Guitarists of Singletrack…

Got a Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound pickup for the bridge position in my Strat arriving today.

I put one in the neck of my Fender Duosonic. An absolutely fantastic pickup

My favourite bridge pickup for a Strat is the JB jnr wired via a Schaller mega switch that taps the humbucker on position 2. Sweet as ****.

Completely agree on this one

This one I assume.

https://www.andertons.co.uk/guitar-dept/electric-guitar-accessories/electric-guitar-pickups-electronics/seymour-duncan-sjbj-1b-jb-jnr-strat-white

If there’s one pickup that I’d like to change in my guitars it’s the bridge pickup in my Mexican Strat which doesn’t sound very strat like and doesn’t have much grunt either. Lose, lose.

Anyone got any tricks for removing chrome?

This one I assume.

https://www.andertons.co.uk/guitar-dept/electric-guitar-accessories/electric-guitar-pickups-electronics/seymour-duncan-sjbj-1b-jb-jnr-strat-white

If there’s one pickup that I’d like to change in my guitars it’s the bridge pickup in my Mexican Strat which doesn’t sound very strat like and doesn’t have much grunt either. Lose, lose.

Posted 2 hours ago

All my strat bridge pickups have been poor even the custom shop ones I think its just my taste really

This one I assume.

That’s the fella.
If I was a better player I could get away with the CS PU in the bridge but I need a bit of help unless I have everything cranked.

Anyone got any tricks for removing chrome?

What are you trying to remove it from?

Any guitar shop will remove silver.

And gold, and notes and coins. They take cards too.

🙂

i would like to get it removed from everything, i dont really like shiny stuff but it might look better than the alternative of course.
Is the hardware usually made of plated stainless or something else?

A lot of it is mild steel, remove the chrome and it will rust. Other bits are diecast, they just look grey and then go furry and greyer.

Not new, but…

The original…

Why haven’t they wired it with spliting the humbucker with a push-pull? And unless I’m missing something there’s no tone control for the humbucker. I’d fit a push-pull and run the humbucker through one of the tone pots before installing.

Edit: I see you’ve added a photo of the original. Pinch the wiring off that. 😉

As I said before i’m not a big fan of pull pots so I use the Mega switch that can be wired in multiple ways. It means I can’t split the bridge pickup on its own but the JB Jr just come across as a fatter bridge pick up that was what I wanted. The coil tapping is done by the switch that has a bunch of options.
I’ve ever really wanted a treble roll off on the bridge, the volume control of adding the middle pickupdoes all I want.
Obviously others have a different view.
Here are the wiring options with the Schaller switch.

https://schaller.info/en/hss

By not new, I mean that I got the new pre-wired board and got it swapped over ~7 years ago.

I was never overly convinced that it sounded ‘better’ (for me) than the fender original in that I did miss the S1 sounds. But rather than **** with the pre-wired plate (that cost >300£ at the time) I think I’m going to swap back to the original…

Also the BKP is a tortoiseshell board and it always reminds me that it would much look better on an Olympic white body (rather than the black mine is…). A refinish is a step too far atm…

Just priced up the pre-wired to what it’d cost now; 525£!

I too prefer a switch to push-pull, Eddie, you may have noticed them on a couple of my Teles. I don’t know where I’d put one on a Strat though so I’d use a push-pull. It needs to be in reach without risk of accidentally hitting it.

What’s the orignal Fender humbucker like compared with the Bare Knuckle, Metalheart? I’ve a Mexican Tele which had Fender humbuckers and they were very disappointing when I plugged it into a tube amp. I swapped for Duncan Pearly Gates which are both better defined and have more punch. Yourguitarhero describes the Pearly Gates as muddy so on that basis the original Fenders were quagmire.

If ever the lockdown ends and all the music bar haven’t gone bankrupt I’ll do something with my Strat because it’s nice to play but sounds crap compared with my teles so I don’t use it.

