I love Eric Johnson strat wiring

[Chickenwings]

Re: I love Eric Johnson strat wiring

call me a rebel, but i wire it so the the neck and middle are wired to one tone pot and the bridge has the other.

[Lewguitar]

Re: I love Eric Johnson strat wiring

I almost forgot about that. Of all the things Leo Fender did right, the two things I'll never understand is the original strat and tele wiring. No tone on the strat bridge, and the tele neck dark circuit.

At the time, the sound of a Tele or Strat was so new to most ears that the bright tone of a bridge pickup without a tone control was like a special effect or something. Fender used to describe that sound as "Take Off"....it was a new and unique tone at the time.

[mojosman]

Re: I love Eric Johnson strat wiring

I have three Strats. Two have traditional wiring, and the third (which is my partscaster) I wired Jimmie Vaughan style. I have to say that I really like that set up. I am thinking about doing the Jimmie Vaughan mod to my Robert Cray CS Strat as well. I seldom use the middle pickup alone, and when you use it with the other two in position two or four, you can adjust the tone as needed. I think it's the way to go.

[ricks]

Re: I love Eric Johnson strat wiring

The same one you are using. I found out about it off the Guitar-nuts website years ago. I like it because I can turn the treble down when using the bridge pickup to tame it.

[Stratman]

Re: I love Eric Johnson strat wiring

Wire the tone connections on your Stratocaster directly to the second (Middle) lug of the volume pot...

50’s Gibsons did the same on Les Pauls.

[hermetico]

Re: I love Eric Johnson strat wiring

Didn't know this was called EJ's mod.
I am doing it since I had an iron on hands. To me, it's more important the tone in an strato's bridge pickup than in neck or middle.
It would be even better if we had also separate volume controls stock.

About '50s tone, I personally don't like results in Stratos but, I like it in LP's (well, mahogany bodied guitars)

[Liko]

Re: I love Eric Johnson strat wiring

For almost two decades, I always used whatever wiring came with my American Fender strats, and usually just changed the pickups. I usually use them with the bridge/middle tone turned down to 8 and the neck always up.
I always lived with the Fender flaw of having the middle pickup connected to the bridge tone, so the 2nd and 4th positions would also have the middle turned to 8.

Then, along came my discovery of the Eric Johnson wiring diagram a few years ago. All you do is move the wires around on the 5 way switch, and you've got volume, neck tone, and bridge tone. The middle isn't effected by either tone control.
How sensible is that??? That's the way a strat should have been wired to begin with.

My 2006 Highway 1 Strat (the year before they went to the 70's headstock and HSS) came stock with this tone wiring, as well as Greasebuckets, and a non-RWRP middle which I fixed with some GFS Greybottoms. Don't hate, I was po', spent all my discretionary money on the axe itself, and they turned out great.

I agree, this is just the way a Strat should be wired. I love the solo middle pickup without the tone pot. If you don't like the loss of brightness on the bridge pickup, you can get a 500K pot to keep more high end, or a DPDT pot and wire in a simple disconnect, or get one with a true "off" detent position available here at Fry's.

[Zombiwoof]

Re: I love Eric Johnson strat wiring

Wire the tone connections on your Stratocaster directly to the second (Middle) lug of the volume pot...

50’s Gibsons did the same on Les Pauls.

I believe there is a mistake in the cap values stated in that wiring diagram. It should be .022uf and .033uf, not .22 and .33.

Al

[Liko]

Re: I love Eric Johnson strat wiring

Wire the tone connections on your Stratocaster directly to the second (Middle) lug of the volume pot...

50’s Gibsons did the same on Les Pauls.

The only problem I have with that wiring is that in position 4, you're putting the tone pots in parallel, which causes two problems. First, the resistance when both pots are at max is halved, so switching to your neck-mid position with the tone pots at 10 will sound like you turned the tone back to 6 or 7. The second problem is related; turning down either tone pot further darkens the tone, so if you're taming the bridge a little, position 4 is going to be a rather muddy duck.

