What's your Favourite guitar mod, there are so many great ones!! Just to answer a couple of questions that I'm getting about this MOD 1) Yes, Passive boosting is possible, it's pretty widespread knowledge nowadays. 2) The MOD in this video is tweakable so you can customise how much bass you like, I used an extreme cap value to provide a lot of Bass to show the potential of this MOD. Hope that helps :)
villex midboost. btw, why would you use a push pull pot? look at how much trouble you have switching it, especially with strat knobs. why not a push push? you just tap the top and you switch on the fly. i have switched to push push more than a decade ago, they are far more user friendly.
@@louiscyfer6944 The Villex mid-boost is great! I use a Push-Pull cause it's just what I stock in the workshop, you have reminded me though I will have to change those knobs :) Those 80's Yamaha Push/Push pots were awesome, wish I could still get 'em, the newer ones don't seem as durable!
Thanks a heap Waylon, sounds great in my CV60, used a 33nf cap. Only wish I'd come across it before wasting so much time and coin on pickups I didn't need.
SD SSL 6 did it for me. Played strats 30+years. That thing took me by surprise. Not sure if I got the "good one" or if they are all that good. In any case, this is really great info and we are lucky to have smart people show us how to work on our gear! Thanks!!
Clever idea! Next step: wire all 5 blade positions to the same tone pot, and replace the other tone pot with a rotary switch that can select caps of different values for the mod (the ground wire of the bridge pickup would extend from the middle lug of the push-pull pot to the input of the rotary, and the bottom lug would be grounded in the same way). That way you could modulate the intensity of the bass boost.
Oh, now I see! I've done this with my Tele. But I robbed the neck pickup of its treble frequencies rather than bass in order to get a thinner, brighter sound when both pickups are on. I didn't think your mod sounded like such a great idea at first - I've wired my Strats, in the past, with a series option, and didn't like full-on series (so I made it variable). But now that I see that you're just taking bass from the middle pickup, it sounds like a great option. I couldn't figure out why it didn't sound like both pickups in series. Now I see. Congrats on a great circuit idea!
Great idea, thanks for sharing! I really like the sound of two different pickups going in series - as well as having the option of the normal parallel configuration too. I think your examples were great - you could hear a huge difference.
Love that WarHead headstock...! I had a Schecter S type with a passive boost that replaced ther 2nd tone pot, a bit like Reverend is doing now with their bass contour. Very efficient, but I guess there's a bit of circuitry to be modified then. Cheers and thanks for the tips !
Once I wired the treble and middle pickups in series. Didn't like it, it was to much bass for me. So this mod isn't for me. And I use the in-between positions a lot, and don't want them affected. I got curious how the treble and neck pickups would sound? Maybe you get a more subtle bass boost without altering the in-between positions? Still a great and interesting video. Thanks!
sorry how do you do this on a single pickup. this is a middle and bridge in series mode plus cap. i guess you just do the cap which is good enough. series wiring plus darkening cap is overkill anyway. i have a series wiring of middle and bridge and never play it because its too muddy alreay. but i will put a cap in series to reduce bass for the series mode.
i want to wire it another way. that the middle pickup sees a cap in series. because if you add middle and bridge in series its way too bassy already for me. i had it wired so that the middle pickup is always brighter thru a series cap at the 5 way. but thanks to this video i will try to come up with a way that the middle pickup just goes brighter when added to the bridge in series.
I haven’t played with wiring in years, but I’m wondering if it’d be possible to ditch one of the tone knobs for a rotary switch with a range of capacitors for different voicings.
I use a mod on all my strats..turn the middle pot to zero and you get a humbucker sounds in pos 1 and 5..the others2,3,4 just give you the mid puo...all the way up gers you standard strat sounds. I find that the humbucking mode gets used most
Aria/Lyle made an ST guitar with single coils (trapezoid covers,) that also had a bass boost switch that was similar. They OEM’d the Epiphone 1802T, but is same guitar. Love to hear A/B of these.
So from what I see, it's partial split of a humbucker (bridge and middle in series) using cap instead of a resistor. You could really play around with the cap value and a variable resistor between the cap and ground to dial in a tone, but that would take a handful of work.
