Just finished rewiring my Sonic Blue Strat....

baimun

baimun

Funkasaurus Rex
Some of you may remember the photos I did down in Florida with this guitar on the beach. At the time it had Eric Johnson singles and an aged pickguard from a roadworn strat. I've upgraded the saddles and arm from the really worn ones I used to have on the PRS trem, and the stock tuners have been replaced with Gotoh vintage locking tuners.

547-1464496775-b3852d6d8591ce9bea192058991fd8e8.jpg


Well, at some point I screwed that pickguard up, and the singles are sitting at McFeely's to go in the neck and middle of my Koa guitar. I had these Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound singles so I thought I'd do something interesting.

There's a master volume and master tone (I started with 500K each because these pickups are pretty hot. We'll see if I have to change the value or not). The first thing I did was wired the neck and bridge pickups to that three way super switch. In the down position, both of the pickups are overwound like P90's. Aproximately 14K bridge and 13k neck. In the middle, the neck pickup drops to a partial winding of 7k and the bridge stays hot. In the upper position, the bridge also taps to a 7.5K.

I'm combining this with a 5 way super switch so I get:

1) Bridge
2) Bridge + Neck
3) Middle
4) Middle + Neck
5) Neck

By adding the 3 way coil taps it gives an extra bridge sound, 2 additional Bridge+Neck sounds, and additional sounds in the 4 and 5 positions too, for a total of 10 different pickup combinations. When using the partial windings, the pickups are very glassy and jangly. The overwound pickups are very beefy and articulate.

I have to finish intonating and setting up.... but this should be a fun guitar. :helper:
 
Also, knowing that the neck pickup is always the plus one pickup, it is the reverse wound reverse polarity pickup instead of the middle.
 
Cool Strat (and nice choice of pickguard)!

Were the Seymor Duncans specifically designed for the 5-way super switch, or do they just work out well with it? I guess what I'm really asking is whether you had to add any additional wiring to the pickups to make them work with this set up.
 
Looks hot. How soon will you know if you have to swap out a pot or two? My Strat has the S-1 switching and a 5 way, so I'm kinda knowlegable about that stuff. Funny thing is that I'm still getting new sounds out of mine after 10+ years owning it.
 
@Stratguy really the 5 way only needed to be a "super switch" because of selection #2 using the neck instead of the middle with the bridge. The other 4 positions are normal. If I do something like this again, i may use a three position rotary so you can't even see the mod.
 
Yeah, that's pretty hot.

My SIL got a Bullet in the same color about 4 years ago that she doesn't play...

:hmm:
 
I located some more Strat pickup screws and the rubber washers from a bunch of tele pickups and swapped out the gold ones for silver ones. I actually like those better than metal springs because I feel like the pickup is more stable and doesn't flop around in the pickguard as much when I'm playing extra aggressive.
 
So I'm not a repair guru like yourself. What do those washers do? The only thing I can think of is that they dampen out any extraneous vibration from the body.
 
They do the same thing as the pickup springs but they're way easier to use because you don't have to compress them to get the pickups on.
 
That's pretty nice. Classy looking. I like the flamey fingerboard wood too - just the right about of "luxurious".
 
So the Strat, the Landshark and the Mesa are all light blue? You have a problem and I should know. :grin:
 
Chad said:
So the Strat, the Landshark and the Mesa are all light blue? You have a problem and I should know. :grin:
Click to expand...

And I'm considering repainting one of my PRS guitars as well. :wink:

Oooh.... could you imagine a sparkly sonic blue top instead of a gold top? :eek:
 
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