Several solutions:

* You could make the jumper a treble bleed cap, either to the neck or bridge terminals. Advantage is that it's just as simple as the wire jumper, and only the very highest frequencies have the choice of going to the bridge tone, reducing the amount of darkening that the bridge tone can do in position 4. Disadvantage, you still won't be able to turn the middle pickup tone all the way down (usually not a big deal; if you want it that dark you're usually on the neck pickup).
* Use a DPDT pot or switch to connect the jumper. Advantage is every position can be selected with one tone pot in the circuit. Disadvantage is giving up a DPDT for such a simple task when it could be doing something more useful, like series-parallel (though if this is your only mod it's not a big problem).
* Replace the stock 5-position with a Lonestar switch, a true 4P5T 5-way switch with discrete terminals for each position. Advantage is discretely choosing the tone control you want in the circuit for each position (you could even use one for 2 and 4 and the other for 1-3-5 if you wanted). Disadvantage is a lot of soldering.
* Go with a master tone control and use the last pot for something else, or not at all. Advantage is that it avoids the problem completely. Disadvantage is that you have to twiddle the tone when you change positions to go from wide open neck/middle to darker bridge.

And BTW, Stratman, love the sig GIF, but it makes visiting this forum on my lunch break an iffy proposition .

[Lewguitar]

Re: I love Eric Johnson strat wiring

In a normal Strat, with a tone control on the neck, and tone control on the middle, when you combine the neck and middle pickups you also combine the two tone pots - as Liko notes. Some players prefer this "warmer" tone and find it to be more "Knopfler-esque".

When you put the tone control on the bridge pickup instead, you never combine two tone pots. I find this to give me a slightly clearer tone when the middle pickup is combined with the neck pickup or bridge pickup.

If you use a Schaller 5 way switch that elimates the middle pickup alone setting, but allows for combining the neck and bridge pickups in the middle setting, you will be combining two tone pots again in that particular setting and you'll lose some treble.

That can avoided by going to a master volume, master tone and blender pot set up. And you'll have every possible pickup combination available.

[LReese]

Re: I love Eric Johnson strat wiring

I played an old style Strat config last night - 1st time in a long time. Pretty much all my other Strats have a bridge tone.

Only difference this time around is I'm using a normal soldered cable instead of George L or Bill Lawrence (RIP).

Pickups to my knowledge are 3 old spec 57/62's with the dark burgundy wire - big thing is all 3 are the same.

I did note that how even the loading of the tone control on 10 affected output level noticeably on the bridge pickup. It balanced nicely with the neck & middle. Clean, it was brash but not over the top bright which was not what I expected. Definitely did not play so nice with a distortion pedal - that's where the huge advantage of the bridge tone control comes in.

On the middle/neck position, the dual tone loading was also noticeable but not that bad. A superswitch will cure that problem if it gets to bothering me.

[ErikH]

Re: I love Eric Johnson strat wiring

In a normal Strat, with a tone control on the neck, and tone control on the middle, when you combine the neck and middle pickups you also combine the two tone pots - as Liko notes. Some players prefer this "warmer" tone and find it to be more "Knopfler-esque".

When you put the tone control on the bridge pickup instead, you never combine two tone pots. I find this to give me a slightly clearer tone when the middle pickup is combined with the neck pickup or bridge pickup.

If you use a Schaller 5 way switch that elimates the middle pickup alone setting, but allows for combining the neck and bridge pickups in the middle setting, you will be combining two tone pots again in that particular setting and you'll lose some treble.

That can avoided by going to a master volume, master tone and blender pot set up. And you'll have every possible pickup combination available.

This. After trying many different options, I like master volume/master tone/blender the best. It's simple, clean, and doesn't require any special modifications aside from a rewire.

I do like a no-load pot for the blender though. That makes sure it is completely out of circuit when on 10. First time I wired a Strat up like this, I put my meter in the blender and there was still some resistance with it on 10. Small, but still there. Hence the reason for a no-load.