Yep, thats the concept :) The only issue with adding a resistor is you reduce or lose the pickups resonant peak, playing with cap values is way to go for sure!
Ok, a couple of questions. Firstly, you said that the value you chose for the capacitor was extreme so what value would you recommend, and what range of capacitor values are worth trying? Secondly, could you just put the cap in parallel with the bridge pup and not do the series with the middle pup? Thirdly that rotary dial on the Gibson ES 345 and 355 - is that doing the same thing? If so, is that a good way to try different cap values?
Now DOES this then use the middle pick up in series WITH the bridge cos that is no longer a single coil sound! I have something similar on a Tele Mr. Fab did for me with a cap just on the bridge pick up to shift the resonant peak down so it sounds more hum buckerish!
A zero ohm resister? Isn’t that just a wire? I’ve never heard of that. But I know what a light emitting resister is! I’ll give you a hint, it sit inside a vacuum tube of sorts.
PLEASE do a mod to remove the dreaded "ice pick" treble from the bridge. I've tried dozens of bridge pickups, love single coils, and I don't want to carve up my strat's for bridge humbuckers
@@youscreamiscream solder a capacitor from the bridge's hot wire (on the switch) to ground. I recommend a .047, I had this on a Telecaster and it gave it an almost humbucker-like quality. If that's too dark for you, try a .022.
@@youscreamiscream 1) Install a metal baseplate to bottom on Bridge pickup 2) Change cap of tone pot #2 to 1000pf 3) Install 120pf cap from bridge hot lead to ground
I’d imagine this mod would work well with a single pickup guitar with no tone knob. I might have just the right kitty for this mod ;) What’s the voltage rating for the capacitor?
I'm always interested but unfortunately every single electronics shop I once relied on is gone, so I can't get these components. Tried ordering online. No supplier has every component, which means multiple orders, adding another €7 p&p to a part that costs €0,40- unless I order the lot in bulk from China. As a hobbyist it's just not on.
3:33 The capacitor affects BOTH coils. As per your example, it's in parallel with the middle pickup but also in series with the bridge pickup. In fact, strictly speaking, that capacitor is cutting bass from the bridge pickup and cutting treble from the middle.
It's not a boost, it's a low pass filter. You can get an overall, but slight boost, if you bypass all the controls. Unfortunately, a real boost needs to be active, which means -> battery.
Seems to me you're actually rolling off hi-end, not actually boosting bass. I agree that you can't actually "boost" a signal without amplifying it which requires an active gain circuit.
GIBSON L6S and the 6 pos rotary switch with various caps and an inductor tried to make strat and gibson tones but was only soso... I traded it offback in the late 70s...24 fets, les paul junior chunk of flat maple and a through body maple fret board....pricy but a failure to me.....BUT, many of the same sort of tone mods you are trying on a strat.
The middle pickup is reverse wound, so is already in series in positions 2 and 4. I replace the middle tone pot with a phase switch on the neck, and wire the neck tone as a master tone control. The standard strat wiring without any tone on the bridge is what makes it sound shrill. And I love the sound of neck/middle out of phase for octave like overtones, especially with fuzz. SRV had his strat modded to have tone on the bridge as well, to get rid of that shrill brightness.
2 and 4 are not series, but parallel. And the tone control on the bridge pickup can only cut treble, not add bass as in the mod of the video. It adds bass by putting the middle pickup in series with the bridge, which gives a big signal boost, then uses a capacitor to remove the highs from the middle pickup so as to get just a bass boost when added to the bridge pickup.
Me trying to hear when you activate the passive bass boost. Literally every person, creature and electronic in my house that can generate noise: Not on my watch
Cool idea but the switching is primitive and doesn't take advantage of some additional interesting possibilities. You could use one of the tone pots as a master tone but only active in positions 2 through 5. The other pot would be a variable bass boost control when the push-pull is pulled. The result would look like this, when the push-pull is pulled: 5 - Neck and variable bass boost (with treble-cut tone control) 4 - Neck in parallel with Bridge and variable bass boost (with treble-cut tone control) 3 - Bridge and variable bass boost (with treble-cut tone control) 2 - Bridge and variable bass boost (with treble-cut tone control) 1 - Bridge and variable bass boost (no tone control) (positions 2 and 3 are duplicates) If you're interested in discussing this, come visit us on the Guitarnuts2 forum.
