Well, here it is – the Rally GL400 upgraded to a ‘Black Beauty’ style 3-pickup guitar. I’m happy with how this went and also with how it sounds now. I think (it’s hard to be sure) that the middle pickup is ‘out of phase’ with the other two – but the effect is very subtle. On many guitars the ‘OOP’ tone can be a fully scooped, thin sound. But on this it’s just a hint – and because the middle pickup has its own volume control you can feed (or blend) in as much ‘OOP’ effect as you like via that volume knob.
The only downside of this upgrade was that I managed to break one of the CTS pots while tightening it up. The circuitboard ‘wafer’ stuff broke and I think the output got disconnected. Whatever it was I swapped it out for a full-size CTS pot which fixed the issue. Overall these Rally GL series Les Paul copies are superb and this job has me hankering after another one…. soon!
In case you were wondering, the missing knob was rescued from the shed and re-attached and the green tape labels are to remind the owner of the new configuration which is basically Neck Vol, Bridge Vol, Middle Vol and Master tone.