Nostalgic Distortion
New member
Alright, so I've got this H/H Strat & right now it's got a standard 1 Vol, 2 Tone, pickguard on it. This harness is just F****** stupid! It's made up of a Alpha 500K volume pot, the neck tone is a regular old Fender 250k CTS pot, & the bridge tone is a cheap Alpha 250k push/pull, none of which I use? I'm not a big fan of tone knobs in the first place & I'm relatively sure the 250K tone pots are holding something back from the Humbuckers I've got in it.
So as I see it I've got a few choices, I can buy a assembled harness made out of all 500k pots with or without a push/pull for like $30-$50? I can buy 3 new 500k pots, a couple of capacitors, & re-build a harness with or without the push/pull, although these babies sound great tapped! That would run me about $30-$35 because if I'm building a harness I'm using top of the line components, I.E.- Duncan or DiMarizo potentiometers, quality P.I.O. caps, & push back cloth wire, which I already have so I guess it doesn't factor into the price & I should also be able to reuse the switch so that will also save me some money when it comes to the bottom line? I'll probably also have to re-bridge the switch, if I remember correctly it looked a little funny. Fender is just doing stupid stuff to their newer guitar harnesses & none of it makes any sense from an engineering standpoint? My Telecaster has 3 redundant grounds aside from the ground to the bridge, one off the volume pot & two more on the neg. leads coming off each of the pickups! Anyway, it can be done...
The thing is, I don't touch my tone knobs, except to tap very rarely & I may add a toggle for that later or I suppose I could just use a 500K P/P as a volume control? So anyway, spending a bunch of money I don't have on pots & caps that I'm probably not even going to use seems kinda silly? So what I'm thinking is, I use the one 500K Smooth Taper Duncan pot I already have, hook it & the pickups up to the switch, & leave the two 250K pots in there basically as aesthetic hole fillers? Down the road I'd like to fill them with a large toggles to tap the neck if not both pickups & perhaps a kill switch??? Another day...
This won't cost me anything but time, I should have everything I need already. So if I were to go this route, how hard would it be? I'd imagine it's going to be quite simple? Also should I do it? Perhaps it's better to have one built for me? I got these guys in Detroit that have made me a few custom Strat harnesses, mostly aluminum grounding plates & N.O.S. P.I.O. caps, true vintage or Artist correct stuff? Like I have a Jeff Beck harness in my 54 Reissue & an Malmsteen harness hooked up to a modified version of a Everything Axe guard in my Koa Strat...
So as I see it I've got a few choices, I can buy a assembled harness made out of all 500k pots with or without a push/pull for like $30-$50? I can buy 3 new 500k pots, a couple of capacitors, & re-build a harness with or without the push/pull, although these babies sound great tapped! That would run me about $30-$35 because if I'm building a harness I'm using top of the line components, I.E.- Duncan or DiMarizo potentiometers, quality P.I.O. caps, & push back cloth wire, which I already have so I guess it doesn't factor into the price & I should also be able to reuse the switch so that will also save me some money when it comes to the bottom line? I'll probably also have to re-bridge the switch, if I remember correctly it looked a little funny. Fender is just doing stupid stuff to their newer guitar harnesses & none of it makes any sense from an engineering standpoint? My Telecaster has 3 redundant grounds aside from the ground to the bridge, one off the volume pot & two more on the neg. leads coming off each of the pickups! Anyway, it can be done...
The thing is, I don't touch my tone knobs, except to tap very rarely & I may add a toggle for that later or I suppose I could just use a 500K P/P as a volume control? So anyway, spending a bunch of money I don't have on pots & caps that I'm probably not even going to use seems kinda silly? So what I'm thinking is, I use the one 500K Smooth Taper Duncan pot I already have, hook it & the pickups up to the switch, & leave the two 250K pots in there basically as aesthetic hole fillers? Down the road I'd like to fill them with a large toggles to tap the neck if not both pickups & perhaps a kill switch??? Another day...
This won't cost me anything but time, I should have everything I need already. So if I were to go this route, how hard would it be? I'd imagine it's going to be quite simple? Also should I do it? Perhaps it's better to have one built for me? I got these guys in Detroit that have made me a few custom Strat harnesses, mostly aluminum grounding plates & N.O.S. P.I.O. caps, true vintage or Artist correct stuff? Like I have a Jeff Beck harness in my 54 Reissue & an Malmsteen harness hooked up to a modified version of a Everything Axe guard in my Koa Strat...