I find the Pearly Gates a bit muddy on my guitar – but it is an old Dean Z which is a huge, heavy Explorer shaped piece of wood… Might be a nicer fit on a naturally brighter guitar

I too prefer a switch to push-pull, Eddie, you may have noticed them on a couple of my Teles. I don’t know where I’d put one on a Strat though so I’d use a push-pull. It needs to be in reach without risk of accidentally hitting it.

Hence the Schaller doing it all in one. All I lose is the ability to have a choice of Just Bridge humbucker or Split. I

Quarter pounder has arrived, time to bust out the soldering iron.

What’s the orignal Fender humbucker like compared with the Bare Knuckle,

For kind of obvious reasons I’ve never ABed them. From memory it’s a riff-raff (see link below). As to be expected for a knocking 150£ pup it has better dynamic range and clarity. I had a H&K tubemiester
18 combo that I hated (never ‘warmed up’) at the time so even less ability to compare in head now.

https://www.bareknucklepickups.co.uk/pickup/humbucker/riff-raff

I would’ve thought the zinc baseplates on the (Irish Tour) single coils and Jensen oil/paper cap might have warranted a comment over the bucker switching…

Here’s a before and after (fitted):

That looks super pretty with that tortoiseshell ‘guard.
I can only imagine how it sounds.

Right then.
Finally managed to stop playing the ’63 Tele* long enough to take some photos.
The relic effect is pretty good, but as John has spent 57 years doing it I’d expect it to look authentic.
The bridge pickup is probably one of the most amazing things I have ever heard.
The neck pickup is a waste of magnets but thanks to Edukator’s info I found it can be used to roll off treble. I think I’d happily settle for an Esquire…
The feel is amazing, the narrower and tighter radiused fingerboard caught me out a few times as I was muffling the high E but that is something I’d get used to.
I’d love it. I still prefer my Strat overall but that bridge pickup into a valve amp is remarkable.

* He swears blind he bought it in 1963.
The back plate serial suggests 1965/6. I’d need to take the neck off to get another number. I’m sure he isn’t lying but he remembers the year as he’d just turned 21.

I’ll have the guard and humbucker off the bottom one, and middle and neck off the top one. I’ll junk one of the tone pots so the volume is where tone 1 normally is and wire it all up like a Nashville Telecaster with the push button to split the humbucker. 🙂

Edit as Eddie has just added pictures of a Tele:

That is in remarkable condition for the age. Junior put more wear on the frets on his first Tele in 2 years than that has got. How much are you going to offer him for it? 😉

The nitro on the neck hasn’t worn too well though. Whatever you think of modern polyurethane finishes in terms of feel they are incredibly resistant to wear compared with nitro.

That is in remarkable condition for the age.

He played rhythm guitar and sang in his band for all that time and didn’t really tear it up, hardly ever used a pick…
…very gentle on the beast.

I think the neck has worn well. Fingerboard would be better if he’d trimmed his nails a bit better. The neck feels good as the finish has work off but something has sunk into the grain giving those dark patches up near the nut at the back.

How much are you going to offer him for it?

I screwed up there by saying what it reckon it is worth, but being honest he’ll never sell it. He doesn’t need the money. He’ll probably leave it to his grandson who has no interest in music, but hey, its his to do with what he wants.

Edukator
Free Member

The nitro on the neck hasn’t worn too well though.

Aye but it’ll probably feel amazing- hand worn nitro is like butter as long as you keep playing it. Loving the body wear taking the shape of the grain, I’ve seen it a bit before but never quite like that, pretty ace.

eddiebaby
Full Member

Hence the Schaller doing it all in one. All I lose is the ability to have a choice of Just Bridge humbucker or Split.

Looking at the wiring pics just made me realise, I used to be pretty damn good at this stuff and now, I know absolutely nothing. Bikes and time have pushed all the knowledge out of my other ear.

