 |
||
 |
||
|
 |
|
|
||
 |
||
| HOME | CUSTOM GUITARS | UPGRADES | ON SALE & READY TO SHIP | ENTER THE VOODOO LOUNGE | GALLERY | ||
|
||
Improving the Tone, the Control, and the Playability
Further down this page, you will also find a photographic history of an upgrade/repair to a Fender Telecaster. But we will begin with a look at how a stock Fender Stratocaster can be made to play and sound so much better.
This is a new Fender American Vintage Series 1957 Reissue Stratocaster. Here is a "before and after" look at the exposed pickup and control cavities, and the electronics.
To appreciate the sound of your pickups, it is important to shield the pickup and control circuit from external sources of noise, such as electromagnetic and radio frequency interference. This is done by creating a "box" of conductive shielding, completely surrrounding the signal path, which is grounded to the controls and to the string path. Notice how in the factory instrument, there is no shielding at all in the body's cavities, and just a tiny bit of shileding between the controls and the pickguard. This is typical of factory guitars, and completely ineffective.
In my upgrade, all cavities are cleaned, and then coated in a special conductive shielding compound. The new electronics are now completely enclosed, thanks to the compound that lines the cavities and also to a sheet of aluminum now fully lining the entire underside of the pickguard. The shielding compound is star-grounded to the controls and to the string path. Now the only sounds that will be coming through the output jack are there pure unadulterated tone of the pickups.
The original Fender factory electronics consist of a set of machine-wound single coils, with a three way lever switch, a master volume, a tone control for the neck pickup, and a tone control for the middle pickup. The factory set up provides no tone control on the bridge pickup, and only three pickup settings. My new assembly replaces the mundane Fender pickups with a set of hand-wound single coils from pickup guru Lindy Fralin. I have tone control for all three pickups on one knob, and I add a "blender" which extends the pickup combinations to all seven possible combinations, and which allows for variable blending of the neck and bridge. My circuit adds a special volume kit that offsets treble roll-off as the volume is lowered. And I use only the best components, like an American-made CRL spring-loaded switch, a Danish Jensen brand paper-in-oil tone capacitor, and high-end CTS potentiomenters with all vintage cloth wiring.
Here's the cheap Fender "Oak" brand switch, and my spring-loaded, American-built CRL.
Here's the cheap Fender "chiclet" tone cap, and the copper foil paper-in-oil Jensen. Jensen audiophile grade capacitors are the most highly sought after, and the most expensive, signal capacitors made anywhere in the world.
Here's my volume control circuit to prevent treble bleed at lower volumes.
And here's the CTS "blender" pot. This special potentiometer allows the player to mix the bridge or neck pickup along with whatever is selected on the five way switch. This enables two pickup combinations that a five way switch alone cannot produce: neck + bridge, and all three pickups together. It also allows you to choose the degree of the blend. So if you want to sharpen up your neck tone just a little, you can blend a little bridge. Or if you want to warm up your lead tone, you can blend a little neck. The blender gives you complete mastery over all possible combinations for a full palette of tone from your three pickups.
The upgrades in the circuit extend all the way from the pickups to the output jack. I replace Fender's standard jack with a military-specification Switchcraft part. This mil spec jack utilizes silver contacts for much better connectivity, and it is "over-built" like the original jacks used in the Leo Fender era. If you are tired of jacks that become noisy and worn after a year or two, this uprated part will make you very happy. You can see the lightweight stock output jack on the right, and the mil spec Switchcraft part that replaced it on the left.
With this exceptional circuit installed, one can fully appreciate the rich vintage Strat tone from the hand-wound Fralin pickups. These fantastic Strat single coils are made for me in a variety of winds (these are Lindy's "Blues Specials") and they are made with strictly old school methods and materials including staggered Alnico magnets, wax potting to reduce microphonics, cloth covered output leads, black fiberboard coil forms, and aged pickup covers. This set has an RW/RP (reverse wind/reverse magnetic polarity) middle pickup for hum cancellation in the out of phase positions on the five-way pickup selector switch. When you think of the special unique tone of the Stratocaster design, these pickups make that sound ... they are "only the best" single coils for the Fender Stratocaster made anywhere.
The bridge on a Stratocaster is also a critical component. The strings on a Strat anchor to the tremolo block, and that block is isolated from the body by a set of strings that allow the bridge to float. So the block itself is an essential elemnt in a Strat's tone. Inferior alloys or lesser grades of steel are (unfortunately) used in all Fender guitars, even the Custom Shop models. The Fender bridges also are poorly machined causing them to have an inaccurate return to pitch, and the Fender bridges have trem arms that are too light and too long. But there is a source for a perfect Strat bridge, built with no compromises, and that source is Callaham Guitars.
