Pre Telecaster Experiment: It’s Alive!
After 45 minutes of desoldering and resoldering my first creation is alive! I took my experiemental guitar (ExG)--which is not the Telecaster, to Chang's house and we attempted the first wiring of my custom designed double-volume circuit. It was a miserable failure. But we learned quite a bit about the mechanics of soldering things together. Turns out I didn't have the circuit correct, and in addition we could never get the volume pots wired correctly. Now I know why:
Take a look at how the poles are numbered, its opposite of what you would expect. So I had the poles wired inversely, thus the pot was backwards. The first run wasn't exactly grounded correctly either, so there was alot of hum.
On Friday at work I redrew my circuit and corrected some errors that I had made. I took the ExG home with me for practice and rewired it. I played it at practice to get a feel for the pickup combination and I absolutely loved it. I have a Fat Bastard paired with a Seymour Duncan SH-JB4 and they actually turned out to be a pretty decent mix. The SH has a nicely rounded metallic crunch and the FB compliments it with a bluesy tone. I did notice, however, that when I rolled the volume back on the FB I lost all my highs. After emailing the guys at stewmac I was instructed that I need a 0.001 µF capacitor connected to the in and out of each volume pot. Noted for the next wiring experiement.
Basically, I have a nice little Les Paul clone here, and for a fraction of the price. The Fat Bastard pickup I have was donated to me (thanks Steve!) and I spent under 50 bucks on all the wiring supplies. This guitar still doesn't have the southern attitude that I would like, but it sounds absolutely amazing on any Muse or Indie Rock song you can throw at it. I'll post a review on the FB whenever I get used to it and use it at a couple of gigs. Heres my finalized wiring schematic:
The Capacitors are 0.001 µF. All the neat little icons I drew myself in photoshop then printed the diagram and drew the wires. This is a scan of my original diagram, which is probably why it doesn't look so good. All of these icons will most likely make it in NAGSS v1.0
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July 25th, 2006 - 17:22
So… the capacitor allows you to keep the highs? If that’s the case, i think that i want to install some of those on the ole strat. cuz i hate turning down the volume and losing high end gain. Man, this house is a wreck. I’ve been tinkering with my compy so much, it has been totally neglected. I blew all the dust outta my compy today made my room dusty–there was alotta dust. So i’m sure you wanted to know all that. Well, i’m gonna try and plan something fun in athens this weekend. YOu should be a part. The occassion is that COokie is coming down after the gig on thursday with me. neways, lemme know.
July 27th, 2006 - 19:04
so you didn’t burn off your hands? congrats.
July 30th, 2006 - 22:58
It sounded good the other night. It really did have a more edgy sound. I especially noticed the difference on songs like “Flow” that I have heard you guys play before. I liked it. Good job with the modifications. And the performing, too. Oh, and….of course my favorite part of the night was my shout-out. It was worth every cent of your waffle!