This guitar was originally “completed” in November 2018, before the birth of my first child.
Build Diary Here (https://www.buildyourownguitar.com.a...ead.php?t=8319[/ATTACH]
The plan was always to make a very versatile guitar, somehow covering both my semi-acoustic and Strat with rail pickup in the bridge position.
The original plan was to have both standard humbuckers modded to be coil splittable. I ended up killing the stock neck humbucker (replaced by a spare generic 8k humbucker), but successful in coil splitting the bridge one. This was going to be the 5 way switch arrangement:
Position 5 (neck) - Kill Switch (plan B after killing the stock humbucker due to attempting to coil split
Position 4 - Neck Humbucker
Position 3 - Neck Humbucker + Split Bridge
Position 2 - Split Bridge Only
Position 1 (bridge) - Bridge Humbucker
The guitar sounded terrible. The only usable setting is position 3, the neck humbucker was too hot (unbearingly), the split bridge humbucker by any definition is too thin/low output. The ground loop was unbearable - turns out I didn’t ground the bridge.
Some soul searching lead to a change of tactic:
Don’t macgyver a humbucker for coil splitting unless it’s one designed to do so.
Tele should have a real Single Coil in it - put that in the bridge
There are some short circuit-ing happening. I think the neck hum actually end up being both humbuckers in SERIES hence it’s that hot.
Dec 2021 Mod:
Ground the bridge. Used the dremel and got the tune-o-matic out. Soldered a ground wire to it and got it through to control cavity.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]42174
Replaced the bridge bad coil split humbucker and replaced it with genuine single coil. I had to laser cut a conversion ring. Doesn’t look perfect but does the job in the end.
New switching layout.
This is called the Bill Lawrence 5 Way Switch Mod
- Position 5 (neck) - Neck Humbucker
- Position 4 - Neck Humbucker and Bridge single coil parallel
- Position 3 - Bridge single coil
- Position 2 - Neck Humbucker and Neck Single Coil Half out of Phase
- Position 1 (bridge) - Neck Humbucker with capacitor (seymour duncan mod to reduce a hot humbucker)
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Other Mods:
Potentiometers while mixing humbucker and single coil. Humbucker in the neck is a generic one as I didn’t want to splash too much cash while doing this for the first time. It measures roughly 8k impedance. The two stock potentiometers are both 500k and this is not recommended for the single coil. I ended up swapping out the tone pot for a push pull 250 k potentiometer. I placed an additional 470k resistor in parallel with the single coil to ground to simply balance the volume.
I was interested in the bright switch and implemented that on the push pull tone pot. This is in part to see if it balanced the previous muddy neck humbucker.
What I didn’t realise last time was that the 5 way switch possibly requires a deeper cavity otherwise the copper tape can get in contact with the switch and shorting everything out. I’ve placed some electrical tape where the contact may occur to stop this
The results exceeded my expectations. Experience definitely helps - I pre-measured every wire, minimised bare wire length, tested by alligator clip and soldered one part at a time and tested one part at a time - this definitely minimised accidental shorting (which happened a few times).
The neck humbucker still sounds a little bit hot but with the series cap definitely make it sound sweeter.
To those curious what this sounds like, I’ve posted a demo
Mods for “next time”:
- Treble Bleed mod on the volume pot.
- 2 series capacitors for the neck humbucker, one on each of hot and ground wire. This means they are “always on”, and wouldn’t affect the phase arrangement (the half out of phase in position 2 is definitely a highlight of this wiring!)
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