Thanks for the suggestion, remember it's the concept I want people to learn so they can come up with their own cool MODs, manipulating a pickups resonant peak to create some new voicings!
Yes it is the same thing...no such thing as passive boost. It's sending highs to ground through a cap, yielding what sounds like more low end but is really just less high end. This is why once the signal reaches the amp, it is boosted with a gain stage before any tone shaping occurs. Otherwise there would be no signal left to boost and shape. That being said, this is a different value cap than is normally used and will sound different that the typical tone control.
0:44 what awesome Strat bridge sound? Nine out of 10 Strats sound like S@&#. Very rarely can you find a Stratocaster with a usable bridge Sound stock. I have no place in my music for a stock strat bridge tone. It’s like a castrated telecaster. I love this idea to remedy this issue with the strat bridge position
Yeah it's not for me. That's way too much bass. It has no place to fit in a band mix and just really doesn't sound good to me. I think what many players actually mean when they say the want more bass is that they want less high frequencies, or more in the low-midrange. None of your favorite classic guitar tones have much bass, I can guarantee it. I run a strat with a dummy coil in the control cavity that runs in series with the neck and bridge pickup. That way impedance goes up and it's like overwinding the pickups on the fly and accomplishes that fat strat sound without losing the strat character like you get here, or with a humbucker.
I mention in the vid, You can tweak it to add as little or as much bass as you like, I used an extreme value to show the potential of this mod. Yes, for me personally I would use a value that has less low end for sure :)
He's only using a massive capacitor to demonstrate how the mod works + so you are able to hear the difference easier. If you watched the video you would know that
@@WaylonMcPhersonGuitar Yeah that's fair. I've been thinking about trying to a capacitor/maybe also inductor on a switch for an upcoming build that I can fake humbucker sound with. I'll have noiseless (stacked) strat pickups on that. I'll probably try your capcitor across the pickup thing first
What's your Favourite guitar mod, there are so many great ones!!
Just to answer a couple of questions that I'm getting about this MOD
1) Yes, Passive boosting is possible, it's pretty widespread knowledge nowadays.
2) The MOD in this video is tweakable so you can customise how much bass you like, I used an extreme cap value to provide a lot of Bass to show the potential of this MOD.
Hope that helps :)
Passive treble and bass controls. The bass cut works so well with fuzz, giving a clean up that’s different from just rolling the volume back.
villex midboost.
btw, why would you use a push pull pot? look at how much trouble you have switching it, especially with strat knobs. why not a push push? you just tap the top and you switch on the fly. i have switched to push push more than a decade ago, they are far more user friendly.
@@louiscyfer6944 The Villex mid-boost is great! I use a Push-Pull cause it's just what I stock in the workshop, you have reminded me though I will have to change those knobs :) Those 80's Yamaha Push/Push pots were awesome, wish I could still get 'em, the newer ones don't seem as durable!
@@WaylonMcPhersonGuitar bourns makes a very good push push pot, the switch is metal, not plastic, very durable.
@@louiscyfer6944 Cool Thanks, I grab some from my supplier on my next order :)
Thanks a heap Waylon, sounds great in my CV60, used a 33nf cap. Only wish I'd come across it before wasting so much time and coin on pickups I didn't need.
Sounds great, so glad I found this channel, this is definitely going in at least one of my strats.
This reminds me of the fender greasebucket tone mod I did on a strat some years ago. This is pretty clever and I'll have to give it a go.
SD SSL 6 did it for me. Played strats 30+years. That thing took me by surprise. Not sure if I got the "good one" or if they are all that good.
In any case, this is really great info and we are lucky to have smart people show us how to work on our gear! Thanks!!
Clever idea! Next step: wire all 5 blade positions to the same tone pot, and replace the other tone pot with a rotary switch that can select caps of different values for the mod (the ground wire of the bridge pickup would extend from the middle lug of the push-pull pot to the input of the rotary, and the bottom lug would be grounded in the same way). That way you could modulate the intensity of the bass boost.
@@zolibxl Wow ! Getting my head around that ! 👍
Oh, now I see! I've done this with my Tele. But I robbed the neck pickup of its treble frequencies rather than bass in order to get a thinner, brighter sound when both pickups are on.
