tri coil pickup, in effect

[Somicide]

Hmm, this may be off topic, but it is a mod, so i thought i'd ask all you geniuses here.  I have a cheap strat-copy that i intend to play one final time, then smash; the problem is that the pickup-selector is a piece of crap.  I was wondering if i could, and how i would, if i could, wire all three pick-ups so they were all on?  That, and how it would sound...

[Peter Snowberg]

As much as I hate to see a guitar die... all you need to do is to wire all the positive wires from the pickups together. Just bridge a wire from the selector output to each of the three inputs. If you want to us a tone control too and the guitar has two, eliminate the wire going to one of them and connect the one you want to keep to the shorting wire you just installed.

The sound is really pretty good. It has a lot of power behind it, but not a lot of voltage. I have a strat copy with that switching capability and it's more fun for me than the single coils by themselves.

Some guitars wire one of the pickups in reverse polarity of the other two to get hum-canceling subtractive tones from positions 2 and 4. You may want to experiment a little here with switching the polarity of the middle pickup to see how you like the sound.

Have fun with it, and I hope you use some lighter fluid at the end.

Take care,
-Peter

[sfr]

yknow, a guitar turns out to be a lot harder to smash than you'd think . . . .

[Jered]

Yes indeed, even on concrete. Unless its a hollowbody, they're done in one swing.
 Jered

[Mike Burgundy]

Keep the bits and pieces for any future occasion when you get the urge to kill a guitar.
It's what Townshend did - apparently he had his tech botch the broken thing together again (paintjob), switched quickly onstage and then smashed them again. Seems he only smashed two or three guitars in his life.
I've actually seen footage showing the switch if you pay *close* attention. Nice secrecy and stealth there
I think Pete admitted to this little trick some years ago, stating that they also smash up a lot easier after the first time or two

[Kilby]

I know that Blackmore used hondo strat copies with pre sawed necks in the early 80s.

It's rather funny in old Who footage to see PT utterly failing to smash a strat that he was playing (he quotes this as a reason for moving away from fenders).

[Ge_Whiz]

There's also memorable footage of Townsend trying to smash a sunburst 335 (or possibly an Epiphone) with little success. In the end, he just stabs it through a Marshall cabinet. This is also a fake - he had one made with no speakers in it. That's showbusiness.

You could also try wiring all three pickups in series. You might even like the sound, and decide to keep it... :wink:

[Nasse]

Anybody remember that pic of Townshends "Wall full of broken Rickenbackers"

I Am happy to be so old that I dont have to smash guitars any more (well I smashed one cheap acustic that I hated 25 yrs ago :oops: Too much beer ). But I never pee to electrified cattle fence.

[Mark Hammer]

Actually, Pete smashed a bunch.  I caught a show here in Ottawa shortly after "The Who Sell Out" hit the charts.  The axe for the evening was a lovely white on white Strat that matched Pete' white bell-bottoms and white frilly shirt (and pasty complexion).  He played it through a fridge-sized SUNN.  During the last number (My Generation I suspect, though I forget), the Strat was smashed to bits and flung out into the crowd.  A friend of the guy I went with caught the body chunk wih the bridge and tremolo assembly and a couple of young women approached him for remnants of it.  We stayed for a while after the smoke cleared and there was no attempt to recover the parts.  This was not any sort of famous gig, just another in a tour, and the smashing seemed pretty orchestrated, so I can't see this being one of only a handful that were broken and pieced back together.

Keith Emerson's organ rampages, on the other hand (during his days with The Nice), I suspect were rarer occurrences.  You just don't trash a B-3 then go looking for another to resume the tour.  Finding cheap B-3 copies to play then destroy is considerably less likely than slipping a fake Strat in for a real one during the last number of the encore.

[Somicide]

thanks for the tips, and I'll be sure to send you all a great pic.  as far as the voltage goes, is there a way to remedy it, ie a boost or something?

on an unrelated note, I found an old tube signal booster (probably from a stereo) and think I can utilize that in some way, who knows?