What 'gimmicky' circuits could I add to a strat?

prowla

axisus said:

prowla said:

I've just ordered a Freeway switch for a Strat I'm building.

That's an interesting mod that I haven't seen before.

I have a 6-way one on a bass.

axisus

sweepy said:

Been doing this sort of thing since the 70’s and now I’m happier with a standard setup tbh, you’ll soon get bored

Yeah, I had a couple of complicated switching guitars, didn't like em, I could never remember what did what! I now like simple controls. As mentioned in the first post, this is specifically to look like a particular guitar, not actually for the functionality.

axisus

ICBM said:

What switching does your hero have on his guitar? Is this in addition to the standard pickup selector, or instead of it? Even if you don't want to duplicate it, it might be useful to know what the whole things looks like.

This is the guitar in question, Nick Barrett of Pendragon's main guitar. As I mentioned, I'm probably going for the look rather than functionality as I can't really stretch to EMGs plus the other electronics.

It has an EMG SA in the neck and one on the bridge and an SAX in the middle position.

on the SAX pick up I have the EXG Expander pot with makes the guitar sound really glassy, almost acoustic, very bright but with a lot of low end too. SPC boost to the both the bridge and middle pickup which add tons of middle making it sound like a humbucker.

The only thing is that these expanders are wired only to work on a variable pot, which is a nightmare if you need to flick that sound in instantly which I do in a live situation. I can't be messing around rolling a pot up and down , it just takes too long even though it's only a fraction of a second, it doesn't feel right under the fingers in the heat of battle at a show.

 The main switch is a standard 3 way Strat toggle.

2 micro switches to bring the expanders in and out, a 3rd switch to bring in the neck pickup

ICBM

Budget option - some second hand Lace Sensors, use the top switch to turn on the neck pickup just like his, and the other two as a phase switch for the middle pickup, and a series switch for the bridge and middle which would give the humbucker-like sound.

It may require some thought as to how to wire these up...

axisus

I just got word back from the man himself about the switching - thinking about it, the neck position on the 3 position toggle brings in the neck and middle pick-ups. The separate micro-switch brings in just the neck pick-up..... I think that's correct!"

Funkfingers

The Freeway six-position lever selector would be handy on my AVRI ‘52 Telecaster. One side of it can perform regular T switching. The other side could take the higher output mode of my bridge/Treble pickup for three Esquire sounds.