A guitar with 17 coil combinations and a "bass" inside!

[relicguitar]

Hello guys,

I'm new here... I just like to show you guys a very cool guitar I built for my "power duo" project called "The Hanged Toupans".

https://thehangedtoupans.bandcamp.com/album/tracks-from-six-feet-under

This band is just me and the drummer. So I had to adapt some of my guitars to produce octave down low frequencies to fill the bass gaps.

In other words, I have a "bass" inside this guitar!

Briefly, it works like this: The middle tiny pickup's signal (that captures only the upper three strings) goes through a octave down pedal straight to a bass amp while the other pickups signal goes to the guitar amp.

This is possible because I use a stereo jack. So "bass" and guitar signals travel in parallel until they get to a "Y pedal" that splits stereo signal into two mono paths. And that's it!

I turn on and off the "bass" pickup using the PUSH-PUSH volume pot (in my opinion the push-push pot works way better than a push-pull one).

The other control switches work like this:

The toggle switch:
Up:Neck pickup
Middle:Neck + Bridge pickups
Down:Bridge pickup

The 5-way switches controls exclusively the Seymour Duncan P-Rails bridge pickup:
1-P90 coil
2-P90 + Rail coils in parallel
3-Rail coil
4-Rail coil with "Cocked Wah" capacitor***
5-P90 + Rail coils in series

The small button in the bottom controls the Seymour Duncan Little JB neck pickup pickup:
Up:Coils in parallel
Down:Coils in series

So this guitar has great amount of tone options (most of them noiseless) that work just fine in studio recording or live situation. I really love it! This babe is surely gonna be in our next record.

Wiring diagram is in this video description.

I put a link to another of my guitars that have this "bass inside" feature that I built or modified in the end of this video.

Spread love, peace and tone!

Fabricio
Guitars and vocals - @thehangedtoupans

Relic Custom Shop ([email protected])

***Cocked Wah capacitor is a lower value capacitor (added to your guitar harness in order to simulate that "sweet spot" in a wah wah pedal that boosts midrange giving some "meat" for riffs and solos. In this case, the Cocked Wah capacitor doesn't "boost" any frequency. It just cuts high and low frequencies letting just the midrange pass.
A cocked wah capacitor is usually from 0.010uF up to 0.047uF (or as your taste). The guitar on this video has a 0.033uF capacitor.
Billy Gibbons tone on ZZTop's "La grange" main riff, Mick Ronson's tone on David Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust" and most of Michael Schenker's solos in UFO and Scorpions songs are good examples, but I think the best example of a cocked wah tone is Mark Knopfler's guitar tone on Dire Straits "Money for nothing".

[Gstring]

A big welcome to theForum and thank you for a very interesting first post.

Like the wiring ideas and choice of pups. Good to see the P rails wired up to a 5 way instead of the usual DPDT on-on-on. You obviously have put quite a bit of thought into it Would have liked a bit more "demo" of the interesting bass idea.. Although a little heavy for me your band makes a great sound,especially for a duo. . Can you reproduce or get close to it live or do you sometimes need a bit of backing track?. Perfectly OK if you do. Sense a little bit of Kings of Leon in your sound but maybe that's an oversimplification.

[relicguitar]

A big welcome to theForum and thank you for a very interesting first post.

Like the wiring ideas and choice of pups. Good to see the P rails wired up to a 5 way instead of the usual DPDT on-on-on. You obviously have put quite a bit of thought into it Would have liked a bit more "demo" of the interesting bass idea.. Although a little heavy for me your band makes a great sound,especially for a duo. . Can you reproduce or get close to it live or do you sometimes need a bit of backing track?. Perfectly OK if you do. Sense a little bit of Kings of Leon in your sound but maybe that's an oversimplification.

Thanx brother!

For the P-Rails 5-way switching wiring, I actually used a telecaster 5-way switching wiring approach to the P-Rails coils as if they were two separate pickups. I've tested witch coil sounded better with the cocked wah capacitor I liked most and put wires together. The "output" of the 5-way switch goes to the bridge side of the toggle switch and the rest is rock n'roll !

This "bass inside solution" sounds great live and works great for me as far as I write my songs thinking about playing them live. So I don't create any song I can't play live in this band.
Soloing can be tricky sometimes, but I have some tricks as well. Not all of my songs have solos. In this case songs are more riff/groove/timing changing based. But if I write a song that demands a solo, I create a rhythm base part that can be recorded/played "on the run" in a stereo loop pedal (electro-harmonix 720 for instance). So guitar and "bass" are looped separately and sent to their amps and I'm free to play my solo with a little help of a boost pedal.

I use other tricks such as hybrid picking, classic guitar technique or just changing the solo part for a different riff section. In the end, the song is the boss. I just do what it asks me to do. All this to say that we don't use backing tracks... I don't like it.

I had to get out of my comfort zone and "re-learn" how to play my modified guitars (you can see some of them in the link below). This duo project "forces" me to be a better player. I'm still learning... We're working on our new record... new tricks are coming.

Regards,

Fabricio
Guitars and vocals - @thehangedtoupans

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4omNrbkVmpYp7yIrqHreytDdVutiaOYG

[Gstring]

Have looked at your telecaster wiring. Interesting way of getting the cocked wah with the bridge hot going both to output and to ground thru a cap at the same time. Have not seen it done that way before. I normally wire 5 way Telecasters with a small cap connecting to both pups and with a PP giving the option of putting the bridge OOP. This gives me fully OOP .partial OOP and series OOP which I find to be all usable tones. However I intend to try your wiring some time soon.

[Mincer]

I love this idea, and the fact that you came up with an idea, and then came up with the gear to make it work. I've done this sort of thing with guitar synth and bass pedals.