MichaelW
Well-known member
Some of you may recall a few months back I converted my "Goldie" Strat into an H-S-S configuration since the bridge position was already routed for it.
At the time it seemed like a good idea to have at least one of my Strats with a beefier bridge sound.
And it was exactly what I expected it to be and I loved it......for a minute.......
.
Tonally it did exactly what I wanted at the time, but I found myself not playing it much. I tend to pickup one of my hum bucker guitars when I want that sound and somehow the "modern" Strat config just didn't suit me as much as I thought it would. So that guitar didn't get a lot of love.
Fast forward a bit and I came across a really interesting mod from Waylon McPherson Guitars. He's got a Youtube channel with a lot of neat guitar, pedal and amp mods. Check out his channel.
I'm not really into trick wiring or fancy mods on my guitars but this one caught my attention because its totally passive and it's a pretty significant new sound, yet all the stock Strat sounds and positions are all still there. Unlike my H-S-S which is both a compromise and a commitment to that compromise (for me that is) because I really missed the stock Strat sounds, even the single coil bridge pickup.
This mod give you the option of easily increasing the output of your bridge pickup 50-70% and adding a significant bass boost (depending on how you select the mod values) yet with a click of a push pull pot restoring your stock Strat wiring and tones.
In a nutshell there are two parts to the mod:
1) Using a push pull or toggle (SPST) you're reconfiguring the #1 switch position (or bridge pickup) into Middle+Bridge but wired in series instead of parallel. That alone is a cool mod in and of itself as it gives you a nice passive boost in output and mids, yet it does not sound like a hum bucker, it still sounds single coil-ey , just beefed up.
2) The second part of the mod is "re-voicing" the middle pickup. Essentially shifting its resonant peak towards the bass register by wiring a capacitor in series between the bridge and middle pickups. How much you shift it bass wards depends on the value of the cap.
And I also found out that the value of the cap needed also depends on how the pickup is voiced to begin with. Now the re-voiced middle pickup is combined to the bridge pickup in series and you wind up with fuller, beefier, stronger sounding bridge position, yet it still sounds like a Strat pickup.
In the video of the mod, he started with a 220nf cap to somewhat exaggerate the effect. So I figured I'd start with 220nf and work my way down from there. Well, when I first tested the mod I thought I had done something wrong. Anything from 220n to about 120n all I got was "mud".
Turns out that for my particular middle pickup, which is vintage overwound (~6.8k) anything above 100nf shifted the resonant peak right off the chart. It took me a while of troubleshooting before I figured out that I needed to be testing a much lower range of capacitors.
My finalists from my workbench ranged from 68n down to 15n. I wired the mod with test leads coming out from under the pick guard so I could play test the results with headphones. I landed at 39nf for this set of pickups. It's a pretty sweet mod.
When the mod is engaged only Positions 1 & 5 are usable. (Neck and Bridge) But it's pretty cool (and useful) to switch between neck and bridge positions but have a beefy, volume leveled lead tone.
I imagine the usable range of capacitors might be different on a different pickup wind. So if you try this mod, try everything from 220n down to 10n. Somewhere in there is the sweet spot.
I'm not a fan of push pull pots but I'm less of a fan of extraneous toggle switches. So I opted for the lesser of two evils and used a CTS Push pull pot I had on hand. It was a 500k pot but I soldered a parallel resistor to bring it down to 250k. Yes, that messes with the taper adversely but it's on the middle tone pot which I literally never touch. I wire my Strats with a dedicated tone pot for the bridge position and that's the only one I fiddle with. Still these CTS Push Pulls are MASSIVE. After using them in a few guitars, I've come to the conclusion that I'm not a fan of these pots either. The little PCB is really not helpful because you have to map them to the switch lugs and they're not very convenient to solder. If I were to do this mod on another guitar I'd opt for plain old push pull with the DPDT lugs.
My little test rig so I could audition the cap values outside the guitar.
Initial round of finalists....I also tried some different kind of caps. PIO, Orange Drop, Mallory, Tropical Fish. To my ears the Mallory and Orange drops sounded the best. But I didn't have one in the final value I chose so I just used a film cap.
After whittling down the finalists on my bench amp, I finalized the choice in my studio with headphones.
I wound up just soldering it to the lug tits instead of f'ing with the stoooopid PCB pads. For the tone cap there wasn't much room to squeeze in one of my fairly large fave PIO tone caps, so I used a 200v Orange Drop (0.015mfd)
Here's a couple of screen grabs from Waylons channel of the mod.
I'd highly recommend watching his video of the mod if your interested.
And here's my demo of my testing the finalists. You may need to use headphones to really get the full effect.
