The OLP MM1. Looks count.

This is the story of the complicated relationship I have with MiMi, an OLP MM1.


The Search

After playing a Stratocaster for a long time and a bunch of other single coil guitars, I wanted to play/have a double humbucker guitar.  I didn't have that kind of sound in any of my guitars.  As you remember, I like to buy cheapish guitars because if they fall out of favour andI want to mod them, I have no compunction about doing so.

I had tried several Les Pauls, the classic HH guitar, but they didn't appeal to me.  Too heavy, too close to my weirdo Marauder, and I could not get a decent unmuddy sound out of one on any of my amps.  For some reason, I got it in my head I wanted a Wolfgang.

Don't get me wrong, I love Eddie Van Halen, but I don't really play like him and the stuff I play does not sound like him.  I think I wanted a Wolfgang is because the reviews I read of the Wolfgang guitar said that those guitars were easy to play and had brightish sounding humbuckers in both positions.  So I went in search of an EVH non-Frankenstein guitar.

Found

On EBay, I found an OLP MM1 which was a Ernie Ball licensed knockoff of its own Music Man Axis, except with a photoflame finish (I didn't know what that was) and a non-locking Fender style trem system.  I didn't care about this because I wasn't going to big dive bombs on this guitar.  The best thing about this: $90!  An HH guitar for under a C note?  Done!  Faster than you can say, "Never buy a guitar without touching or seeing it," I hit the BUY button.

A few weeks later, I got an email saying my guitar has arrived.  That was the good news.  The bad newses were: I had to come and pick it up at the distribution centre (about 45 minutes away) and there was a $60 handling fee from the courier.  I wasn't happy about either of these, especially the $60 fee on a $90 purchase.  Still a deal, but not a smoking one.

Not what I had in mind

When I got the big box home, I opened it up and strapped the guitar on.  It had a little bit of neck dive, but the neck in my hands felt really good.  I plugged it in and for an HH guitar, it had a little spank to it.  Too much in fact with the amp I was using.  No problem, I'll just crank down the tone a bit, and then I remembered: this guitar does not have a tone knob.  It didn't bother me at first because I would just adjust the treble on my amp, but after playing with the band for a bit, I realised not having a tone know was a pain.  I couldn't smooth out the tone on the fly in the middle of a song.

I remember showing the band my shiny new axe for the first time.  They were NOT impressed.  I didn't notice the photoflame (a picture of flame maple projected onto a piece of formica) being that bad at first, but they did.  It had a 60s bowling ball look to it, and not in a good retro way, more like in a "my mom made a wanted to try crafting a faux wood finish so she Q tipped one onto a piece of countertop and glued it to my guitar" way.  It looks like flame maple from far away, like from space.  Up close, not so much.

To recap, MiMi (I name all of my guitars):

• felt good (especially after I put an oil finish on the neck).
• sounded okay.   I missed the tone knob.
• looked really, really ugly.  

I thought I would get used to the looks, but I never did.  I'd keep it in a cupboard where the band would practice because it was such a small guitar (hence the neck dive), and if someone stole it or broke it, oh well.

MiMi lay pretty well unused for several years, and I thought I would probably sell it or give it away (I loaned it out a few times, and no one ever begged to keep it).

Mod Project

I think it was because of a bunch of Youtube videos I watched on modding guitars, that I decided old MiMi was going to become my sacrificial project guitar.  After all, I could not make it uglier.  Before when I was playing it, I would pick off the headstock photoflame finish in between songs.  There would be little red dandruff all around me after we'd play.  When I decided to mod it for real, I borrowed my crafty friend Janet's heat gun.  It took off the formica in a couple of minutes.  I kept the formica on the body intact because I thought it was a nice flat painting surface after a little sanding.

I painted the body and the headstock with blue sparkly auto paint.  I did an OKAY job. There were some pits and drips.  Lori, the bass player, thought it looked like the surface of the moon from her angle.   I had originally wanted to go with a gloss white, like my new kitchen, but the cream binding on the edge of the body would have looked bad against it.  Cream on white white?  Ugh.  The blue was a great improvement over the 80s looking red zebra, though the blue did have complexion issues.

