gringopig's guitars
2020 Nik Huber Orca 59
This is Nik Huber's tribute to the Gibson 'burst. Sharing a similar aesthetic, this is a handmade guitar made from Spanish Cedar and flamed maple with a Brazilian rosewood fretboard and Häussel 1959 pickups with a flamed maple binding on the neck. It doesn't sound exactly like a Les Paul though!
Click on gallery for larger version
With the fascination for the Gibson les Paul from the late '50's, it's hardly surprising makers will offer tributes to this model. Gibson do enough of them and players love them with good reason. However, if you like the form of the guitar but want an alternative spin on it then makers like Nik Huber in Germany and Patrick James Eggle in the UK, along with Paul Reed Smith offer alternatives.
The attributes of the fabled 'burst are, in my view, a thicker body depth with maple cap with a carve, a control set with 2 humbuckers and twin tone and volume for each along with a set mahogany neck and 3 on each side tuners. A stop tailpiece and tune-o-matic might be considered a requirement also.
However, what makes this some totem? What is it about the 1957 to 1960 Gibson Les Paul guitars that has become so iconic?
I can't believe it is based on reality. So many people have an opinion and there are so few actual instruments out there that only a tiny percentage will have actual experience and with only 1 or possibly 2 instruments and from playing guitars even from the same year and run in the modern context of production, it is obvious that the myth is largely imaginary.
Often, the guitar used by an artist on iconic tracks which are assumed to be a Les Paul actually isn't. Jimmy Page often used a Telecaster in the studio and people assume he used his live equipment there too but it was a completely different guitar and a small combo amp.
Apparently but unless you were there who knows. That's the thing. So many assumptions, so much lore.
A les Paul does have a certain sound though and it is the solidity of the sound, the sustain and the high end qualities that make the guitar so iconic.
So this Orca 59 has the body depth of the 'burst but it takes the template and plays with it. The neck tone control has a coil split on any pickup combination. The scale length is 25" unlike Gibson which is significant in of itself. It does have a Brazilian rosewood fingerboard (with CITES certificate) but the binding is flamed maple not plastic and the body is a 2 piece Spanish Cedar. It's actually a Mahogany not a Cedar weirdly so the construction is similar but not identical.
It has a very easily marked finish on the body top and not a glossy finish but is a semi-gloss nitro cellulose.
It's a superbly made guitar. It really is. Nik Huber runs a small workshop in Germany with 8 builders. Economies of scale don't really work here and, sure, it costs.
Most importantly, in sounds good. It sounds bouncy and resonant with a unique tone. It doesn't sound like a Les Paul to me. It shares the depth and punch but has a voice of its own. I played my Gibson Les Pauls back to back with it and all the Gibsons sounded as a group with variation but the Huber was different entirely.
Now, the urge to mod is great and after my pal bought a set of Mojo NOS wire PAF humbuckers and let me try them, I placed an order as well. They sounded fantastic and, as much as I love the Huber, the Häussel humbuckers didn't have the air that I liked about Gibson Custombuckers and I believe the reason is that the Häussel pickups are intensively potted. There is no 'ting' to them as you tap the cover and consequently, the guitar does have a pronounced mid hump, especially with the bridge position which is further away from the bridge than a normal Les Paul style guitar.
I took the Häussel pickups out in preparation:
I had a couple of Gibson pickup surrounds from an R7 and I noted that the Häussel neck pickup had a surround that wasn't slanted as a Gibson is, so I got the sandpaper out and sanded it flat so the pickup coils of the new Mojo pickups were going to be parallel to the strings.
Now, the Mojo humbuckers have what many might ridicule: NOS wire. Marc, the guy behind Mojo describes these as such...
Description
These are my take on the infamous 59 PAF’s, made with cloned vintage-spec parts.
N.O.S vintage 42awg Plain Enamel wire, I think I have enough wire for 100 sets, once these are gone they are gone. They’ll be boxed in limited edition boxes that will be individually numbered.
USA made butyrate bobbins.
Machine wound with USA made 42awg Plain Enamel wire from wooden spools, correct turns per layer as the vintage pickups.
Cloned roughcast alnico 5 magnets, formulated from vintage magnets.
Covers are nickel silver, copperless plating and correct dimpled pole screw holes.
Baseplates are nickel silver with L shaped tooling marks on the legs.
Correct alloy poles and slugs.
Maple spacer.
Braided two-strand hookup wire.
Neck 7.3K and Bridge 8.3K.
Who knows what vintage wire does to the sound. You might argue that the gauge of the wire and the subsequent spacing makes some element of the inductance change due to wire tightness around the bobbin. The affect on signal impedance (resistance of the wire, capacitance in wire length and inductance of the coil wind) must be pretty minimal at the frequencies that an electric guitar works with but you never know. Marc doesn't pot his pickups though and I heard a set first hand and really liked how they sounded in a Les Paul so cynicism be damned.
I took the 4 wire Häussel pickups out by de-soldering the coil split connection made to the CTS push-pull pot switch connection, the ground from the switch and the connection to the potentiometer for both pickups and removed them along with the surrounds in case I want to put them back at some point. I am keeping the CTS switch pot in even though it will do nothing. It's a quality potentiometer.
In went the Mojo pickups and I noted that Huber use a TAD silver mica 250pF capacitor between input and wiper on each volume pot as a treble bleed. I kept that on.
So here's a gallery of how it looks now:
Click on gallery for larger version
Was it worth it?
Absolutely!
I now have all the upper end air that was missing with the Häussel pickups. It has the 'ting' and the 'chirp' but retains the slight nasal character due to the placement of the bridge pickup. Very nice and I am glad I did it. Plus the double white coils look stunning on the flame top. A really great look.
You can find Mojo pickups here and Marc has some cool pickup designs for sale!
I have done a demo for you to watch. Choose 1080p and click on the chapters to move about. In the end screen there are links to the 2 previous demos. Part 1 has the full humbuckers and Part 2 has the coil split which has now been banished!
