Leaderboard

Looking for the most tech reasons for the volume problem, I completely lost track of the low tech and obvious; I raised the single pickups and lowered the humbucker. The humbucker is still a little bit more powerful than the singles, but I can live with that. Ok that's the volume sorted, and I'm sure the problem with the tone pot is down to who I bought it from. An arrogant seller that agreed to sort through his CTS audio taper pots to find two that are higher than 500k (these pots are sold as 500 but can be as low as 420k), well one was 514 the other was no where near, I'm guessing the 514 that I used for the tone wasn't audio taper either. I deliberately went out to find higher than usual 500k pots as I wanted this Yamaha to be bright. After finding out CTS sell their pots as 500k but could actually be anything, I took my multi meter to my two les pauls, yup they're only 420k all eight of them. Ok, back to my brand new Yamaha top of the Pacifica range 612VIIFMX . The shop said it would be all set up from Yamaha when I get it, erm no it wasn't not even close to being anywhere near set up. Seeing the wire adrift and crackly Alfa pots, and kinked G string they agreed to fix the problems and set it up properly as agreed before I purchased it. So it went back to them, and back to me, and all the luthier had done was to change the string and solder the wire up. While he was there he butchered most of the screw holes in the wood for me. I complained, and they said sent it back and we will have another go. At this point I thought about a brand new Ferrari in the hands of a moron, who's job it was to wash the car; so out comes the bucket of soapy water and a Brillo pad. Do you ask him to do it again? Not a chance! After re-wiring, pot change, phase mod, and proper setting up, it sounds an feels so much more than it did stock, even with a doggy tone pot. Thanks for your input

Thanks Douglas it clarifies a few things very well, starting from the flashing LEDs...

No, it's not affecting the signal until the LED bar starts to react. The 'Compression' level is the right-hand knob; turning this up will adjust for lower-level input signals. Top tip..? Turn all of the knobs to 'twelve o'clock' to start with. This 'top tip' works for 80% of everything in Life, and even more with Fx pedals. Once you've 12-o'clocked the controls, adjust the 'Comp' knob to see (and hear...) what effect it has (yes, whilst playing, you fool; it does nothing if you stop playing..!). Use the 12-o'clock as a starting point to adjust, one by one, each control separately, returning each to the centre each time. Then start combining, and listen to the result. Compressors can be a bit of a 'rabbit hole', but I'd suggest, without knowing this particular model that 12 o'clock should not be a rubbish setting, so, if it pleases, use it as a baseline and tweak around that. Hope this helps. Douglas

Side dots…so easy to rush and make them look messy, especially the 12th fret. And ish the part that the player will be looking at most.