Anyone Alter Their ES1 Pickup/Preamp?

[tedtan]

I have a 2010 814ce with the ES1.3 pickup system and preamp, which allows me to choose either 1) the magnetic pickup by itself, or 2) the magnetic pickup combined with the soundboard transducers. I would like to switch that around so that I can access the soundboard transducers by themselves so this system will (hopefully) play a little nicer with the Audio Sprockets Tonedexter preamp.

Anyone ever done this or have any experience working on the ES1.3 pickups and preamp?

[tedtan]

I didn't think many, if any at all, would have any experience with this, so I contacted Taylor as well. And, just in case anyone else is looking into this in the future, I'll post the gist of Taylor's response here.

According to Taylor, this is a fairly easy mod that can be accomplished "simply" by swapping where each pickup lead plugs into the preamp (e.g., plugging the neck magnetic pickup lead into the jack the sound boad transducers are currently plugged into, and vice versa). This still entails removing the preamp from the guitar in order to access it, but shouldn't be more than an extra 5 minutes of work next string change. Plus, if it does not work out, it can be easily returned to Taylor's factory configuration.

[Edward]

Tell us what you hear after the mod.  I know I’m curious!

Edward

[tedtan]

Will do, Edward.

I still need to buy the Tonedexter, but once I have it, I'll try to post some clips so everyone can hear the difference between the various pickup configurations for themselves, both with and without the Tonedexter.

[Edward]

Sounds great, Ted!  Not only am I curious about the tonal diff, but especially interested in how it handles feedback rejection: that is, body sensors only vs whole system.

FWIW, years back when I had played my ES Taylors (versions 1.1 and 1.2) with floor monitors and full band (full acoustic drum kit, mind you), the ES was unbeatable, allowing lots of gain-before-feedback, and still offering a quality acoustic tone as opposed to UST/piezo systems that had the typical quack.  I've not since had played an ES1.3 such under loud conditions (things have changed since then, natch), but can only imagine that feedback rejection is same if not better since there is only one set of body sensors instead of two.  Not sure if you'll be able to test GBF with this ES-mod, but I'd certainly be curious about this, as well as the tone.

Edward