Rewiring a worn out strat copy help please

[jmartyg]

Hi,
I'm new, I've tried running through previous posts for the answer but i couldn't find anything that really helps.

Anyway, I'm rebuilding an old righty strat copy of mine, I'm left handed, so its strung upside-down (this is a key thing)

so, there are 2 questions i have.

1. Since I'm left handed, I've always had the 2 tone pots duct-taped to full open since i find myself hitting these with my arm. I'm considering of removing these pots, but I'm afraid of the possible tonal changes that might have. This guitar sounds real shrill and since the weiring is horrible, i figured that rewiring would be an improvement. Will this have any tonal change if i remove the tone? where would the leads from the 5-way switch end up?

2. The switch has a ground going directly to a tone pot, which is looped to the 'common ground' on the the volume. Other diagrams I've seen have this lead going to a terminal on the volume pot. why is this one different?

theconfessions.net/slammer.JPG is the current way it is wired right now. the hum-bucker is only 2 leads so I'm treating it as a single coil (no fancy phasing or tapping)


Any help would be appreciated!
Thanks,
Marty

[JohnH]

Hi Marty, welcome to GN2.

Thanks for posting the diagram. I dont quite follow the switch representation, but the rest is helpful.

With tone pots on a Strat based wiring, you can remove them and the wires to the lugs, the guitar will still work, maybe with a tad more brightness in the pickups where the tone pot was active. As a work around, you could disable them without affecting the tone by moving the wires from the tone pot centre lugs to the unused outer lugs. Then at least you could lose the duct tape.

I dont know why your grounding is different. it will work so long as there is a route to ground of some kind. Preferably, all grounds are taken to a single ground point, usually the back of the volume pot.

John

[jmartyg]

Hi,
Thanks for the reply. I desoldered it all last night, and realized that sine I've used the bridge pickup 90% of the time, and the tone was never in that part of the circuit, I can physically lose the two tone's and not really worry about the lead sound.

so.. theconfessions.net/slammer2.JPG And if that mysterious ground on the switch doesn't sound good like I'm going to do it, i can just move it. oh, and yeah, that switch is different than the 6 other ones I've used, picture it with the axis of the switch in the middle, and then in first position, it would have the bottom right and the third from the bottom on the left, 2nd would be the 2 bottom ones on the right, and so on.

thanks!