Post by newey on Aug 9, 2011 5:29:52 GMT -5
Thanks for the offer TTH, but I've got a bag of screws on the way.
An Update:
I have strung it up and played it, with the pickguard jury-rigged with a few screws for now, although it needs intonation and set-up. But meanwhile, there's good and bad news.
On the good side, the pickups sound good and it's dead quiet, much less noisy than my unshielded 3-pickup Strat. My worries about excess noise with 4 SCs were unfounded, the shielding seems to have taken care of it nicely.
The bad news: The tone control is wired backwards (why can't I ever get that right?); that's easily fixed. More of a problem is the blend control. At either extreme of rotation, it's fine- that's with 1-2 pickups in the mix, depending on the other switching. In the center detent position, however, the output is cut down to about 1/3 of full volume. In this position, 3 or 4 pickups are in the mix.
My first thought was that it was the difference in load between 1-2 pickups vs. 3-4. But it seems like way too much of a cut-off for that to be the cause, and it also doesn't seem to appreciably alter things if I have 3 pickups going in the center position as opposed to all 4.
My second thought is that the two pairs of pickups are wired OOP at the blender. If so, I'm getting pretty dramatic cancellation between the 3 or 4 pickups. It doesn't have that typically thin, OOP sound though- it's more like a straight volume drop, like I had the volume set to about "3".
At any rate, it's only useable when turned to one or the other extreme, so the pickguard has to come off (yet again!) for some more troubleshooting.
An Update:
I have strung it up and played it, with the pickguard jury-rigged with a few screws for now, although it needs intonation and set-up. But meanwhile, there's good and bad news.
On the good side, the pickups sound good and it's dead quiet, much less noisy than my unshielded 3-pickup Strat. My worries about excess noise with 4 SCs were unfounded, the shielding seems to have taken care of it nicely.
The bad news: The tone control is wired backwards (why can't I ever get that right?); that's easily fixed. More of a problem is the blend control. At either extreme of rotation, it's fine- that's with 1-2 pickups in the mix, depending on the other switching. In the center detent position, however, the output is cut down to about 1/3 of full volume. In this position, 3 or 4 pickups are in the mix.
My first thought was that it was the difference in load between 1-2 pickups vs. 3-4. But it seems like way too much of a cut-off for that to be the cause, and it also doesn't seem to appreciably alter things if I have 3 pickups going in the center position as opposed to all 4.
My second thought is that the two pairs of pickups are wired OOP at the blender. If so, I'm getting pretty dramatic cancellation between the 3 or 4 pickups. It doesn't have that typically thin, OOP sound though- it's more like a straight volume drop, like I had the volume set to about "3".
At any rate, it's only useable when turned to one or the other extreme, so the pickguard has to come off (yet again!) for some more troubleshooting.
).