Monoprice Indio Classic V2 Pickup Swap - Duncan Designed Detonator and EY Alnico Hot Rail

The Guitar

Monoprice Indio Classic V2 in stock form.

I impulsively bought a Monoprice Indio Classic V2 guitar to use as a project for some pickups I had lying around. With the help of a coupon code, the guitar cost $54 + tax to get shipped to me. 

The guitar itself is decently built for its normal price point. The frets are a bit scratchy, but less so than the other Monoprice Indio Classic V2 that I have. The guitar came set up with no fret buzz. The tuners are not high ratio, so it’s easy to overshoot the pitch when tuning up if I am in a rush.

The stock pickups are bright sounding, and don’t have much bottom end. The pickups don’t feel great to play through, but the recorded sound is not as bad as I thought.

I previously had a Duncan Designed Detonator and two EY hot rail pickups in a HSS configuration in a Squier Strat. I thought these pickups would be suitable replacements for the stock Monoprice pickups. 

Duncan-Designed Detonator

I bought a Duncan-Designed Detonator pickup some time in the mid-2000s. I enjoyed the sound of the pickup, but started gravitating towards lower output pickups as I got older. The pickup is high output and has a lot of low end information. I would later learn that the pickup was based off a Duncan Distortion rather than an Invader.

The paint on the Hex screws was presumably coming off from age. I came across other users who had the paint come off their Detonator/Invaders hex screws, and ended up sanding off the paint. I did the same, loading each screw in a drill to sand off against a sanding sponge.

Half of the hex bolts sanded.

Cleaned up Detonator.

The pickup’s measured DC resistance was 16.92kohm. 

EY Alnico V Hot Rail Pickup

I bought an 11kohm Alnico V dual rail pickup (part # EY-DRP580-BL) from EY Guitar Parts sometime back in 2016 for under $12. I had read favorable comparisons of it to GFS and Artec rail pickups at that time. The pickup sounded good as a series neck humbucker. I preferred playing the pickup in parallel in the neck position, but will keep it as a series humbucker for this guitar.

Pickups swapped in.

I wired up the Detonator per the online documentation (green-hot, black-ground), and had to flip the polarity of the EY Hot Rail (black-hot, red-ground) for the middle position to sound right.

The Detonator is thick and compressed sounding, which is something I don’t currently get out of my other guitars. There is much more low end available than the stock pickup. I might set this guitar up to drop down 1 step, since I have more classic sounding guitars in standard tuning.

Neural Amp Modeler

I decided to check out Neural Amp Modeler out of curiosity, and the fact that it is free. I've been wavering about purchasing IK's ToneX, but will probably eventually join the ecosystem. 

I immediately tried to capture my Plexi circuit amp through a Suhr Reactive Load. I used the provided v2_0_0.wav file to reamp into my typical settings. I am still trying to get a grasp on ESR and number of Epochs for a sufficient capture. Other users on the NAM Facebook group informed me that 1000 Epochs for high gain and 500 Epochs for lower gain was typical. 

Using the Google Colab set up by NAM, training a 1000 Epoch model takes about 1 hour and 40 minutes. I am surprised that a 290kb NAM file can contain such a detailed snapshot of my amp. I also like that the plugin is straightforward, laid out without bloated effects and features.

1986 and 1987 (5000pF) capture demo.

Fender Pro Junior IV capture demo.

5E3 Capture Demo.

I've found a lot of useful captures of amp types on ToneHunt and the NAM Facebook group that I don't have in my collection. The amp selection is skewed towards high gain amps (Mesas, modded Marshalls, 5150s) , but there are some lower gain varieties as well. Some users have provided the dBu calibration information, which makes it as close to virtually connecting to someone's setup as it can get.

To be continued.