I didn't think your mod sounded like such a great idea at first - I've wired my Strats, in the past, with a series option, and didn't like full-on series (so I made it variable). But now that I see that you're just taking bass from the middle pickup, it sounds like a great option.
I couldn't figure out why it didn't sound like both pickups in series. Now I see. Congrats on a great circuit idea!
Great idea, thanks for sharing! I really like the sound of two different pickups going in series - as well as having the option of the normal parallel configuration too. I think your examples were great - you could hear a huge difference.
Love that WarHead headstock...! I had a Schecter S type with a passive boost that replaced ther 2nd tone pot, a bit like Reverend is doing now with their bass contour. Very efficient, but I guess there's a bit of circuitry to be modified then. Cheers and thanks for the tips !
Bravo! Easy and effective!
I love this channel, and I only found it 2 weeks ago.
Blender pot mod is cool too
Another great video.
I though it was a treble boost from the thumbnail.
This is a really neat mod!
Thanks :)
Maybe too much bass at 100Hz, gonna try higher freq range
this is more like the mod of the decade!
Amazing!! Thanks a lot.
Once I wired the treble and middle pickups in series. Didn't like it, it was to much bass for me. So this mod isn't for me. And I use the in-between positions a lot, and don't want them affected.
I got curious how the treble and neck pickups would sound? Maybe you get a more subtle bass boost without altering the in-between positions?
Still a great and interesting video. Thanks!
I also do not like Middle and Bridge in series, this MOD is different to that, have a check through the video again, it's pretty cool!
Great!!! Can I put this on volume pot or on a Telecaster swicth in a guitar with Just one pick up?
I’m gonna do this on my sg
I have a single bridge pickup guitar that I use with a circuit like this to create a false “neck” pickup for a jazzy tone.
sorry how do you do this on a single pickup. this is a middle and bridge in series mode plus cap. i guess you just do the cap which is good enough. series wiring plus darkening cap is overkill anyway. i have a series wiring of middle and bridge and never play it because its too muddy alreay. but i will put a cap in series to reduce bass for the series mode.
I use this to split a humbucker thru a cap and a resistor to beef up the splitted sound.
VERY interesting. I wonder if this is what the Norma Teisco Split pickup guitar was trying to do back in the 1960s.
omg you clever sod !! i wonder if this is similar to how the treble bass system works in G&Ls ? I really want to try this in my 'science' guitar lol
Thanks! Quite different from the G+L, that is a cool circuit though but there is no boost it only cuts, cheers!
i want to wire it another way. that the middle pickup sees a cap in series. because if you add middle and bridge in series its way too bassy already for me. i had it wired so that the middle pickup is always brighter thru a series cap at the 5 way. but thanks to this video i will try to come up with a way that the middle pickup just goes brighter when added to the bridge in series.
I love this mod. Is it similar to the base roll off control on Reverend guitars ?
Thanks! quite different to the Reverend circuit, great guitars
I haven’t played with wiring in years, but I’m wondering if it’d be possible to ditch one of the tone knobs for a rotary switch with a range of capacitors for different voicings.
I use a mod on all my strats..turn the middle pot to zero and you get a humbucker sounds in pos 1 and 5..the others2,3,4 just give you the mid puo...all the way up gers you standard strat sounds. I find that the humbucking mode gets used most
One must remember that inductors (pickups) wired in series are like resistors wired in parallel. Product of the square. Iykyk .
How can I put this on a Telecaster Esquire swicth?🤔
Aria/Lyle made an ST guitar with single coils (trapezoid covers,) that also had a bass boost switch that was similar. They OEM’d the Epiphone 1802T, but is same guitar. Love to hear A/B of these.
So from what I see, it's partial split of a humbucker (bridge and middle in series) using cap instead of a resistor.
You could really play around with the cap value and a variable resistor between the cap and ground to dial in a tone, but that would take a handful of work.
Yep, thats the concept :) The only issue with adding a resistor is you reduce or lose the pickups resonant peak, playing with cap values is way to go for sure!
Ok, a couple of questions. Firstly, you said that the value you chose for the capacitor was extreme so what value would you recommend, and what range of capacitor values are worth trying?
Secondly, could you just put the cap in parallel with the bridge pup and not do the series with the middle pup?
