Post by ashcatlt on Sept 29, 2011 17:05:19 GMT -5
So, I replaced my Squier Strat with the Xavier. I was planning to restore it to stock and sell it back to the Music-Go-Round where I bought it a couple years back. Now, though, I think I've changed my mind.
The new plan is to use it as a poor man's baritone. Yes, a baritone guitar normally has a longer scale, but I got to thinking ( )... There are plenty of 7 strings out there in standard 25.5" or even 24.75" scales, and people don't tend to complain. So I'm taking the lowest 6 strings from a 7 string set (.14-.58, and it leaves me an .11 for when one of my other guitars pop one) and sticking 'em on there. I'll probably just half-butt the nut and intonation adjustment, at least until I break the nut or remember how bad I am at guitar setups. It'll probably be tuned normally B-E-A-D-F#-B, though I've got one song that's in open D baritone (A-D-A-D-F#-A, open G down five frets), so I may drop it down there from time to time.
But it kind of needs re-wired. It originally had a set of 3 GFS L'il Killers, but I yanked the middle one out to put in the Xavier, so I'm left with just the two. I need to repair the Bridge pickup, because the insulation on the wires is cut where it comes through the hole in the base plate, and something is intermittently shorting to something else causing the pickup - and anything combined with it in parallel - to go silent sometimes. I've still got the 3 x DP5T rotaries for it.
The idea I've got is going to be a bit different from anything I've done so far. I plan to use one switch as a Master Selector - wired something like Baja Tele with an Off position. Pretty much the same thing I've got in my other guitars. The off setting will be redundant with the 5-way-blade-as-kill-switch thing, but with just two poles I can't think of anything better to do there. Maybe I can come up with something else to do with the blade, or just leave it out all together...but the blade makes it easier to do that stutter thing than with a rotary, so...
Each pickup then will get one of the other rotaries. I'm thinking I'll wire them in local series, and use the switches to add caps. One position will be wide open with no caps - normal HB. I'll have maybe a couple positions where there's a cap* across one coil of the HB, for a "local broadbucker" thing, and then one or two positions where the cap* is across the entire pickup, like a Tone control cranked down to 0. This will then give me some options for "system broadbucker" sounds.
Not completely sure how it will work out having one of four coils in a series structure bypassed by a cap, or having one coil in each pickup bypassed for that matter, but I figure it's worth a shot. I think I've got all the parts I'll need, except maybe the caps. Caps are cheap and easy to get, though. It should offer a pretty wide range of useable sounds, but most of them will retain a bit of girth, which I think will be appropriate for a baritone tuned instrument.
I don't right now have a good program to draw up a scheme, but I'll get around to that and post it up sometime in the not too distant future.
So just throwing this up here. I don't really want to buy any new parts for this guitar, but I'm open to suggestions on what I might could do with either the blade switch or that extra position on the Master switch. Also, any comments regarding the whole idea of using at a baritone, or whatever.
* There will be different values for each position, not looking for redundancy.
The new plan is to use it as a poor man's baritone. Yes, a baritone guitar normally has a longer scale, but I got to thinking ( )... There are plenty of 7 strings out there in standard 25.5" or even 24.75" scales, and people don't tend to complain. So I'm taking the lowest 6 strings from a 7 string set (.14-.58, and it leaves me an .11 for when one of my other guitars pop one) and sticking 'em on there. I'll probably just half-butt the nut and intonation adjustment, at least until I break the nut or remember how bad I am at guitar setups. It'll probably be tuned normally B-E-A-D-F#-B, though I've got one song that's in open D baritone (A-D-A-D-F#-A, open G down five frets), so I may drop it down there from time to time.
But it kind of needs re-wired. It originally had a set of 3 GFS L'il Killers, but I yanked the middle one out to put in the Xavier, so I'm left with just the two. I need to repair the Bridge pickup, because the insulation on the wires is cut where it comes through the hole in the base plate, and something is intermittently shorting to something else causing the pickup - and anything combined with it in parallel - to go silent sometimes. I've still got the 3 x DP5T rotaries for it.
The idea I've got is going to be a bit different from anything I've done so far. I plan to use one switch as a Master Selector - wired something like Baja Tele with an Off position. Pretty much the same thing I've got in my other guitars. The off setting will be redundant with the 5-way-blade-as-kill-switch thing, but with just two poles I can't think of anything better to do there. Maybe I can come up with something else to do with the blade, or just leave it out all together...but the blade makes it easier to do that stutter thing than with a rotary, so...
Each pickup then will get one of the other rotaries. I'm thinking I'll wire them in local series, and use the switches to add caps. One position will be wide open with no caps - normal HB. I'll have maybe a couple positions where there's a cap* across one coil of the HB, for a "local broadbucker" thing, and then one or two positions where the cap* is across the entire pickup, like a Tone control cranked down to 0. This will then give me some options for "system broadbucker" sounds.
Not completely sure how it will work out having one of four coils in a series structure bypassed by a cap, or having one coil in each pickup bypassed for that matter, but I figure it's worth a shot. I think I've got all the parts I'll need, except maybe the caps. Caps are cheap and easy to get, though. It should offer a pretty wide range of useable sounds, but most of them will retain a bit of girth, which I think will be appropriate for a baritone tuned instrument.
I don't right now have a good program to draw up a scheme, but I'll get around to that and post it up sometime in the not too distant future.
So just throwing this up here. I don't really want to buy any new parts for this guitar, but I'm open to suggestions on what I might could do with either the blade switch or that extra position on the Master switch. Also, any comments regarding the whole idea of using at a baritone, or whatever.
* There will be different values for each position, not looking for redundancy.