Ground wiring on mini switches

[karmicluca]

Hi there, first post from me 

I've been surfing on this forum (and GuitarNuts I) for a while and since i had this disassembled squier strat around I thought i could give some mods a shot 
I started with the 'quieting the beast' but soon had to stop since I found that i had bought regular cloth wires and not screened insulated ones -.- still looking for them.

First question might be, is it important if the ground wire from bridge clamp to pup cavity is not shielded? 

After that I'd like to try three mods (4 if you count treble bleed as one) which involve three different switches, they're the following:

• Free "woman" tone with SP3T
• Direct out (tone bypass) with DPDT
• Separate Neck on with SPST
  

Now, since I already did the enormous effort ( ) of shielding the cavity with aluminum foil, do any of the switches posted there need grounding and where? o.O
Sorry for not posting a schematic of the whole thing but I think it'd come out so bad it'd be useless anyway  

Thanks a lot in advance and for the tons of info on this forum ^^

Luca

[ashcatlt]

Hey welcome aboard.

There is no reason for the bridge/string ground wire to be shielded. You'd really just be connecting the shield to the same ground as the wire, so it would be redundant. Won't hurt anything, but...

The Tone Bypass switch has a connection to ground as drawn, but I assume you're talking about grounding the body or frame of the switches for shielding purposes. As long as the foil on the pickguard is continuous to ground (at least when it's all put together), and the metal threads/nuts/whatever at the top of the switches contact that foil, then you won't need any extra wires. I'm not really sure how important those frame grounds are to begin with, but the foil shield will definitely take care of it.

In instances where there wasn't foil or something else and you needed to ground the switch frames I will usually just solder a wire to the inside washer, or you could get a ring connector that fits comfortably over the threaded bushings. Sometimes you can solder to the metal on the sides of the switches, but it can end up damaging the switch if you appl too much heat for too long.

[karmicluca]

Oh yeah the pickguard is covered properly, didn't think of that.
So yeah that should do all the grounding that is needed I guess, since as you said the tone bypass is already grounded and there is a simple on/off switch for the Neck On mod...
I'm still unsure of how the caps thing works but I think I'll just go and give it a try before even bothering 
that kept me thinking because I'm used to see a cap going from the output of the pot to the ground, but I realized that the mod happens before the signal enters the pot... uhh o.O

So that's really it, I'll be modding as soon as shops open here T_T hope the process goes well  I'm thinking about making a recorded sound test when it's over, just in case it can be useful to someone

Thanks a lot for your help  

Luca

[ashcatlt]

On the tone thing:

The order of series passive components is arbitrary unless there are parallel components between them. Caps to ground or pots to ground is the same thing.

[karmicluca]

That makes things a bit clearer for that
I realized, if I'm not mistaken, that in any case if I want to keep two tone knobs I have to take the direct-out mod a bit differently and put a DPST on/off switch after the tone-side lugs of the 5-way and before the tone pots, since what that schematic in the link would give me is only a master tone, which is tele style... 

So my idea is to take the two tone out of the 5-way (mid-bridge and neck) and pass them through a DP (to keep them separate unlike the mod) on/off switch, so when it's on, the pots are active, and when it's off there's only one direct output through the vol pot... does that make any sense at all? Hope so 

EDIT: So I've put it all together and the switches work like a charm, the direct-through is working and so are the neck-on, the caps selection and a killswitch i put there at the last minute.
I still have a problem with caps positioning since I have the "tone acting as volume" problem, will fix that today if I can.
Other than that i seem to have inverted mid-bridge and neck tone pots, so the neck one is closest to the jack, will fix that too.
Also the treble bleed cap is way too large (4.7 nf in place of 1 nf), so the highs are left unaffected all the way from 10 through 3, which makes it not a volume pot at all... Might be handy anyway, but I need a working vol pot right 
Hope I can fix that all today so I can record   Thanks again

[karmicluca]

Aug 24, 2013 14:14:47 GMT -5 karmicluca said:

Oh yeah the pickguard is covered properly, didn't think of that.

[...]

I'm thinking about making a recorded sound test when it's over, just in case it can be useful to someone

Sooo, sorry for coming back a bit late (almost an year is a bit, right) but just YESTERDAY the beast had its first proper test with "everything" working.
This because I had to take the caps switch off in order to get the tone circuit right, and the killswitch just lost contact a few minutes before screwing the pickguard... 

So I'm reviving this post since I'm very curious about your opinion on the sound I got, stock pickups, same woods, all the electronics remade from scratch, fresh strings and a few VST amps.

I'm wondering, isn't this sound pretty good coming off a 150€ squier AFFINITY strat? soundcloud.com/karmicluca/sets/fender-squier-mod-tone-test
Pretty rough and badly executed demo but I think it had a couple interesting sounds...

Pretty happy about the resistor/cap in parallel - treble bleed, it actually works wonders in keeping the tone constant at half or even close to zero volume!

Also, as summer advances i'm gonna get a couple fender USA stock pickups, hope they'll help improving overall sound too!

Thanks and sorry for a late update
Luca

[newey]

KL-

Sounds good by these ears!

[karmicluca]

Nice then Looking to buy a used set of stock US standard strat pups to replace the squier ones, wonder what's a fair price for them... 
found a set for 60€//80$ without shipping, 1997, or a more recent one (2010) for 75€/100$, i guess either would do?

[newey]

AFAIK, Fender didn't change their pickups between those years on a std Strat, so either set should be the same. There are cheaper options; you're paying a premium just because they say "Fender" on them.

[karmicluca]

I understand the brand inflating the price, but I went for it anyway, and got fender USA tuners from the same guy, so the guitar now has only woods and pickguard from the old days
Mounted heavy 11-50 d'addarios for dropping, recorded this with the fender bridge pup, sounds nice to me

Alter Bridge - Waters Rising (Demo)

I've made a blunder tho, since i didn't know that the mid pup isn't actually RWRP, so it's out of phase in positions 2-4.

The first one is quite usable, so i think i might use a DPDT switch to switch bridge's phase and get N+B out of phase too... 
What do you think?

Thanks for all the help ^^

Luca