Post by ozboomer on Jul 14, 2010 20:41:13 GMT -5
Here is another fairly simple construction project suitable for use with a standard 3x single-coil, "Stratocaster"-style guitar.
"SimpleMod" (Revision "b") has recently been incorporated into the wiring of my 2006 Squier Bullet Strat (my standard mod testing platform) and is working pretty well for me.
Many thanks, once again, to everyone (at GuitarNutz, and elsewhere) who have helped me with the design.
Background
The basic objectives of the design were to remedy some of the deficiencies/non-features of the traditional Stratocaster wiring scheme. Specifically, "SimpleMod" currently addresses the following issues:
Schematic:
Wiring Diagram:
Pickup Combinations:
...where the "*" indicates the traditionally "missing" sounds.
Discussion
The "deficiencies" mentioned above have been addresed in this design by including the following:
"SimpleMod" is actually an on-going project, where I've been adjusting one or two features at a time and the current version (Revision "b") is something that's pretty simple to build (you can add the elements to an existing standard-wired guitar fairly easily) and thus, I thought I'd post it here for others to try.
It is also one of the first "production" designs that I designed through the use of "modules". The modules used are shown in the following diagram:
I intend to eventually post the modules I've developed on the Design Modules sub-board so that we can start establishing a nice repository of tested, workable "boiler plate" that can be easily dropped into almost any design to add a required feature.
It would be best to post any further thoughts, comments, etc about "SimpleMod" in the SimpleMod + ToneMod = ... thread.
John
"SimpleMod" (Revision "b") has recently been incorporated into the wiring of my 2006 Squier Bullet Strat (my standard mod testing platform) and is working pretty well for me.
Many thanks, once again, to everyone (at GuitarNutz, and elsewhere) who have helped me with the design.
Background
The basic objectives of the design were to remedy some of the deficiencies/non-features of the traditional Stratocaster wiring scheme. Specifically, "SimpleMod" currently addresses the following issues:
- The sound of the guitar can often lose brightness when the volume is reduced.
- The way in which the sound changes when using the standard tone and volume controls is not necessarily the way we would like it to change. That is, the volume and/or tone controls may only operate in the range 8-10 instead of 1-10. This behaviour is normally governed by the type of taper used for the pot making-up the volume or tone control.
- The guitar's tone, as well as being determined by the pickups selected, is generally controlled by the use of two, "treble cut" controls and they often interact with each other in a (kind-of) non-intuitive way.
- Although we have 3 pickups connnected in parallel in the original design, only 5 of the possible 7 pickup combinations are generally available by use of a 5-way switch.
Schematic:
Wiring Diagram:
Pickup Combinations:
5-Way | Neck Off | Neck On |
1. | B | B+N* |
2. | B+M | B+M+N* |
3. | M | M+N |
4. | M+N | M+N |
5. | N | N |
...where the "*" indicates the traditionally "missing" sounds.
Discussion
The "deficiencies" mentioned above have been addresed in this design by including the following:
- Tone changes with volume can be alleviated by use of the Treble Bleed Mod.
- Conventional wisdom talks about using log taper pots for volume controls (owing to the logarithmic repsonse of our hearing) but there is often "heated discusion" about whether to use a linear taper pot (you're changing the cutoff frequency of a low-pass filter = linear) or a log taper pot (you're actually changing the volumes of various frequencies in the pass band of a low-pass filter = log) for tone controls. It seems that you have to do some experiments yourself to adequately resolve this conflict of opinion... and the tapers I've used in this design seem to work well for me.
- I have used a slightly modified version of the tone controls from a G&L Legacy guitar in this design. This means there are both a "treble cut" and a "bass cut" tone control; I wanted a fairly severe cut to the bass frequencies for this guitar, hence the small value of the capacitor on the "bass cut" control. Note: Capacitors of less than ~1 nf (1000 pF) can significantly affect the output level and you would need to adjust the volume control on the guitar whilst playing to compensate.
For more details about the G&L Legacy tone control, look at the G&L Guitars web site, navigate to G&L Guitars > Support > Technical Schematics and Wiring Diagrams and locate the PDF document titled "Legacy - schematic block diagram". - This design includes a "neck on" switch, so the neck pickup can be switched into the output (in parallel) at any time. This provides a way to achieve the "missing" sounds of B+N and B+M+N.
"SimpleMod" is actually an on-going project, where I've been adjusting one or two features at a time and the current version (Revision "b") is something that's pretty simple to build (you can add the elements to an existing standard-wired guitar fairly easily) and thus, I thought I'd post it here for others to try.
It is also one of the first "production" designs that I designed through the use of "modules". The modules used are shown in the following diagram:
I intend to eventually post the modules I've developed on the Design Modules sub-board so that we can start establishing a nice repository of tested, workable "boiler plate" that can be easily dropped into almost any design to add a required feature.
It would be best to post any further thoughts, comments, etc about "SimpleMod" in the SimpleMod + ToneMod = ... thread.
John