(I’ve got an early 90s MIJ hotrod strat in a case, in bits, which I’d started some insane wiring scheme on- I wanted a double fat strat with a les paul style pickup switch in the bottom horn and a wee selection of mini switches for taps, phasing etc… Got as far as getting the parts, routed the body, got a scratchplate made and even ordered a custom shop 4-wire seymour duncan ’59 for the neck, and then… I dunno, got a girlfriend or something. And now it’s not even that I don’t know how to finish it, I don’t even know how to start to finish it 🙂 ) I guess it can stay in the case for a while longer, seeing as how nobody else’d want it and I probably wouldn’t play it)

guess it can stay in the case for a while longer, seeing as how nobody else’d want it

You just need a time machine.
Allan Holdsworth was quite into twin humbucker Strats for a while.

Well that’s that sorted then…

Put the Quarter Pounder pickup into the strat. I think it is pretty much what I was looking for – similar tone to the normal pickups but a little fatter and higher output – sounds good once you get into crunch or distorted sounds – the normal pickups sound a bit “clanky” there. Basically it’s kind of like a P90, which is my favourite kind of pikcup.

It’s possibly still a little bright, so I might take the pickguard off again and wire the bottom tone control onto it as there is no tone control at the moment.

I also thought it would fit under the normal pickup covers, but it doesn’t so I have one black pickup now where the others are white….. I think they make a white version so I might see if can get one second hand and swap them over.

Allan Holdsworth was quite into twin humbucker Strats for a while.

But then ended up with 1 humbucker (bridge) and headless. Exactly the sort of guitar I would love as like him I don’t see the point of a heavy headstock at the end of the neck and I convert my guitars to bridge humbucker (with coil split) as it covers all I need.

I don’t buy guitars for £1500 but even if I did Kiesel don’t even sell the Holdsworth guitar as they have put 2 pickups on it for some reason.

😁
If you think that’s pricey I was trying to find a Steinberger L2 a couple of years back…

As I can’t get my mystery guitar finished yet.
I bought a bass kit from coban guitars.
Spend the afternoon building it.
So if you can hear a weird sound it’s me murdering Peter Gunn

Love this thread even though I can barely follow most of it. To me a pickup is what Cletus drives, so a discourse on how soapy they are is at a different altitude to my head 😉

Anyway – to Christmas…despite only knowing 8 chords (yep, that’s nearly enough for 3 Quo tribute bands) I want to make some different noises. A work colleague suggested a Roland Cube GX micro which seems quite cool – what else should I look at in this sort of bracket?

I have had a Roland Microcube for about a decade and I’d rate it probably the best 65£ I’ve spent on guitars.

It’s got a such decent sound for something so small and the combination of amp models and effects is great for a bedroom amp.

The ability to take an mp3 in and headphones out also a boon.

So I’d give a thumbs up for its replacement.

Oh, Lou Reed said “One chord is fine. Two chords is pushing it. Three chords and you’re into jazz.” 🤪

I know hundreds of chords it’s putting them into some kind of melodic order that things start to unravel. 🤣

Ooh! Modern jazz then.

Have we done
“What’s the difference between a rock guitarist and a jazz guitarist?”

“One plays three chords to an audience of thousands…..”

Your Uncle Larry says you should listen to organ players…

One chord:

despite only knowing 8 chords

One of the beauties of guitar (esp. electric) is chord shapes, If you only know a handful you can play pretty much any standard chord: specifically B and F (just A and E with a barre). Otherwise know as Ramones chords… forces you to learn (at least) the notes of the top two strings up the neck.

And any chord in A or E you can play with three fingers can also be barred (ie Am, E7, Em7, etc.).

Get a capo and the handful of chord shapes you do know can open whole new songs. I like a capo on the fourth fret personally (that I think of C# as I like to around the ‘Am’ shape here…)

Managed to sell my Marshall JTM1c overnight

Great amp but wasn’t getting used for more than room decoration by my mrs