Bill Callaham uses only the best steel for the block and the saddles, and even the bridge plate and screws are made of better materials and to much more exacting standards than the stock Fender bridge. The denser, harder steel of the Callaham block and string saddles provides much better tone and sustain, and the action of the trem is much more smooth and accurate when you bend the bar. Callaham's tremolo bar is heavier and shorter, his part is reverse engineered from a 1964 pre-CBS Strat. These arms pop into the block and tighten with just a few turns, so you won't have to do all the tedious threading that you do with the Fender designs. And unlike the Fender design, there is no spring needed inside the block (that inevitably pops out and gets lost) to prevent you from over-tightning. The bore for the arm is lined with a Delrin bushing, so the action of the arm will not get sloppy over time, as always happens with Fender trems. Bill Callaham's bridge is pure genius.
As I have already discussed, a hard trem block and string saddles improves tone and sustain, but that improvement is limited if the strings are resting on a soft surface at the other end. So the string nut is another key element for an overall quality upgrade. Like most factory made instruments, this Strat came with a pre-cut nut made from synthetic material. I replaced it with a hand-cut bone nut. Bone is an ideal substance for a string nut, due to its hardness. Cutting and shaping the nut by hand also allows one to get the slots at exactly the right width and depth to provide a perfect set-up for the player's personal choice of string gauge.
With a bone nut, a Callaham tremolo bridge, the Lindy Fralin hand-wound pickups, and the world's best control circuit properly shielded and grounded, the only thing left to enhance the playability of this Strat will be to level the frets by the most exact method possible, the amazing Plek Pro machine from Germany. Here's a video demonstration of the magic that is the Plek computer-guided fretboard mapping and fret leveling system.
And that's it, now set up to perfection, this Strat has the most versatile control layout, the best possible protection against unwanted external noises, the best tone and sustain thanks to the bridge and nut work, and silky smooth play thanks to the world's best fretboard technology. Of course, there are limitless other options for pickups, controls layouts, etc., but this will give you an idea of the kind of work done at Pat's Guitars, which will make a merely good guitar into a genuinely great guitar!
And now for the Telecaster story....
A Study in Contrasts:
Straightening Out An "Upgrade"
Done Elsewhere and...
Gone So Very Wrong!
A good man named Ron, in Bay City, Texas, contacted me for help. He had paid over $1300 to a Florida shop (this self-described "Custom Shop" often sells and advertises on eBay, and shall not be named here, but the name sounds like with Salph and Randy's) and then Ron waited many weeks to have a "Satisfaction" mod on his very nice Japanese Fender '92 Telecaster Custom Reissue. When the guitar was finally returned, there were a wide variety of problems. After receiving no "Satisfaction" after complaints to the Florida guy that performed the work, Ron asked me to straighten out the numerous problems. Ron wanted to keep a mini-humbucker at the neck, but otherwise rework the guitar to my Triple Voodoo layout.
My examination of this shop's work was very interesting, and (especially considering that the other business charges about twice my own price for a 3 pickup Tele mod), and so it seemed worth documenting my findings, and the differences in the work performed at Pat's Guitars, for comparison purposes.
Here is Ron's body, as I received it, with the "Satisfaction" mod -
This mod is intended as a copy of the Gibson Valley Arts Brent Mason Signature Custom Pro electronics. The Mason model has a Gibson Mini-Humbucker at the neck, with a Seymour Duncan Stratocaster "Hot Stack" in the middle and the Duncan Tele "Vintage Stack" at the bridge. There is a crowded three knob layout that keeps the middle pickup always on, with control by an independent volume (the middle knob), and a push-pull for phase reversal on the tone pot. However, the "Satisfaction" copy incorrectly reverses the control plate so that the lever switch is at the rear.
And that is only a hint of things to come, a look inside the "Satisfaction" reveals a myriad of problems that explain Ron's dis-satisfaction with the finished product.
A look under the pickguard reveals that the mini-humbucker used here is not a Gibson product at all; it is instead a cheap Asian copy, with no identifying stamps or markings, and the sort of cheap output wire that is typical of the low end mass-produced pickups from factories in China and Korea. Furthermore, the pickup has been suspended from the pickguard with oversized wood screws (!), which have reamed out the holes in the frame, and which were then soldered to the pickup frame to hold them permanently in place. This arrangement allows no height adjustment, and the use of the oversized conical screws has ruined the pickguard (and the cheap pickup itself) for any possible future use with correct humbucker height screws.
The neck and middle pickup routing was very rough and incorrect. The routes did not have sufficient depth, so the middle pickup was "bottoming out" against the wood, which meant that it was also unable to be properly height adjusted. Some shielding compound was present in these cavities, but it was not applied all the way around the surfaces inside the cavities, and it was not wired to ground, thereby making it useless.
