[GEAR] Finally, a Strat that works for me
I just got this Strat back from the luthier last week. The body is a 2002-ish Squier that I've had sitting about for years waiting for a new neck. The neck is a '70s style Mexican that I bought off a friend, with Schaller tuners.
I wanted a Strat with just a neck pickup, because I don't use the others. The pickup is a Bare Knuckle Mississippi Queen humbucker-sized P90. Switching is somewhat inspired by the Esquire - Position 1 is pickup with volume and tone, 2 is volume with tone bypassed, and 3 is the pickup wired direct to the output. This gives a load of switchable tonal variation from the single pickup. It sounds big and punchy, with plenty of high-end in position 3. I'm finally enjoying Strats after years of playing everything else!
Posted Jan 15, 2019, 2:28 PM UTC
Cool... I can understand why this would be convenient when performing by just switching to 2 or 3 for solos... but I have a question... wouldn't bypassing the pots just have the effect of running tone and volume at 10?
Yes, it has that effect - although the "direct pickup" setting is actually a good bit brighter (and a tiny bit hotter) than the "volume only" setting. Also, this way I can pre-set tones and volumes and switch them in and out easily!
You should have less voltage drop, since the signal is not going through the pots.
yup! tone deletes are REAL
Think it's Karl Sanders from Nile who goes straight from the pickup to the jack, no knobs.
You definitely do, sounds great!
yep i have my strat wired straight to the volume, no tone controls. sounds fat.
Cool.. this gives me a 5 position switch idea for a tele setup with neck P90 and a bridge humbucker..
I'll have to play around and see what works... I'm kinda interested how a direct output neck/bridge combo would sound...
I'm guessing it will be loud, and bright - awesome!
Hell yeah... and I just found a "no-load" pot that at 10 it preforms just a tone bypass... so I can get pretty much the same setup as you... but with some humbucking flexibility...
sounds like a fun upgrade to try on my $75 craiglist find yamaha tele...
It's not that simple. Even with volume and tone at 10 they're still components in the circuit and still have an effect on signal flow. Removing them from the circuit therefore gives a different sonic effect to simply turning them up.
An analogy would be the difference between an open door and a door frame without a door fitted. Similar effect but cosmetically totally different.
To add on to this, they do make “no load” pots as well.
Yeah, you’re still restricted by the pots if they’re just turned to 10 (a 250k pot at ten will be different than a 500k pot set to ten). Removing the pots from the circuit leaves you wide open, and only really subjected to whatever high end or volume you’d lose from the sigma passing thru the wiring itself (hopefully negligible if done right, tho I’ve had to pop a few guitars open again to fix wiring that seemed to be having this effect), or thru any resistors you place in the sigmal path if you’re bypassing the pots.
I guess it would all depends on the pickups and pots too... should be a fun project... I'd like to hear what tonal possibilities there would be on a P90 neck with an old active EMG bridge...
Could you wire an active circuit like this? I was under the impression that the volume/tone controls acted as a preamp to drive the output from the pickup?
Yeah that's what I was thinking, but I've seen active mixed with passive pickups... but I'm pretty sure those were on guitars with two sets volume and tone controls... perhaps some high impedance (250k+) pots would solve that... I dunno... I'll have to see what I can come up with...