strat neck and bridge wiring poll

[Chistopher]

When you wire your Strats to have a neck the neck and bridge to be on at the same time, do you give the bridge pickup a tone control too? The reason I ask is because I gave my Strat 7-way wiring because the only other pot I had for a tone control was push pull. I used the other half of the switch to give the bridge a tone control when in "tele mode" and it sounds a lot more like a convincing Tele tone than other Strats.


I feel a lot of people don't worry about the tone control on their 7-way strat mods, but I feel having one tone control govern neck and bridge is a big part of the tele sound, not to mention the additional load the pot adds.

 

[beaubrummels]

I use no-load on the bridge so I can have both.

 

[Mincer]

On my Strats, the bridge always has a tone control. I use a master tone for the middle & neck.

 

[jeremy]

i dont usually mix neck and bridge strat pups, but if i do, i have a master tone for the whole guitar. i want the bridge pup to have a tone, but dont want to have two tones active with that pup selection

 

[ehdwuld]

i dont usually mix neck and bridge strat pups, but if i do, i have a master tone for the whole guitar. i want the bridge pup to have a tone, but dont want to have two tones active with that pup selection

this
master tone

hate two tones on a guitar

 

[Chistopher]

i dont usually mix neck and bridge strat pups, but if i do, i have a master tone for the whole guitar. i want the bridge pup to have a tone, but dont want to have two tones active with that pup selection

See, I'm a bit of an oddball in this department. I have a single semi-master tone control. Neck and middle have one knob, bridge has nothing. The way my strat is wired now, 6 of the 7 positions are governed by the tone control, except for the "bridge only" position.

 

[Mincer]

I always thought that the bridge needs the tone control the most.

 

[GuitarDoc]

I totally agree with what Jeremy, Ehdwuld, and Mincer have said.

If I could only have a tone control on one pup, it would be on the bridge pup. But occasionally some tone adjustment is needed for the neck and/or middle pups as well.

I much prefer a master tone control.

 

[ehdwuld]

when I put a Piezo pickup in an electric guitar
I would like to have a separate tone for that pickup
all of mine at the moment either have no tone or is shared with the magnetics

but that would be another discussion altogether and it doesnt bother me enough to change one

 

[MikeS]

The way strat tone circuits are traditionally wired, if you used the push/pull to add the bridge pickup to any position, the neck tone pot would act as a master tone in the neck + bridge position. It's not like a LP where the tone controls affect the pickups individually. That said, the 7-way mod only uses one pole on the push/pull, so the other pole could be used to provide a master tone control when "up." In theory I prefer that because it eliminates duplicate positions.

 

[Explorer84]

I always thought that the bridge needs the tone control the most.

I absolutely agree with this.