite but I do get that a killer tone without a ton of gadgets comes down to the guitar and my fingers. The latter is a journey, and a long one, but the former can be mitigated on a much sorter timeframe.
The past couple of days I've been making over my PRS Zach Myers as a "vintage" guitar. I installed a set of '59 Seymour Duncan "Vintage Blues" pickups; quite Old Skool, down to the single wire with a metal braid wrapper for hooking it up. I also studied the old wiring methods and, in the '50s, guitars were wired in a certain way that didn't need tricks like treble bleed circuits and all that. Also, they were wired so when you selected both pickups you could still control each one separately with its knob. Most guitars nowadays lose treble clarity when you use lower volumes (seems most kids these days want to shred at paint-peeling volumes) and in dual pickup mode dialing down one affects the other.
So, the deed is done.
Initial tests are quite promising and I'm going to be splitting this weekend's play time between practicing that Joe Walsh song on my new 12 string acoustic and wringing out some soulful bluesy licks on this monster so I can learn what I've created.
Mark