Guitar wiring

[Narcosynthesis]

right i have a cheapy strat copy, so i rewired it for a bit of fun into an odd setup for playing about with (a volume control for each pickup, and the pickup selector wired as a kill switch)

i am thining of rewiring it again, the setup it has is cool, but not really too practical, so i am thinking of rewiring it again
i havent missed the tone controls in the slightest (and think the guitar sounds much better, and i guess this is the reason) so intend to have the switch wired up 'normally' as per pickup selections and ignoring two of the volume controls in favour of a master volume on one pot

problem being, the wire from the controls to the jack has been cut too short in the process of rewiring it, so i will need to replace it, the wire that is there is a shielded type, liek a guitar lead, with the hot wire being surrounded by the ground wire, and i dont know where i could get hold of more wire, so would using two normal wires affect the guitar in any way? i doubt the hole from cavity -> jack is shielded so dont know if this would add any noise to the guitar

David

[Paul Marossy]

I would definitely keep the shielded cable. You can probably get some from RadioShack that would work OK. I have some that I got from there quite a while ago, have used it for several builds now, including some tube amps. I think it was some sort of speaker wire, don't remember for sure - got it probably 10-12 years ago.

[tcobretti]

I've always wanted to do this to a strat.

http://www.treblebooster.com/brian_may_pickup_mod.htm

I have the burns brian may and it produces an unbelievable array of guitar sounds.

[Paul Marossy]

I like the series/parallel switch I added to one of my guitars. There really is a lot of things you can do with pickup combinations. I like to keep it simple, though.  

[Narcosynthesis]

I would definitely keep the shielded cable. You can probably get some from RadioShack that would work OK. I have some that I got from there quite a while ago, have used it for several builds now, including some tube amps. I think it was some sort of speaker wire, don't remember for sure - got it probably 10-12 years ago.

i am thinking of butchering a patch cable, then just using that, hopefully i can get one that will fit (or thin it down with a knife)

any ideas on that plan? seems alright to me

David

[Paul Marossy]

Butchering a patch cable would work in a pinch...

[nosamiam]

Would George L cable work?  It's reasonably priced and I've been getting it from www.reverenddirect.com for $.76/foot to build effects jumper cables out of.  Seems to be pretty nice stuff.  I also have a Wurlitzer electric piano that I'm chopping down from console-size to portable-size.  It requires shielded cable for the mod and I was planning on using some extra George L cable I have laying around.  Good idea? Bad?

[Paul Marossy]

I don't see why it wouldn't work...

[tcobretti]

In a rather delayed response to Paul Marossy, how do you wire a strat for parallel/series?  Is there a way to do it using only a single add'l switch instead of pulling the 5-way switch and installing a bunch of smaller switches a la Brian May?

[Mark Hammer]

Here's a simple set of changes to make that should yield a whole bunch of tones you've never thought of.

1) Switch the middle and bridge leads on the selector switch.  This will give 1-neck, 2- neck+bridge, 3- bridge, 4- middle+bridge, 5- middle.  You forfeit one of the Strat combinations (neck+middle) but you gain the elusive Telecaster combination (N+B), without having to buy a fancy schmancy switch.

2) Replace one tone control with a 1M linear pot and connect the wiper of the pot to the input of the volume control.  Solder a 6800-8200pf cap from one outside lug to ground, and a 15nf - 22nf cap to ground from the other outside lug.  You now have a bi-directional tone control that gives one rolloff in one direction and a different rolloff in the other, with not treble cut in the middle.

3) Wire up the second tone pot so that it works as a variable resistor between the middle pickup lug and the selector switch.  Solder a .01uf cap in parallel with.  The pot will now function as a variable lo-cut for the middle pickup, allowing various amounts of signal to pass through the pot more readily than through the cap (where the highs pass unimpeded).  This will give an interesting range of cluck and scratchy sounds in pickup positions 4 and 5.

[tcobretti]

That's good stuff; thanks for the ideas.