So I’m constantly changing things with my guitar sound, some for the good, some for the bad. Like all guitarists, just when you think you have achieved the perfect sound, you can’t help yourself to start fussing with things again. I think it’s an untreatable disease that I will suffer for the rest of my life. Mod 3 is the latest change to my 2006 American Stratocaster. This is a great little guitar. You can see from some of my previous gear modification articles HERE that I’ve already changed out the pickups, added the Suhr silent system and installed locking tuners. It was recently setup professionally Andy Brauer. He not only made it play better including a needed adjustment to the vibrato arm, he replaced the saddles on the bridge using S-Model “CG” solid steel saddles by Callaham Guitars. Andy really knows what he is doing.

In my quest to make this guitar part of my main arsenal, I recently replaced the 5-way switch with a 3-way switch and modified the wiring a bit. The jury is still out on this modification to my Strat but so far, I like it.

The basic wiring scheme on most standard Stratocasters out of the factory has not changed much since its inception. It’s actually a brilliant wiring scheme, in my opinion, and this is the magic of a Strat and what makes it such a versatile guitar. However, in classic Chris Conte fashion, I decided to change the 5-way switch to a 3-way switch and place the middle pickup to it’s own volume. Let me review what I did and what I was after.

The pots on Strats are almost always audio taper. They may be either 500k or 250k but are typically 250k. 500k pots seem to give the Strat a little fatter, more modern sound. The value for the tone capacitor can vary from .022uf to .047uf.  Older Strats started out with .047uf capacitors but .022/.033uf values are more widely used today. With 500k pots, it is typically .033uf and with 250k pots, it is typically .022uf. On older Strats, all three pickups are of the same polarity. On newer Strats the middle pickup has reverse polarity from the other two. Personally, I prefer that all three pickups be in phase as it gives a fatter sound to my ear. There is an excellent wiring schematic shown here at GuitarNuts.com. http://www.guitarnuts.com/wiring/shielding/innards.php. As far as the pickup selector switch is concerned, 99% of all Strats out there incorporate a 5-way pickup selector switch.  There have been some variations over the years but most utilize the 5-way switch to select between the 3 single coil pickups.

What I was after

On my Strat, I almost always use position 5 (Neck), as well as position 4 and 2. Surprisingly, I almost never use position 3 (Middle) and 1 (Bridge). I find both these positions are way too tinny for my taste. I like position 5 and 2 for soloing and position 4 for rhythms and some level of soloing.

Another pickup combination I love in a two pickup guitar is the neck and bridge pickup in parallel. This is that classic Les Paul “poppy” sound. I wanted to hear what this might sound like with the Suhr V60s in my Strat.

Finally, I love the sound of the neck position pickup alone for soloing but thought I wanted to add a little color by rolling in the middle pickup. I didn’t want it full up but more in the range of 70% to 80%. This might give a slightly different flavor of the neck pickup soloing sound.

Based on that concept, I decided to use a 3-way switch and wire my Strat similar to a two pickup Telecaster. I put the middle pickup on a separate volume control allowing me to “mix in” the middle pickup with the other 3 switch settings.

I looked up a standard Telecaster wiring schematic and used that as the basis of my modification. The Tele schematic uses a 3-way switch and offers the pickup selection scheme I was looking for. To help roll in the middle pickup “at will”; I decided to use the middle pot on my guitar as a separate volume for the middle pickup. This left two more pots, one for Master Volume and one for overall Tone (I never really got the two tone thing….).

Working on a Strat is never fun. You gotta remove all the strings, remove lots of screws and flip the pick guard around working dangerously on top of your guitar. I use a towel to cover the Strat when soldering and wiring.

Step 1 - First things first, I drew my schematic. I obtained a standard wiring schematic for both my American Strat and a standard American Telecaster. Below is the schematic plan I drew up and used for my new wiring modification.

Step 2 - I unsoldered the wires from the 5-way switch to allow removal and replacement with a new 3-way switch. Following a standard Telecaster schematic, I wired the jumpers on the 3-way switch as shown. Next I wired the neck and bridge pickup to the correct tabs as shown. I also decided that I wanted the pot closest to the strings to be my master volume and the tone pot to be at the bottom. The middle pot would serve as my middle pickup volume.

Step 3 - The next step was to remove the tone capacitor from the middle pot and rewire it to the lower pot. As an experiment, I decided to change the stock capacitor from a .022uf to a .047uf. This is an easy thing to change back but let’s see what value this will bring.

Step 4 – An important decision when using two volume controls in your schematic is to decide where to wire the output jack. There are a few choices here. I experimented with a few different options giving me various results.

On a volume control pot there are three tabs; one wiper in the middle and then the two tabs on the end which make up the resistor value. One end of the pot will be grounded. Depending one where you connect your signal feed from the switch and output feed to your guitar jack, the volume controls will interact differently.

What this resulted in was an independent volume control for the middle pickup. In other words, with the master volume turned all the way down, the middle pickup volume could be used independently as a volume for the middle pickup by itself. This is cool except I didn’t like the fact that if I needed to bring down my guitar volume, I would have to turn two knobs.

Results

So far, I really love this control option. I still don’t use the bridge pickup by itself but I certainly use the neck pickup for soloing. More importantly, I love the new Bridge-Neck pickup combination. It can give a very “telecaster-Les Paul” tonality to my Strat. What was a little surprising is when I roll in the middle pickup in this position. I can get a real “glassy” full sound using all three pickups with the middle pickup at about 80%. It is very, very usable.

I also love the fact that I can blend in the middle pickup in any combination. I think of the middle pickup is a tone enhancement pickup. It sounds great when the neck-middle pickups and/or the bridge-middle pickups are a 100%. These are classic Strat sounds. However, it’s nice to roll off the middle volume slightly letting the end pickups dominate and the middle pickup is just adding a little color.

Treble Bleed Capacitors

I should mention that this change made a common problem with volume controls more obvious. Often as the volume controls on guitars are turned down, the guitar sound can become muffled and sound bassy. High-end frequencies are rolled off quickly. To help fix this problem, I added a .001uf capacitor to the volume control across the wiper. This allows some of the high frequencies to "bleed" into the output signal as the volume is turned down, making the guitar brighter sounding at lower volumes. It is very effective.

Tone Capacitor

Finally, and as I mentioned previously, I installed a .047uf capacitor as the tone cap. It was pretty dark and muddy sounding. In the end, I switched back to the .022uf capacitor; which was more appropriate to my 250K pots installed in my guitar.

Conclusion

I’ll report back in a few months to see if I keep this mod. I have to play with it for a while and see what advantages I gained. I like what I hear so far but it will depend on how it sounds with the band and how easy it is to switch and alter my sounds.

A little history on the Stratocaster

http://www.geocities.com/musicfan.geo/choice.html