SSS Pickguard – Women Tone, Bass Cut & 2 Vols
SSS custom pickguard for Stratocaster- Women Tone, Bass Cut & 2 Volumes
This SSS custom pickguard is the latest creation of mine. I always like to try new settings and test them.
I got the bass cut and women tone idea from a Hagstrom Retroscape Impala guitar I have. It simply adds a resistor or a capacitor to the circuit.
A 12K resistor on the women tone switch (on/on), and a 0.003Mf capacitor on the other On/On switch. (bass cut).
The pickguard features
2 volume pots
- The first volume works on the neck and middle pickup
- The 2nd volume pot works on the bridge pickup
The tone pot is only active on the neck and middle pickups.
3 Toggle Switch
- First switch
The famous Gilmour switch. It activates the neck pickup no matter what, giving seven possible settings
- Second switch
The women tone. A 12K resistor added to the circuit.
- Third switch
The bass cut switch cuts out the bass frequencies and renders a more treble sound.
Take a look… Continue reading
GFS Gold Foil Pickups – Custom Strat Wire Diagram
GFS Gold Foil Pickups – Advanced HSH custom pickguard
GFS Gold Foil Pickups are the pickups powering this Partcaster. I made this beauty almost three years ago using parts from different places.
GFS Gold Foil Pickups
I bought the gold foil pickups on the guitar fetish website. The site is a great alternative to mods guitars cheaply without passing on quality. I think that Artec manufactures most of the electronic on sale at the site. I personally really like Artec pickups that I consider as good as better established brand such as Seymor Duncan and Dimarzio.
GFS Gold Foil Pickups are offered in different shapes. You can get them as humbuckers and single coil pickups. On this custom strat, I decided to make an HSH pickguard featuring my favorite wiring mods as well as an Artec VPS onboard booster.
About the Artec VTC booster
I already reviewed the Artec VTC booster in another Article on this site using the same custom strat. Check about it following this link if you’re… Continue reading
EYB Sitar Bridge – Custom Made Electric Guitar Sitar
EYB Sitar Bridge – The Only Adjustable Sitar Bridge for Guitar
EYB Sitar Bridge is the only adjustable sitar bridge available for guitar.
If you know my work, I am interested in building all the possible guitars you can think of. After these days, I think I made about 24 different custom guitars that I am using daily in my studio to record my music, or for licensing music production.
I was wondering about guitar sitar since a while. I knew about the Danelectro model, and I was trying to put my hand on a secondhand one. But, I decided a long ago to only play with instruments I make. Except for an acoustic guitar, a 6 strings bass, and a nylon guitar, all the guitars I have are my creation.
I was clueless about how those guitars were made. I knew some people were doing some low-grade mods on their guitar to transform a regular guitar into a sitar. But first they sounded bad, and secondly, they sounded… Continue reading
Harley Benton Thinline modified with Guitarfetish P180 pickups
This article is a review of the last guitar I modified, namely, the Harley Benton Telecaster Thinline
I equipped it with P180 pickups purchased on the Guitarfetish website, and I did the standard wiring that I perform on all guitars equipped with Humbucker pickup.
I have added two on-on-on switches to get my favorite modifications which are the ability to select each pickup in series, split, and parallel position.
On the tone control, I added the solo option. It is, of course, a 500k push-pull type of pot. In the mounted position, the solo switch is activated, which bypass potentiometers from the signal and allows the sound of the pickups without any filter.
On the volume potentiometer, I added a half out of phase option. There is a significant difference between the half out of phase and the out of phase setting. Indeed, an out of phase pickup needs to be opposed to an in phase pickup so that it gives a different sound. While with a pickup in half… Continue reading
Artec PP-607 Transducer Ceramic PIEZO Pickup on a Harley Benton Custom Line ResoKing
New Piezo Transducer pickup – Artec PP-607 Ceramic PIEZO Pickup
This article is an update of the post I made about the mods I did to the Harley Benton Custom Line ResoKing guitar.
I was unhappy of the original piezo included in the guitar. Despite adding a custom JFET Tillman preamp, I add weird and unsolvable outcome.
The strings’ volume was unbalanced. The two lower strings were much louder that the remaining strings and the G string was dead.
I tried to play with the bridge placement to find a spot where the G string was louder, but the D string was losing volume, and the high E string was positioned too close to the edge of the fingerboard.
It was a lost battle. The problem was caused by the shape of the piezo. Each string has a section separated by a slot in the pickup, and it wasn’t possible to align it properly. They probably used a regular first price piezo made for acoustic guitars, and the resonator’s string… Continue reading
Artec Electronics Active EQ & Booster on a 24 Frets Custom Guitar – Artec MP3 & Artec QTB
Artec Electronics Onboard Equalizer and Booster
Artec Electronic offers a great alternative to customize a guitar for a low price with high-quality components. The only hassle is to find or create a place to put the battery. Most of the passive electric guitars do not have such free spot, and on a Stratocaster type of instrument, it can be a PITA.
