Help with finishing,and active with passive pick-up

[Dominic Rocheleau]

I have 2 problems right now.
1- I have tried to dye and clearcoat a circular spot on a Gibson Les Paul Black peghead,with diferent technics and product, but always seems to get that grey color after sanding...With some advice I order some Aniline black dye, I have some Ur-50 retarder bought in a car paint shop.I have spray guns airbrush guns also. But what is the trick or the process or technic should I try now???

Really need someone's help.

2- I want to install an active bridge EMG pickup in my Telecaster, and keep the neck passive Humbucking pickup already in place.Ther is a volume pot, Blend control, a Les Paul 3 ways switch, and a 2 ways toggle switch on it.See the schematic attach file.
How should i wire it to all that control?

Thank you

Dominic Rocheleau

[Frank Ford]

The bad news is that black is one of the hardest colors to match for touchup. I don't count on ever getting it right unless I do the entire surface.

[Russell Vance]

Franks on the money here, one of our principle repairs are Gibson pegheads, which are not crashworthy, and they are the basis for my retirement fund. The secret to matching gibson MOP INLAYED pehead finishes lies in knowing their schedule for refinishing: The fibre face plates for les paul (Custom style with the split diamonds esp) are naturally grey and to correct this and give a nice consistent black Gibson spray with black, clean up the inlays and binding and then spray the whole face with a black shader coat (black dye tinted nitrocellulose lacquer) - the bright MOP is hardly changed in shade by this coat and the clear coats following give everything nice enhanced depth. That has been the normal for these pegheads when we have stripped down the finishes layer by layer.

Beware that the gold decal (les paul) application is different - the decal goes over the black and the clear goes over the decal and the decal is easily damaged when finish sanding - especially with the skinny vintage nitro finishes on some of the reissues etc.

Black is hard to match because normal black is not black but some shade of gray/charcoal =- you need to put some dye in the lacquer to real get it jet black - Refinish the spot with some black dyed laquer (black, black. as it is known) and then apply a mild shader over the whole face and then some clear coats. That what I know.

[Russell Vance]

Actives and passives are mutually exclusive - Emgs use 25k pots and passives use 250/500k pots to load and control the volume and control circuits. Trying to connect the two types of pickups together (for the middle sound on a Tele for instance) is just plain hard to do. I recall that EMG had a switchable buffer amplifier which impedance matched the EMG to a passive circuit but haven't looked for a long time at that solution.
I have wired up a 5 way/four pole Mega switch to handle passives and actives together with some loading resisters etc but it was an expensive nightmare and didn't work too well anyway. Alternatively, Quit: EMGs seldom qualify for tone enhancement awards being more useful for the metal and driving effects genre - which they do very well. Stick an EMG 85/89 pup in the neck and save yourself a bunch of money and time - they will also sound OK when working together. Brutal solution , but practical. Rusty.