Hope this is useful to someone out there. I'm pretty tickled by this mod. (How long I remain tickled remains to be seen......
At the time it seemed like a good idea to have at least one of my Strats with a beefier bridge sound.
And it was exactly what I expected it to be and I loved it......for a minute.......
.Tonally it did exactly what I wanted at the time, but I found myself not playing it much. I tend to pickup one of my hum bucker guitars when I want that sound and somehow the "modern" Strat config just didn't suit me as much as I thought it would. So that guitar didn't get a lot of love.
Fast forward a bit and I came across a really interesting mod from Waylon McPherson Guitars. He's got a Youtube channel with a lot of neat guitar, pedal and amp mods. Check out his channel.
I'm not really into trick wiring or fancy mods on my guitars but this one caught my attention because its totally passive and it's a pretty significant new sound, yet all the stock Strat sounds and positions are all still there. Unlike my H-S-S which is both a compromise and a commitment to that compromise (for me that is) because I really missed the stock Strat sounds, even the single coil bridge pickup.
This mod give you the option of easily increasing the output of your bridge pickup 50-70% and adding a significant bass boost (depending on how you select the mod values) yet with a click of a push pull pot restoring your stock Strat wiring and tones.
In a nutshell there are two parts to the mod:
1) Using a push pull or toggle (SPST) you're reconfiguring the #1 switch position (or bridge pickup) into Middle+Bridge but wired in series instead of parallel. That alone is a cool mod in and of itself as it gives you a nice passive boost in output and mids, yet it does not sound like a hum bucker, it still sounds single coil-ey , just beefed up.
2) The second part of the mod is "re-voicing" the middle pickup. Essentially shifting its resonant peak towards the bass register by wiring a capacitor in series between the bridge and middle pickups. How much you shift it bass wards depends on the value of the cap.
And I also found out that the value of the cap needed also depends on how the pickup is voiced to begin with. Now the re-voiced middle pickup is combined to the bridge pickup in series and you wind up with fuller, beefier, stronger sounding bridge position, yet it still sounds like a Strat pickup.
In the video of the mod, he started with a 220nf cap to somewhat exaggerate the effect. So I figured I'd start with 220nf and work my way down from there. Well, when I first tested the mod I thought I had done something wrong. Anything from 220n to about 120n all I got was "mud".
Turns out that for my particular middle pickup, which is vintage overwound (~6.8k) anything above 100nf shifted the resonant peak right off the chart. It took me a while of troubleshooting before I figured out that I needed to be testing a much lower range of capacitors.
My finalists from my workbench ranged from 68n down to 15n. I wired the mod with test leads coming out from under the pick guard so I could play test the results with headphones. I landed at 39nf for this set of pickups. It's a pretty sweet mod.
When the mod is engaged only Positions 1 & 5 are usable. (Neck and Bridge) But it's pretty cool (and useful) to switch between neck and bridge positions but have a beefy, volume leveled lead tone.
I imagine the usable range of capacitors might be different on a different pickup wind. So if you try this mod, try everything from 220n down to 10n. Somewhere in there is the sweet spot.
I'm not a fan of push pull pots but I'm less of a fan of extraneous toggle switches. So I opted for the lesser of two evils and used a CTS Push pull pot I had on hand. It was a 500k pot but I soldered a parallel resistor to bring it down to 250k. Yes, that messes with the taper adversely but it's on the middle tone pot which I literally never touch. I wire my Strats with a dedicated tone pot for the bridge position and that's the only one I fiddle with. Still these CTS Push Pulls are MASSIVE. After using them in a few guitars, I've come to the conclusion that I'm not a fan of these pots either. The little PCB is really not helpful because you have to map them to the switch lugs and they're not very convenient to solder. If I were to do this mod on another guitar I'd opt for plain old push pull with the DPDT lugs.
My little test rig so I could audition the cap values outside the guitar.
Initial round of finalists....I also tried some different kind of caps. PIO, Orange Drop, Mallory, Tropical Fish. To my ears the Mallory and Orange drops sounded the best. But I didn't have one in the final value I chose so I just used a film cap.
After whittling down the finalists on my bench amp, I finalized the choice in my studio with headphones.
I wound up just soldering it to the lug tits instead of f'ing with the stoooopid PCB pads. For the tone cap there wasn't much room to squeeze in one of my fairly large fave PIO tone caps, so I used a 200v Orange Drop (0.015mfd)
Here's a couple of screen grabs from Waylons channel of the mod.
I'd highly recommend watching his video of the mod if your interested.
And here's my demo of my testing the finalists. You may need to use headphones to really get the full effect.
Hope this is useful to someone out there. I'm pretty tickled by this mod. (How long I remain tickled remains to be seen......
