Cheap Strat Tricks

Pickups, wiring schemes, switch techniques and onboard active electronics for guitars and basses
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deltafred
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Post by deltafred »

Thanks Mike, I hadn't heard of no load pots before (but I don't get out much nowadays :lol: ).
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Dr Tony Balls
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Post by Dr Tony Balls »

mictester wrote:The only Strat mods I've ever found worthwhile involve fixing the crappy intonation, replacing the weedy pickups with something with a bit of zip and fitting active electronics.

However, the most effective mod of all involves trading it in for a proper guitar...... :twisted:

<Ducks>

This HAS to be a joke, right? Pickups are to each their own, but its downright silly to suggest that by nature a strat has crappy intonation.

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astrobass
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Post by astrobass »

Dr Tony Balls wrote:
mictester wrote:The only Strat mods I've ever found worthwhile involve fixing the crappy intonation, replacing the weedy pickups with something with a bit of zip and fitting active electronics.

However, the most effective mod of all involves trading it in for a proper guitar...... :twisted:

<Ducks>

This HAS to be a joke, right? Pickups are to each their own, but its downright silly to suggest that by nature a strat has crappy intonation.
When someone complains about how their Strat has poor intonation, I interpret it the same way as when someone complains that their dog chews everything: they're just not taking care of it properly. But I took mictester's comment as a joke anyhow :D

.Mike's suggestion for using the second tone pot as a blend knob sounds really interesting though, and that's pretty minimal in terms of effort required.

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.Mike
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Post by .Mike »

astrobass wrote:.Mike's suggestion for using the second tone pot as a blend knob sounds really interesting though, and that's pretty minimal in terms of effort required.
It is really nice. When you have the neck/bridge going, it can be similar to a Tele's neck and bridge combo.

I also like blending in a little bit, and then switching from the neck position to the bridge position. When in the bridge position, you get a bit of thickening from the neck, and when in the neck position, you get a bit of an edge from the bridge pickup.

If anyone tries this, I would love to hear what you think. :)

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Post by bluescage »

Hi Astrobrass,

You could look on this site: www.guitartechcraig.com. On the left side of his home page there's a button diagrams. There you can find a number of mods for single coils as well as humbuckers.

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Post by Lucifer »

I wanted to wire my Strat like Brian May's Red Special.

He uses six slide switches - one for each pickup to turn it on or off, and one for inverting the phase of each pickup. In theory there are 2^6 (ie, 64) different combinations, but in reality, there are only 13 'different' ones. You actually only need two phase switches, because if you invert the phase of two pickups, you effectively put the third pickup out of phase with the first two. So, what could I do with a sixth switch ?

After considerable headscratching, I devised a way to switch the guitar from parallel wiring to series (Strats are normally parallel wired, whereas the Red Special has its pups in series).

The switches were mounted as three (pickups on-off), two (phase switches) and one (seies/parallel), in a delta configuration which fitted neatly into the existing cavity - so no drilling/routing of the body. The original 5-way selector was, of course, removed, and a sliver of white plastic placed in the slot (you can still see the line in the photo).

I fitted Strat sized humbuckers - a Hot Rails in the bridge, Cools Rails at the neck, and a Lil '59 in the middle position. These are all 4-wire pups so, using pull-pots for the controls, I could have them as single coils or humbuckers. That gave me a total of 74 unique combinations !!! Having said that, I probably only liked about five of them !

The guitar was featured in the "My Guitar Is . . ." section of Guitarist magazine in May 2003.

The flat toggles of the switches turned out to be non-knuckle friendly - so I decided to file the corners off them - buggering up half of them internally, and the guitar was never the same again. Fortunately, I had used a spare scratchplate, so I removed the whole gubbins and put the guitar back to its original state before eventually selling it.

For anyone with a really masochistic personality, I devised a version that had . . . wait for it . . . 981 unique combinations (including pups in series with parallel pairs, etc, etc). I started building the scratchplate, using rotary switches for each pickup, putting them on a top bus, middle bus or bottom bus, in phase, out of phase, series humbucking, parallel humbucking, single coil, etc, etc. I never finished it - good job, because I'd still be testing out all the different combinations some 10 years later !

I'd love to show you the circuit for my 74-way Strat - but it was 10 years ago, and I can't find it, but if it turns up, I'll post it. I hope the photo will have you salivating instead.
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skylark44
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Post by skylark44 »

Guitar Fetish makes a kit for a similar setup...http://www.guitarfetish.com/BHM-STYLE-S ... c_226.html , check it out :thumbsup . :mrgreen:

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Post by Lucifer »

Those kits will still only give you the 13 different sounds, not 74 as I've described (but 13 is still twice as many as most people will ever need).
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Post by CHEEZOR »

Lucifer wrote:Those kits will still only give you the 13 different sounds, not 74 as I've described (but 13 is still twice as many as most people will ever need).
Like I said in the other thread I posted a link to, almost all the mods I have tried sounded worse than a stock setup. Out of those 74 options, I wouldn't be the least be surprised if you chose to use one that a stock Stratocaster was capable of most of the time. But if you find something cool, let me know. I'm just very skeptical. :D

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Post by Lucifer »

Hi Cheezor,

The Strat was disassembled after I screwed up the switches, so I won't be able to find any cool sounds for you now.

Although there were 74 pickup combinations, that doesn't necessarily mean that there were 74 totally different sounds as, in many cases, the differences were only minimal and would be lost in a gigging situation anyway.

I'd say that the combinations of pickups in series were probably the most useful (in addition to the stock sounds), as they gave the punch and tonality of full humbuckers. My other fave was neck and bridge in parallel - very Telecasterish - and unavailable on a 'normal' Strat.

I only posted the article to show what was possible, just in case there are any Strat mod maniacs (like I used to be) still out there.

Until someone steps forward and finds that extra cool sound for you, you can can carry on enjoying your skepticality. :D
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Post by biliousfrog »

I'm another one that spent far too much time modding strats in the hope of finding sonic nirvana...eventually realizing that they sound fine as they are.

I'm not really sure that they're considered "mods" as such but I've got a single master TBX tone control which usually stays in the middle notch position. I've moved the volume control into the middle tone position as I find it a bit too close for comfort. The empty hole has a kill switch but really only to plug the gap, I never use it. The pickups are original Lace golds - I don't mind them but I'd be happy to use regular singles with a dummy coil. The bridge has been fixed with an ash block as I couldn't be bothered to maintain the vintage trem, I have kept the springs in place as I did notice a change in character when they were removed.

To the OP - why would you want to switch tone caps? Isn't the point of a rotary pot to change the tone anyway or am I missing something?

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