Grateful Dead Music Forum

Hey all,

I'm wondering about what mods I should consider to make an Ibanez 2680 more "cowboy fancy" like. Major things I'd like to do are add a middle single coil, add coil taps for the hum-buckers, and replace the three-way switch with on/off for each pickup. Some questions:

The guitar I have doesn't have the original hum-buckers. Are the stock PUs in a 2680 basically PAF clones? Is there a PU you'd recommend?

What about the middle single coil? Any recommendations?

As for switches - where can I find the type of on/off switches for the pickups similar to what's on Cowboy?

I've done a bit of research about the MC400-500 active EQ that's in the cowboy guitar and that seems pretty interesting but they seem really difficult to come by. Is there a modern recommendation? Otherwise I might forgo that for now. Seems like something I could easily replicate with a pedal anyway.

Thanks so much!!

I have a complete set of Cowboy pickups you can use. I also have a complete Ibanez EQ that Weir used.

ace

I used to have an Ibanez 2680 Bob Weir Professional model. IIRC, the stock pickups were Ibanez Flying Fingers which are excellent pickups. The guitar was definitely on the heavy side and the neck was way chunky.

Bill, tgo

Think your best bet is to work with MK above.

But I'll start by giving generic advice:
- PAF type pickups. Peary Gates are good modern ones!
- The mini toggles are: series parallel and single
- Out of Phase switching was included as well

My main Weir type guitar uses the tone pot to engage OOP.

^^ recipe above for getting into the zone. There are other and more purist ways to get there.

Thanks for the tips! I’m getting those pickups and eq from MK and I’ll post more follow ups when the guitar’s all put together.

Dimarzio 35th Anniversary PAF's with an Area 61 in the middle. Series/Parallel/Single,

MK any other of the same PU’s lying around you’d like to unload? Looking for 3 myself.

Happy Chinese New Year guys, just about to pop Bobby on for the show tonight. Enjoy!

heymur1 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 12, 2021 6:44 pm MK any other of the same PU’s lying around you’d like to unload? Looking for 3 myself.

I have two of the three pickups. The last one you would need to find elsewhere.

If interested, PM me.

ace

I have a set of the virtual pafs available
T

To clarify: mine are DP197 & DP410 2.2. They were used on the first Cowboy production run as opposed to the 2nd production years later which had different pickups.

ace

https://ibb.co/VCKmwFr

Couldn't get the image upload to work so here's a link


Hey guys! Finally got the guitar back from Glaser instruments here in Nashville and I've had a while to experiment with it. It's awesome! My hope going into this project was that I'd have an instrument that could do both early 70s Bobby tones (335 esque) and the late 70s Cowboy stuff and this guitar knocks it out of the park for both. Instead of on/off toggles for each pickup, we opted to use a "freeway" 6-way toggle that fits where the original 3-way toggle was. This allows me to get neck, middle, and bridge each individually as well as bridge/middle, neck/bridge, and neck/middle. We also redid the volume tone controls so that the knob closest to the strings is a master volume. Then behind that is master tone with a push-pull knob for coil tap. The two bottom knobs are also push-pull for phase inversion for the neck and bridge PUs but don't actually function otherwise. I'll post some sound clips soon but I wanted to show y'all how great it came out. Thanks for the advice and thanks to MK for the PUs!

Looks great - can't wait to hear it!

ace

Had a quick question was hoping to get some feedback on. I'm having the cowboy pick ups installed on one of my guitars and basically having it set up to where I can set each of the pickups selected for single coil, I play mostly in the 2nd position, so would be using that bridge HB and middle pick up in single coil (NO onboard EQ). When I asked the guy to reverse the middle PU by wiring red to ground and green as hot, he pretty much said no, that it would put it out of phase and would sound horrible. He's starting to wire everything next week for me, should I push him to do this, or is there something maybe I'm presenting wrong to him? Sorry, my lack of knowledge on the electronics isn't helping.

PU's I'm using:
- Dimarzio Virtual PAF DP196 (neck)
- Dimarzio Virtual Vintage DP410 2.2
- Dimarzio Virtual PAF DP197 (bridge)

Any thoughts / suggestions would be much appreciated.

Thanks