Les Paul Standard Project with Planet Tone Pickups

For the record, None of my guitars are stock. I play aggressive music in drop tunings. I always replace my stock bridges, humbuckers and tuners.

Humbucker
I had been hearing great things about Planet Tone pickup co. After a few phone chats and emails with their staff I settled on the “Defiance” humbucker. “The Defiance humbucker offers a tasty mid range, and big bottom end for high power, high gain tone. Perfect for heavy styles of music” sold! They made me a custom “reverse zebra” HB. Amazing price, quality and lead time.
Wiring 
That leads me to pots and wiring. I wanted the most performance out of the pickup so I went with a Golden Age 500k pot wiring kit from Stew Mac. Wired “50s Style” since I honestly only use my bridge pickup and prefer the tone/volume versatility over modern wiring.
Hardware upgrades
Gotoh “Nashville Style” Tune-o-matic bridge and locking tuners. Gotoh is now installed on literally all my Les Paul’s and Fenders. TonePros are also great! And to tie it all together Taiss Amber top speed knobs.
Setup
This guitar is set for CGCFAD tuning so I needed a custom bone nut (NC Guitar works) to accommodate the string thickness and spacing. The nut was shaped and the whole project came together with the help of my amazingly talented friend Jason Racino.

Stringswing.com
Thank you to the amazing folks at String Swing for sending me all this gear to photograph guitars with.  Check them out for the coolest displays, racks and hangers

Scroll to Top