Ron advised that the bridge pickup was lacking in the "twang" character that a good Tele lead pickup is known for. A quick check of the six saddle bridge installed here revealed why. The bridge plate and saddles were made of a cheap "pot metal" alloy - no brass and no steel. A Tele's string-through-body design acquires the unique Tele twangy punch at the bridge when the saddles are made of a hard metal that will allow the proper firm foundation that will permit the strings to ring out. This cheap bridge (again a bargain basement Asian-made part), with its soft metal composition, eliminated any chance for the kind of sharply defined lead tone that provides the classic Telecaster personality.
The opening in the cheap imported bridge was too small for the Duncan "Stack" design pickup, the bobbin had to be forced through the cut-out with great difficulty.
There was no shielding compound at all in the bridge cavity. A ground wire was in place for the string path, but it was hanging loose in the cavity rather than contacting the bridge plate, thereby making it useless.
A minimal amount of shielding compound was smeared on the bottom surface of the control cavity, but it was not painted all the way up around the sides, and (again) there was no grounding of the cavity shielding, thereby making it useless. Pieces of stripped plastic wire insulator had been left as loose "litter" inside the cavity.
The rated values on the "Satisfaction" controls were all wrong for the pickups in use in this guitar, and again do not match the actual Brent Mason design. The Hovland capacitor tested way outside the rated spec (and that rated spec was also wrong to begin with). There was a cheaper "wafer" type lever switch, and the person who did this mod saved a few pennies by using an aftermarket switch tip that fits much too loosely. His solution? Bend the lever to a pretzel shape and force the shaft all the way into the cheap plastic of the tip until it will no longer fall off by itself.
So the time has now come to make it right.
Here's how the body was set right with the Triple Voodoo Upgrade,
Step one was to re-route the body to get the three pickup routes with the correct depth that would permit adequate room for proper installation and height adjustment of the pickups. All of the cavities were then properly shielded, and the cavities were grounded to one another, and to the string path, and to the controls, with correct star grounding.
Ron supplied me with a nice Warmoth Black Pearloid pickguard. Of course, I disposed of the cheap mini-humbucker and the Hot Stack used by the other shop and returned them to Ron. In the neck I used the superb Duncan Antiquity II Mini-Humbucker, a hand-crafted and hand-wound exact copy of the original Gibson mini design, with an aged nickel cover and Seymour Duncan's signature on the back of the pickup. I mounted it to the shielded pickguard with correct humbucker screws and proper nuts and washers (what a concept, right?) so that the user can adjust pickup height in either direction.
The middle pickup is the Duncan Vintage Rails that has always been standard in my Triple Voodoo layout, with superior true Stratocaster voicing, and much better sound at the middle position. With the middle route now at the right depth, height adjustment is again freely available, up or down.
I added the best six saddle bridge made for the vintage style Tele. The much harder heavy plate and saddles assure the best possible sustain, articulation, and "twang" in the lead position. Pickup height can again be adjusted at the bridge, thanks to the correct routing depth of the cavity.
Star grounding in the control cavity completes the ground path for the controls, string path, and complete pickup and control cavity shielding. My Triple Voodoo Control plate electronics are well documented elsewhere, so I won't go into great detail here. But of course they include a USA built spring loaded 5-Way CRL switch (no bent lever here), bench-tested and balanced CTS pots, a real Sprague "Orange Drop" capacitor, a military specification Switchcraft jack, a volume kit on the volume control that prevents treble bleed as the volume is backed down, and a concentric CTS tone and blender control set up. The blender allows fully variable blending of all three pickups for all seven possible pickup combinations. The control plate is laid out in the conventional Telecaster configuration with the pickup selector closest to the playing hand and no crowded middle knob to get in the player's way.
Now, for the first time, Ron has a body that is properly routed. It is also finally fully shielded and grounded, to box out external interference and to assure zero ground hum. The only thing coming from the output jack today is the signal from three excellent pickups, which Ron will hear to full advantage thanks to the superior USA electronics with correct values, and the intelligent, user friendly, and highly versatile concentric blender layout. Cap it off with the engraved Pat's Guitars neck plate, fast and friendly service, and a price tag about half of what the Florida "Satisfaction" dude charged him.
Highest Quality, Attentive Service, and a Fair Price. That's what I mean by "Only The Best."
Here's Ron's newly upgraded Triple Voodoo "Mini Hum" Telecaster body. Thanks Ron!
Do you want to discuss upgrades, repairs, or restoration work? If so, I'd love to hear from you, so please contact me:
