My '72 P-bass had gone silent, and in researching replacement electronics, I stumbled on Obsidian. After reading the reviews, I decided to give myself a break and not have to worry about soldering. Of course things rarely go as planned, and when I took a close look at the existing electronics, I noticed that I had two live leads coming from the pickups. I wasn't surprised as the bass had been modified by Alembic back in 1976, and at that time they replaced the original pickups with Seymour Duncan Quarter Pounders. After a little pondering, I decided to strip and twist the two leads together to create a single live wire. My first attempt at installing the Obsidian unit resulted in silence. Then I realized I had flipped the unit upside down, and once I got things properly oriented and reconnected, I was rewarded by the best sound the instrument had put out in years. I guess the point is that the solderless connections are very forgiving and allow for a bit of trial and error without the hassle of soldering, unsoldering and resoldering. I found the resulting sound to be much cleaner, wider in frequency response and just plain better than the old pots and wiring. I highly recommend Obsidian for sound quality, ease of installation and flexibility during the installation process. Pros and novices alike will appreciate Obsidian's features.
Easy and quick to install, it just works with no headaches
Absolutely love this wiring harness for my Warmoth Strat. This is the fourth or fifth harness I've had in this guitar at it's definitely the best. My main gripe with the other harnesses I've tried before is the poor taper of the potentiometers where the volume/tone would just decrease too rapidly as you turn down. Not the case with the Obsidian. I now have an even and smooth volume and tone taper across the the whole movement of the pot . Also I love the clarity switch which combined with the taper of the pots allows me to get lots of different and usable tones with great clarity that I was never able to get before. Only one minor issue I had was that my strat control cavity had to be widened ever so slightly by the tone controls to get the harness to fit, but after I removed a little bit of wood it fit right in. Because of that it too me several hours to install because of the necessary wood work.
I've a 2012 Fender US Deluxe Strat with the S-1 switching and noiseless pickups. After a pickup swap the sound improved but discarding the S-1 switching and moving to the Obsidian Wire Gen 2 HSS harness has totally transformed the sound of this guitar. Not only is it quieter, the sound is clearer, sharper, more sensitive. You can hear each string distinctly. I just can't believe the difference this has made. I feel like this is the way that this guitar was always made to sound. I have no idea why Fender are not fitting these as stock to their US guitars.
The quality of the harness is excellent. Took a few weeks to arrive in the UK from New Zealand but no messing around with taxes.
So far not good. But Obsidian team is working with me to change the amount of stars.