Search for a thinner sound

I wired in a tone knob (thanks Youtube) and changed the knobs to two chrome ones.  I played it like that for a few years, and I was much happier.  I experimented with the sound by removing the pickup polepiece screws on the white part of the zebra pickups.  That's when I realized, I am really a single coil guy now.  In my earlier hard rocking days, I wanted distortion and high output.  Now I am looking for a smoother, thinner sound.

I even turned the neck pickup 180 degrees to get the pole pieces further away from the neck.  I liked the sound I was getting with the middle toggle position now.  Before both humbuckers sounded like eating too many carbs.  Now, it was Tele-like.

I liked it so much that I started looking for ways to wire MiMi like a Tele.  I bought a harness that would split the humbuckers into single coils by pulling on the tone knob.  It was a great idea in theory until I pulled out the pickups and realized the pickups were not 4 wire (which is what the harness required).  I found instructions on how to make the stock pickups 4 wire, but it seemed like too much work when I could just buy new 4 wire pickups.  But then I realized, why would I want to buy more humbuckers when I know I don't love their sound?  Plus, because MiMi's pickups are direct mounted, screwed right into the body, I'd have to do some extra mods just to get new pickups to fit.

Lipstick is not just for your face

In the meantime, Danelectro put out a new guitar and there were several Youtube videos reviewing it. I really liked the sound of the nasally lipstick pickups and thought they looked cool too.  I couldn't see a way to mount the beautiful single pickups in MiMi, but I did find some double coil lipstick pickups on the Guitar Fetish site.  I didn't buy them because to buy two it was going to cost me more than what the guitar cost me (especially if I got stung for handling charges again).

Fast forward to several months later, and Guitar Fetish had a sale where I could buy two of these dual coil lipstick pickups (with 4 wire connections) for about the price of one pickup, and it came with mounting rings (that might come in handy when converting from direct mount).  There was just one catch: these particular sale pickups only came in gold.  But faster than you can say, "Never mix your metals," I hit buy.

I got them in the mail about a week later (no extra fees, no having to go far to pick them up).   It took a bit of work and thinking of how to get them in this particular guitar.  Here was my method:

• Remove the old pickups.
• Install the cheapo push pull harness.  
• File down the rectangular pick up feet so they fit in the triangular slots on the guitar body.  
• Drill a big hole in the body so the thicker wires of the new pickups with reach the controls.
• Swear for a bit when you notice the drill shank has rubbed some paint off the body, revealing the red zebra.
• Drill new holes for the pickup rings.
• File down one side of the neck pickup ring so it does not get in the way of the truss rod adjustment.
• Screw in the pickups and rings.
• Take a wild guess on the soldering the leads to the push pull switch because the pre-wired harness does not match the GFS wiring diagram.
• Test the switch.  It was here that I found out the switch only split the neck pick up the way I'd wired it, but that was okay because I liked the sound of the full bridge pick up.
• Touch up the paint using a Q tip, so that no red shows, but MiMi's complexion does any better.

Now, MiMi:

• still feels good.
• sounds great.  Spanky and sparkly.  The tone knob is really important with these very bright lipstick pickups.  
• looks really good.  Mind you, this is in the eye of the beholder.  MiMi has dermatological issues and does have the fashion sense to know you don't mix gold and chrome. 

My phone flipped the image.  

I didn't suddenly become left handed.

The video shows an open chord progression.

• Bridge humbucker only
• Bridge humbucker and neck single
• Neck single only
• Neck both coils

It was a great project to have, especially seeing as I mounted the pickups and rewired MiMi at the beginning of the COVID-19 home quarantine.  For an around $200 guitar, old MiMi does the trick.  It does not sound like anything else I have, and it does not look or sound like it used to.  I now have a playable, useful guitar that I am not embarassed to take out into public.  Though I still don't see myself jumping onto any stages anytime soon.