Thirdly that rotary dial on the Gibson ES 345 and 355 - is that doing the same thing? If so, is that a good way to try different cap values?
This is almost "the Robbie Robertson wiring"? Good solution!
Can you create mid frequency passive volume? Boots.and.cut
Now DOES this then use the middle pick up in series WITH the bridge cos that is no longer a single coil sound!
I have something similar on a Tele Mr. Fab did for me with a cap just on the bridge pick up to shift the resonant peak down so it sounds more hum buckerish!
A zero ohm resister? Isn’t that just a wire? I’ve never heard of that. But I know what a light emitting resister is! I’ll give you a hint, it sit inside a vacuum tube of sorts.
Hi, is there a way to change more of mids instead of bass?
Yep, I'm working on it :)
PLEASE do a mod to remove the dreaded "ice pick" treble from the bridge. I've tried dozens of bridge pickups, love single coils, and I don't want to carve up my strat's for bridge humbuckers
@@youscreamiscream solder a capacitor from the bridge's hot wire (on the switch) to ground. I recommend a .047, I had this on a Telecaster and it gave it an almost humbucker-like quality. If that's too dark for you, try a .022.
@@youscreamiscream
1) Install a metal baseplate to bottom on Bridge pickup
2) Change cap of tone pot #2 to 1000pf
3) Install 120pf cap from bridge hot lead to ground
Will this mod work on a strat with a blender knob? Or is there another way to incorporate this into a guitar with a blender knob?
So it’s running as a humbucker ? What about positions 2,4. Do you looose the strat quack
That's why the mod is on a switch, so you can have the mod OR the stock sounds.
I’d imagine this mod would work well with a single pickup guitar with no tone knob. I might have just the right kitty for this mod ;)
What’s the voltage rating for the capacitor?
Thanks, it's a 50V cap, almost any Voltage rating will work great though. Unfortunately, it will not work on a single pickup guitar, cheers!
@ aw! No singles love for this mod, back to the EQ pedal I go =P
G&L uses this same trick on some of their basses, they call it "OMG mode"
I'm always interested but unfortunately every single electronics shop I once relied on is gone, so I can't get these components.
Tried ordering online. No supplier has every component, which means multiple orders, adding another €7 p&p to a part that costs €0,40- unless I order the lot in bulk from China.
As a hobbyist it's just not on.
Didn't G&L do this on their Legacy Guitars with their PTB circuit but for all their pickup combinations?
got any cool mods for an active 81/85 set?
Wire up two 9 volt batteries & run with 18 volts?
🔋🔋⚡️🔊
As the bass player I resent this mod
I have this mod factory made on my 2016 American Elite Strat
im assuming Fender did it on a way it doesnt affect the inbetween positions. Would you mind sharing a couple of photos or a wiring diagram?
@@gabibartok4544 Sure, can you send me an email address?
IT's possible to make this into a Telecaster?
yep
3:33 The capacitor affects BOTH coils. As per your example, it's in parallel with the middle pickup but also in series with the bridge pickup. In fact, strictly speaking, that capacitor is cutting bass from the bridge pickup and cutting treble from the middle.
I found the best fix to the trebly single coil sound years ago...
HUMBUCKERS
Can you do this, so the mod is always actively sounding like this?
It's not a boost, it's a low pass filter. You can get an overall, but slight boost, if you bypass all the controls. Unfortunately, a real boost needs to be active, which means -> battery.
That is what I used to think too but passive signal boosting exists. Check out my Golden Gizmo Project,!
Seems to me you're actually rolling off hi-end, not actually boosting bass. I agree that you can't actually "boost" a signal without amplifying it which requires an active gain circuit.
@@MrSonicAlchemy He's amplifying the signal by putting the two pickups in series. He then shapes the tone of that boost by using the capacitor.
I wonder what this would sound like on a 2 pickup Telecaster.
GIBSON L6S and the 6 pos rotary switch with various caps and an inductor tried to make strat and gibson tones but was only soso... I traded it offback in the late 70s...24 fets, les paul junior chunk of flat maple and a through body maple fret board....pricy but a failure to me.....BUT, many of the same sort of tone mods you are trying on a strat.
