A Monterey Surf Green Strat - Made Mean!

 
Back in 2007, not long after I re-kindled my interest in actively learning and playing guitar, I acquired a Monterey Surf Green Stratocaster copy (the brand/model seems to have disappeared entirely during the last year or so...). In a lot of ways, it was just a backup guitar, something that I could play whilst my Affinity Strat was in for maintenance and while the Bullet Strat was "under the knife" as part of my SimpleMod projects.

Recently, I thought I'd give the guitar a bit of a change of face (and sound), so I came-up with this simple project. The changes made are not very complicated, so there's probably not a great deal to be learned from this project... but I think it covers some potentially useful features, so I thought I'd make the posting here anyway.

Here's what it looked like before I started work:-






Objectives

Now, the basic objective was to "beef-up" the sound of the Strat somewhat and maybe approach something of the flavour of a P-90 equipped Les Paul. The inspiration for this came from listening to David Gilmour's playing of a 1955 Les Paul Goldtop (with P-90 pickups) on "Another Brick in the Wall (part 2)" from 1979.

Obviously, significant compromises had to be made, given what gear I was working with:-

• As I used a Stratocaster, some elements of the sound (due to body resonance, hardware and string mounting, etc) would be different. However, the Surf Green Strat was a "spare"(!) that I could work on... and there's always the advantage of the body contouring on the Strat which makes the guitar more comfortable to play when compared to the "boxy" body shape of the Les Paul.
  
  
• To include "real" P-90 pickups would require significant additional routing in the body cavity, which I didn't want to do. Thus, I opted for some "P-90 -like" pickups, being the GFS Mean 90 pickups. I'd previously used a GFS Dream 90 pickup in SimpleMod-h and I liked the sound, so I thought I'd "up the ante" some and use the (reportedly) higher-output Mean 90 pickups with this project. Being a humbucker-sized pickup, there would not be any problems with mounting the pickups as it was easy enough to get an "H-H" pickguard and the body routing on the Strat would easily accommodate these pickups.
  
  
• The various pieces of hardware used on the Strat, such as the tremolo/bridge and the nut, affect the sound in ways different from the hardware used on a Les Paul... but I basically wasn't worrying about that.
  

Overall though, I thought I'd get some significantly different sounds from the finished guitar, so I pushed on with the project.


The Changes

• Replaced the 3 stock ceramic single coil Strat-style pickups with 2 GFS Mean 90 pickups - The original pickups were Ok but the Mean 90s use AlNiCo V magnets and they certainly sound cleaner and a bit beefier than the pickups they replaced. Note that when the 2 pickups are combined, they are noise-cancelling, as the neck pickup is RW/RP relative to the bridge pickup. Also (whether it's really a measure of anything), the neck pickup measures 8.0k whilst the bridge pickup runs at 8.5k.
  
  
• Replaced the stock 5-way Strat pickup selector switch with a 3-way version - With only 2 pickups, I didn't need the extra positions provided by the stock 5-way switch. I wasn't interested in switching between series/parallel combinations or including an extra tone cap/resistor on the other positions, so I kept things pretty simple and opted for the 3-way switch and a conventional, 2-pickup wiring scheme (see below).
  
  
• Modified the circuit to only use a single Master Tone control - I only have one tone control pot running as a standard "treble cut" control. It uses a 0.012uF greencap which I've used previously without any problems. Note that when the cap is fully dialled-in, the sound actually goes rather "nasal", which I've found is sometimes useful.
  
  
• Modified the Volume control to brighten the tone at lower volumes - The volume control now includes a "treble bleed" mod, which helps maintain the brightness of the sound as the volume is turned down. Further information on the "treble bleed" is available in JohnH's "A better treble bleed circuit" article.
  
  
• Incorporated electrical shielding to cut-down background noise - I'd previously done some electrical shielding using (kitchen) aluminium foil with some success on earlier projects but I wanted to try some metallic shielding paint with this project. So, I applied 3 coats to the cavity of the guitar, leaving at least 24 hours between each coat:-
  
  
  
  
  
  I also applied some foil to the rear of the pickguard to help complete the 'electrical enclosure':-
  
  
  
  
  
  I then soldered a small steel washer to the wire from the tremolo spring claw. I also soldered a similar washer to a wire connected to the back of the volume pot. I then installed a small steel screw in the wall of the cavity with the two previously mentioned washers (using the cavity wall meant the pickups weren't pushing against the screw when adjusting pickup heights -- something I learnt about in previous projects). This meant the signal ground and the shielding ground were all connected.
  
  

Schematic (564x528, 65kB):



Wiring Diagram (747x528, 77kB):



Wiring Layout (640x480, 174kB):




Pickup Combinations:


...where:
+ = pickups are combined in parallel
^¤ = noise cancelling


Observations

Having made all these modifications, the sounds coming from the guitar sound pretty good to my ears. Whilst not like a Les Paul (really), the guitar now has a bit more "robust" sound and gives a somewhat different series of tones when compared to those sounds available from a standard Stratocaster. I still need to work on the pickup heights to better "tune-in" the individual pickup sounds but I'm pretty pleased with the results.

Also, the shielding paint treatment seems to have worked pretty well. I think the guitar is quieter in general and I'll be giving the same treatment to my Affinity Strat.


Final Pictures

So you can see what the guitar looks like now; note the pickups actually have chrome covers -- the lighting for the photos was ordinary so the pickups may look black... "Sorry about that, Chief"...





Sample Sounds

However, the proof of the pudding is in the eating... so have a listen to some sample sounds... and please let me know what you think:-

• Before_Mean90s.mp3 (128kbps, 736kB) - Sounds from the unmodified guitar. Fairly standard 3-pickup Strat sounds as we move the 5-way switch from neck only through bridge only pickup combinations.
  
  
• After_Mean90s.mp3 (128kbps, 478kB) - Slightly beefier/rounder tones (but still with some 'bite') from the Mean 90 pickups as we move the 3-way switch from bridge only, through both pickups (noise-cancelling) and to neck only (apologies for reversing the order!). I'd be interested to hear how this guitar sounds going through an overdriven valve amp, even though I don't intend to ever play the guitar that way.
  
  
• After_Shielding.mp3 (128kbps, 748kB) - The background noise of the guitar in each of the positions selected by the 3-way switch from bridge only to neck only, as before (punctuated with a chord to more obviously identify the change in switch position). Sorry, folks - I should've done a noise profile for the original pickup arrangement
  
  

Conclusions

Another worthwhile project, I think. I like the resulting sounds but if you only have the one Strat, I don't know that it would be worthwhile to make these changes if you wanted to maintain a "true Strat sound" (whatever that is). YMMV.

I look forward to any comments...


John