duhvoodooman
December 15th, 2008, 12:58 PM
I'm in between pedal projects, so I decided to use some of that free time to make some changes on my new (in August) Xaviere XV-870 Strat copy (http://store.guitarfetish.com/xvdocusobo.html). In my opinion, these guitars are just a fantastic value for under $200. Sure, at that price, they have some weak spots, but nothing so serious that it isn't easily addressed (at least, in the one I bought). I had been delaying fixing a couple of small issues with mine, but decided to get after them this past Saturday. Here's the rundown on the work I did:
For whatever reason, the guitar came with all 500K pots, unusual for an S-S-S Strat-type guitar. 500K's tend to make single coils sound a little too bright, something I had noticed with mine, which is why 250K pots are the norm for these pickups. At the same time, the guitar had been fitted with a linear taper pot for the volume control and audio taper for both tone pots. This is the opposite of what is usually used--audio taper for the volume and linear for the tone controls. I had pointed this out to Jay at Guitar Fetish and he had sent me six new 250K pots, 3 each linear and audio taper, so that I could mix & match however I wanted. Time to use them!
At the same time, I also wanted to install my favorite Strat mod on the guitar, namely a push/pull switch to enable adding the bridge pickup in series to either or both of the other two pickups (see diagram below). I particularly like the bridge-middle-in-series combo for it's very cool combination of quack and power.
So to accomplish both of these changes, I removed all three of the stock control pots and installed an audio taper 250K pot with integrated DPDT push/pull switch (wired per the diagram below) for the volume control and two 250K linear taper pots for the two tone controls.
On the latter two pots, I replaced the stock Xaviere 0.033 uf polyester film tone caps with NOS 0.015 uf Sprague "Vitamin Q" sealed oil-in-paper caps I got from Bloozcat a while back. I decided to try the lower rating after reading an interesting article (http://www.premierguitar.com/Magazine/Issue/2008/Mar/Auditioning_Tone_Capacitors.aspx) by Dirk Wacker in Premier Guitar (another good tip from Bloozcat!). Now 0.015 uf is still quite a bit higher than this guy recommends, but (1) it was the lowest rated of these NOS oil-in-paper caps I got from BC, and (2) it's still a move in the right direction.
The guitar also came with the neck & bridge pickup wired for tone control and the middle pickup with no tone control. IMO, this is better than the traditional Strat method of tone controls for the neck and middle and none for the bridge, but I really prefer to have tone control on all three pickups. Fixing this issue is a simple matter of locating the empty tone connection lug for the middle pickup on the 5-way switch and then just jumpering it to either the neck or bridge tone lugs; I connected mine to the neck.
Lastly, the guitar came with the trem claw spring tension set very high, so that the bridge plate was flush against the guitar's body and the only trem movement was in the pitch-dropping direction. That's how I have my Strat Plus set up, so I thought it would be fun to float the trem block a slight bit on this Strat. The main thing this entails is backing out the two screws on the trem claw to shorten the spring travel and relieve some tension on the block. I backed off enough to raise the bottom edge of the bridge plate about 1/16" off the body, which allows sharpening a note by about a half-step when the trem arm is pulled up. I followed the method described on THIS PAGE (http://www.fender.com/support/stratocaster.php). The trem on the Xaviere is the "vintage" 6-screw type and uses three springs for tensioning. Because this slightly increases the guitar's scale length, I'll need to adjust intonation, though I haven't done that yet.
