I love Eric Johnson strat wiring

[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.