Another Cool Strat Pickup Wiring Mod....

[Nelskie]

Another fantastic write-up, DVM, and some great clips to boot. I really liked the Neck (in-phase) and bridge in series tone - very wide and warm. That'd sound really chunky running through the Tonebone or Tone Driver.

My MIK Squier would be the perfect base for this mod, and I'm giving some serious thought to doing it. Perhaps I could also bother you for a parts list for this particular project.

[tot_Ou_tard]

Yes very impressive Vood. With the clarity, precision, and completeness of your write-ups you are going to turn all of us into guitar modding adventurers.

[duhvoodooman***]

Another fantastic write-up, DVM, and some great clips to boot. I really liked the Neck (in-phase) and bridge in series tone - very wide and warm. That'd sound really chunky running through the Tonebone or Tone Driver.

My MIK Squier would be the perfect base for this mod, and I'm giving some serious thought to doing it. Perhaps I could also bother you for a parts list for this particular project.

Yeah, the 3-pickup combo is good, too, but I was expecting more than I got from that one, I guess. It doesn't sound very much different than just the neck & bridge in series, IMO--just a bit muted. But it's still very definitely useable. Of the six new combos, really the only ones that don't seem readily useful to me are two of the neck out-of-phase combos-- with the bridge & middle together, and with just the middle. Both are too thin and nasal for my taste, but who knows? Seems like every tone has a home somewhere, if you can just find it!

I may try to record & post a couple more clips as I have time over the next few days. Probably a couple through the drive channel of my DB to demonstrate the new pickup combos with an overdriven tone, and maybe some through the Valve Jr.

The "bill of materials" for this mod is very short--mainly two 250K audio-taper push/pull pots from the parts supplier of your choice. I used StewMac, P/N 1215 at $9 each. You should be able to re-use the 0.022 mfd tone cap that's currently on your neck tone pot, but in case you can't, you can get a package of a dozen of 'em from StewMac for about $4. Not a bad item to have a few of on hand. I bought a package of 0.047's while I was at it. You'll also need some fine wire, because the mod requires an additional 6 pieces of wire to be added for the various switch runs. I don't think any of them were longer than about 3 inches! I used some #26 multi-strand instrument wire I got here at work. I wouldn't recommend anything larger than about #22 or so, due to the small solder contact points you work with on these push/pull switches.

The rest of the project is all soldering work--LOTS of soldering work!