The middle pickup is reverse wound, so is already in series in positions 2 and 4. I replace the middle tone pot with a phase switch on the neck, and wire the neck tone as a master tone control. The standard strat wiring without any tone on the bridge is what makes it sound shrill. And I love the sound of neck/middle out of phase for octave like overtones, especially with fuzz. SRV had his strat modded to have tone on the bridge as well, to get rid of that shrill brightness.
No reverse wound has nothing to do with series or parallel. You’ve misunderstood something along the way.
2 and 4 are not series, but parallel. And the tone control on the bridge pickup can only cut treble, not add bass as in the mod of the video. It adds bass by putting the middle pickup in series with the bridge, which gives a big signal boost, then uses a capacitor to remove the highs from the middle pickup so as to get just a bass boost when added to the bridge pickup.
Hey noob here
Isn't it like to turn the tone knob down?
Me trying to hear when you activate the passive bass boost.
Literally every person, creature and electronic in my house that can generate noise: Not on my watch
You need headphones to hear bass notes, certainly on a laptop.
@ everything thing in the house would still insist on making noise in an untimely fashion lol
Cool idea but the switching is primitive and doesn't take advantage of some additional interesting possibilities. You could use one of the tone pots as a master tone but only active in positions 2 through 5. The other pot would be a variable bass boost control when the push-pull is pulled. The result would look like this, when the push-pull is pulled:
5 - Neck and variable bass boost (with treble-cut tone control)
4 - Neck in parallel with Bridge and variable bass boost (with treble-cut tone control)
3 - Bridge and variable bass boost (with treble-cut tone control)
2 - Bridge and variable bass boost (with treble-cut tone control)
1 - Bridge and variable bass boost (no tone control)
(positions 2 and 3 are duplicates)
If you're interested in discussing this, come visit us on the Guitarnuts2 forum.
Thanks for the suggestion, remember it's the concept I want people to learn so they can come up with their own cool MODs, manipulating a pickups resonant peak to create some new voicings!
Isnt that the same as the tone control
Nah, the tone control removes highs rather than adding lows. Different tonality.
Yes it is the same thing...no such thing as passive boost. It's sending highs to ground through a cap, yielding what sounds like more low end but is really just less high end. This is why once the signal reaches the amp, it is boosted with a gain stage before any tone shaping occurs. Otherwise there would be no signal left to boost and shape. That being said, this is a different value cap than is normally used and will sound different that the typical tone control.
Years ago, Premier Guitar had an article on parallel/series switching for both the #2 and #4 positions with a single DPDT switch.
Nice, yes Series/Parallel is a very cool, I install it often, personally I prefer my MOD in this video over series which is pretty dark, cheers!
0:44 what awesome Strat bridge sound? Nine out of 10 Strats sound like S@&#. Very rarely can you find a Stratocaster with a usable bridge Sound stock. I have no place in my music for a stock strat bridge tone. It’s like a castrated telecaster. I love this idea to remedy this issue with the strat bridge position
strat sound great, if you dont´t like it is your preference, but if it sounds that bad probably your playing is sht
Yeah it's not for me. That's way too much bass. It has no place to fit in a band mix and just really doesn't sound good to me. I think what many players actually mean when they say the want more bass is that they want less high frequencies, or more in the low-midrange. None of your favorite classic guitar tones have much bass, I can guarantee it. I run a strat with a dummy coil in the control cavity that runs in series with the neck and bridge pickup. That way impedance goes up and it's like overwinding the pickups on the fly and accomplishes that fat strat sound without losing the strat character like you get here, or with a humbucker.
I mention in the vid, You can tweak it to add as little or as much bass as you like, I used an extreme value to show the potential of this mod. Yes, for me personally I would use a value that has less low end for sure :)
He's only using a massive capacitor to demonstrate how the mod works + so you are able to hear the difference easier. If you watched the video you would know that
@@WaylonMcPhersonGuitar Yeah that's fair. I've been thinking about trying to a capacitor/maybe also inductor on a switch for an upcoming build that I can fake humbucker sound with. I'll have noiseless (stacked) strat pickups on that. I'll probably try your capcitor across the pickup thing first
Could try installing a 1meg pot to let your pickup breath fullest
No such thing as a passive boost.
This is just a treble bleed like any other tone control...