ikay

Indeed I do! Thanks, that's interesting. I guess odd pairings do work sometimes. And yes, it was your ML-112 that prompted the question!

Thanks for the replies and I'm glad I asked! That all makes perfect sense. I generally play small venues with backline only and am quite happy with my amp/cab combination (LMIII + Berg 112). Used to have two Berg 112s but rather foolishly sold one. That will teach me!

Specifically I'm considering pairing my Bergantino EX112ER (1x12 plus tweeter, front ported cab) with a Baer ML-112 (1x12 plus 6" mid driver, sealed cab). The idea being that the punch and upper mid detail of the Baer might complement the extended bottom and sweet top end of the Berg. I love the Berg on it's own but have also heard good things about the Baer and I'm wondering how well they'd work together. Or would their individually excellent sound qualities just cancel each other out and sound meeh? Is pairing up cabs from two different makers in any case something that's generally best avoided? Google didn't yield any useful insights so I'm hoping the combined experience of all you excellent and helpful BCers will! 😎

I think the biggest challenge will be finding a way to do it without sanding the existing finish back, at least to some extent, particularly if there's a build up of polish on top of the old finish. Personally I think it looks great in your pic, that sort of naturally aged and well worn look is a beautiful thing!

Excellent, well done!

This may help - https://www.redstarguitars.com/how-to-decode-cts-pot-numbers/ EP885 would seem to indicate a CTS pot made for Allparts.

For the neck (J) pickup, the white wire (hot) and the black+shield wires (cold) should just go where the original J hot and cold wires went which should be easy enough to spot. For the bridge (MM) pickup, the white and green (hot) wires should go to the switch where the original black and red wires went. It will work whichever way round they go (eg. white for black and green for red, or vice versa) but the order does determine which coil is tapped. Wire it up and if you're not happy with which coil is being tapped just swap the wires over. (Bartolini wiring code says red is neck coil and black is bridge coil) The brown+yellow+shield wires go to the pot lug where the original white+green+shield wires went.

One thing to watch out for is the number of frets - there are 20, 21 and 22 fret P/J necks out there. Best to swap like for like to avoid intonation and bridge position issues.

Your '87 sounds great, why do you need another one?!

Looks like an attempt at adding a treble bleed cap to the vol control to reduce loss of high frequencies when vol is backed off.

If you want it to sound like a regular single pickup P then it would be best to take the J vol pot completely out of circuit. To do this you need to break the wiring as shown by the green markers in the diagram below. If you leave the J pot connected then the P pickup is still seeing the load of both vol pots which results in a little loss of high end and a slight drop in output compared with a regular P. It's equivalent to running a regular P with the vol backed off about 20%. Not dramatic but enough to be noticeable. Depends what you're trying to achieve by disconnecting the J pup.

+1 All Lakland 5s are 19mm spacing.

It's most likely the TR200 pickups are passive, in which case you can replace them with any other passive pickup. If you want to run a test, disconnect one of the pickups from the preamp and connect it directly to the output jack. If you get a good strong signal then it's passive.

Have you looked on this archive page - https://support.fender.com/hc/en-us/articles/115000819563-Fender-Audio-Schematic-Archive

Yes, that all makes perfect sense.

Yes 500k vol pots would be brighter than 250k.

It's a simple mod but can you post a pic of your existing wiring?

Mmm, if that's the case then I stand corrected. My understanding is that the signal effectively bypasses the cap when the tone is maxed (wide open). The cap only really comes into play when you start turning the tone knob down. The cap then progressively bleeds high frequencies to ground. Not so?

If the tone is always maxed changing the cap won't make any difference.

A no-load tone pot when maxed will be exactly the same as a VV setup without a tone pot. Taking the tone pot out of circuit will be noticeably brighter. By how much is a bit hard to quantify. Instead of a VV setup you could have a single vol control and a three way switch (neck/both/bridge). That would be brighter still. Or you could dispense with pots altogether and just have a three-way pickup selector switch and an on/off kill-switch. That would be even brighter. Removing all of the pots might sound a bit brittle though. Depends what sort of sound you're after. Best way to find out is experiment with a few different wiring configs. The Fender Mark Hoppus model just has a single vol control (no tone) so that might be a useful benchmark for sound.

A loose tuning key? Hold the E tuning paddle when you play the string, see if that makes any difference.