BLAcK MAgic

Thanks for the excellent feature on the Gibson ‘Black Beauty’ in last month’s edition. I’ve loved the look of the black and gold ever since a schoolteacher let me play his when I was 11 years old in 1982. I’ve been trying to rediscover that feeling of playing something so special (and valuable!) since then, and have ended up buying an Epiphone Black Beauty, which gets me close.

Your article didn’t cover the wide variety of options for wiring up three pickups to a three-way selector switch and four knobs. The original wiring of my Epiphone had the middle pickup selected by pulling on one of the tone controls. While this allowed any combination of pickups to be selected, the lack of a volume – or tone – control for the middle pickup meant I rarely used it as getting the levels balanced was too difficult.

I have had the guitar re-wired with a six-way rotary selector switch plus a separate volume control for each pickup and a master tone control. This gives me access to all pickup combinations except all three on at the same time. I have also swapped out the neck and bridge pickups for P90 clones and left the middle pickup as the original humbucker. This way I can get a huge variety of tones from a very playable guitar that, despite looking very ‘bling’, is also an excellent workhorse. Peter Platt, via email Thanks Peter, the soldering iron is warming up now. Your P90/’bucker combo sounds great!