I have built this guitar using a kit from Aliexpress. I paid it 161$ shipping included. It’s a 24 frets hollow-body guitar that looks like a sort of PRS. I don’t know what the model of that guitar is. Normally, with kits, it’s always a copy of a known instrument such as; SG, Telecaster, Les Paul, etc…
This one I have no clue… But it’s a fantastic kit.
As I say in the video, I changed the hardware completely. I only kept the tuners, selector and jack plate. Everything else is new. The hardware included in any kit is first price quality.
If you only build a kit using… Continue reading
Modified Electronic on a Harley Benton Custom Line ResoKing
Harley Benton Custom Line ResoKing – Turn a first price resonator into a beast
Harley Benton Custom Line ResoKing. I bought this guitar at Thomann website for the low price of 198€, shipping included.
The guitar in its original version was ok. The action is set low, and the neck plays fast. But the electronic was really poor.
Neck Pickup
The original mini humbucker didn’t sound too good, and it was a two wires pup that I had to modify into a four wires pickup to split coil it.
I already had Belcat mini humbuckers I already changed into 4 wires, so I switched pickups for the best. Belcat is an excellent brand even if yo can get them incredibly cheap compared to superstars established brands like Seymour Duncan or DiMarzio.
Series/parallel switch
I installed a series/parallel switch on the neck volume pot. Every time I work on a humbucker I install a three position toggle switch to have series/split/parallel. When I lack room to had an extra switch, and… Continue reading
Ibanez Tube Screamer Clone Test – TS9 TS808 Tube Screamer by Demon
Ibanez Tube Screamer Clone – Affordable Classic Overdrive Tone
Ibanez Tube Screamer Clone. The problem we face in commerce is as soon as a product become famous, the price gets incredibly high. Guitar pedals, even more than an electric guitar, are built with few dollars of equipment. We are paying for the brand and of course the creativity of the product;
Clone Pedals
Even if I consider normal to pay for the intellectual property, I find the price they are charging ridiculously high when you know the cost of components included. Especially for a factory that buys them by the tons. You can make your own Ibanez Tube Screamer Clone for peanuts if you are willing to invest in parts and time to do it.
As I say in the video, if the circuit board and components used are the same, it can’t be a different product. There are tons of free schematic online you can get to build any pedal and get the same outcome. Overdrive and distortion pedals… Continue reading
Tony Iommi Pickups Magnum 4 and hyperflux 5 & Guitar Roller Nut – Les Paul Junior Double Cutaway Kit Update
Tony Iommi Pickups by John Birch – Amazing Upgrade
Tony Iommi Pickups were one of the few pickup’s types missing to my arsenal of guitars. If you remember my previous article about my last build, I had installed Tonerider Rebel 90 pickups on it.
Everything was fine, and the beauty just sounded perfect. The only problem was, my SG equipped with neodymium Entwistle pickups have the same sound when set to split mode. Considering the SG has a Gibson scale and sports the same tremolo, it was a duplicate.
Why upgrading a brand new built?
Even if I look like a crazy shopaholic guitar collector, I’m not. I know I have way too many guitars, but still, each and every one of them is unique and sounds different from the other 19. I spend my time trying new mods on my test strat to make them as different as possible. I had probably rebuilt each of them 3 or 4 times already.
The Les Paul Junior Double Cutaway Kit was,… Continue reading
Electric Guitar Kit – Les Paul Junior Double Cutaway Kit – Tonerider Rebel 90 pickups & Artec BCU
Electric Guitar Kit
This article is about my latest build. A Les Paul Junior Double Cutaway Kit featuring two ToneRider Rebel 90 pickups and an Artec BCU.
The BCU is a Band Control Unit onboard frequency booster that I already reviewed on two different guitars in this article. Check it out if you want to have a deeper test of this unit.
The Les Paul Junior Double Cutaway Kit
I bought this kit on AliExpress for the small price of $179, shipping included.
The regular Les Paul Junior Double Cutaway Kit features only one P90 pickup routing, an Adjustable Wraparound Bridge, and a tiny cavity for two potentiometers only. A Volume and a Tone pot.
I knew before ordering that I’d be installing a Stetsbar tremolo that requires a Tune-o-Matic support (4 holes), two humbuckers and a four potentiometer electronic with a 3 position Metric Toggle Switch.
So, before ordering, I contacted the seller to know if he could do those mods for me and at what cost.
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