So how did these changes work out? Just as I hoped they would. The overall tone of the guitar has mellowed out noticeably with the 250K's, but still has plenty of sparkle. The tone pots have a wider useable span now; maybe I'll try even lower tone cap ratings in the future, though these NOS Spragues seem to have a very clean, round tonal quality. The bridge-in-series switch works perfectly, adding 3 more very useable tones. The bridge-middle-in-series is still my favorite, but that bridge-neck-in-series combo sounds great, too, in a semi-Tele-ish sort of way. I've got the tone control on the middle p'up that was lacking, and the trem works very nicely while the tuning stability still seems very good (I'm not a dive-bomber!). All in all, a productive Saturday afternoon....
http://www.duhvoodooman.com/miscimages/musical/strat_wiring/Bridge%20Pickup%20Series%20Add-in%20Wiring%20Mod.gif
For whatever reason, the guitar came with all 500K pots, unusual for an S-S-S Strat-type guitar. 500K's tend to make single coils sound a little too bright, something I had noticed with mine, which is why 250K pots are the norm for these pickups. At the same time, the guitar had been fitted with a linear taper pot for the volume control and audio taper for both tone pots. This is the opposite of what is usually used--audio taper for the volume and linear for the tone controls. I had pointed this out to Jay at Guitar Fetish and he had sent me six new 250K pots, 3 each linear and audio taper, so that I could mix & match however I wanted. Time to use them!
At the same time, I also wanted to install my favorite Strat mod on the guitar, namely a push/pull switch to enable adding the bridge pickup in series to either or both of the other two pickups (see diagram below). I particularly like the bridge-middle-in-series combo for it's very cool combination of quack and power.
So to accomplish both of these changes, I removed all three of the stock control pots and installed an audio taper 250K pot with integrated DPDT push/pull switch (wired per the diagram below) for the volume control and two 250K linear taper pots for the two tone controls.
On the latter two pots, I replaced the stock Xaviere 0.033 uf polyester film tone caps with NOS 0.015 uf Sprague "Vitamin Q" sealed oil-in-paper caps I got from Bloozcat a while back. I decided to try the lower rating after reading an interesting article (http://www.premierguitar.com/Magazine/Issue/2008/Mar/Auditioning_Tone_Capacitors.aspx) by Dirk Wacker in Premier Guitar (another good tip from Bloozcat!). Now 0.015 uf is still quite a bit higher than this guy recommends, but (1) it was the lowest rated of these NOS oil-in-paper caps I got from BC, and (2) it's still a move in the right direction.
The guitar also came with the neck & bridge pickup wired for tone control and the middle pickup with no tone control. IMO, this is better than the traditional Strat method of tone controls for the neck and middle and none for the bridge, but I really prefer to have tone control on all three pickups. Fixing this issue is a simple matter of locating the empty tone connection lug for the middle pickup on the 5-way switch and then just jumpering it to either the neck or bridge tone lugs; I connected mine to the neck.
Lastly, the guitar came with the trem claw spring tension set very high, so that the bridge plate was flush against the guitar's body and the only trem movement was in the pitch-dropping direction. That's how I have my Strat Plus set up, so I thought it would be fun to float the trem block a slight bit on this Strat. The main thing this entails is backing out the two screws on the trem claw to shorten the spring travel and relieve some tension on the block. I backed off enough to raise the bottom edge of the bridge plate about 1/16" off the body, which allows sharpening a note by about a half-step when the trem arm is pulled up. I followed the method described on THIS PAGE (http://www.fender.com/support/stratocaster.php). The trem on the Xaviere is the "vintage" 6-screw type and uses three springs for tensioning. Because this slightly increases the guitar's scale length, I'll need to adjust intonation, though I haven't done that yet.
So how did these changes work out? Just as I hoped they would. The overall tone of the guitar has mellowed out noticeably with the 250K's, but still has plenty of sparkle. The tone pots have a wider useable span now; maybe I'll try even lower tone cap ratings in the future, though these NOS Spragues seem to have a very clean, round tonal quality. The bridge-in-series switch works perfectly, adding 3 more very useable tones. The bridge-middle-in-series is still my favorite, but that bridge-neck-in-series combo sounds great, too, in a semi-Tele-ish sort of way. I've got the tone control on the middle p'up that was lacking, and the trem works very nicely while the tuning stability still seems very good (I'm not a dive-bomber!). All in all, a productive Saturday afternoon....
http://www.duhvoodooman.com/miscimages/musical/strat_wiring/Bridge%20Pickup%20Series%20Add-in%20Wiring%20Mod.gif