Strat wiring scheme questions

[subversivepinko]

Okay, I'm planning on completely rewiring my Strat (vintage-style pickups, maple neck).

My current plan is:
Switchcraft 5-way switch (wired to stock)
Volume: 250K CTS w/volume mod
Tone 1: Mod Guitar passive midrange control w/center detente
Tone 2: 250K CTS pot wired as master tone w/push-pull to turn bridge pup on and off for 7-way switching; Orange drop or Hovland Musicap cap. Are the Musicaps worth the money? What values do people recommend, .047?

Anyone have any critiques/suggestions?

Thanks,
Nathan

Has anyone tried the GuitarNuts shielding scheme?

 

[alderbody]

my opinion is to rewire your strat with a set of WCR SR pickups and 300K pots, stock wiring. And i suggest stock wiring because most of the players who made custom wiring, ended up playing the stock sounds and finally rewiring back to stock. OK, maybe you get to like it, but you never know. I guess Leo knew what he was doing...

A Hovland is great, too. Mine is a .022uF

You can get these from RS guitarworks or as i saw from your link, from rothstein. I got mine from RS.

The guitarnuts shielding is 100% succesful if you do it right.
The only thing i didn't like was that large protective capacitor they put, so i removed it.

With the SR's and the shielding i have the quietest strat i ever played. (not to mention about tone....)

good luck

 

[subversivepinko]

Keithrick - I'm a bit confused about how a midrange control can be too bright. I associate brightness with treble, which I'll have on another control. Perhaps you can shed some light on this. The one I'm looking at has a center detente where there is no change in mids, one direct boosts (passive boost), the other cuts.

alderbody - Not looking to replace my pickups just yet, but thanks for the recommendation. I know from personal experience that I will use the extra tones provided by the 7-way switching, but I do know what you mean about keeping it simple. My H/S/H guitar has 7-way switching and individual series/parallel/coil-split switches for both 'buckers, and it gets a bit hectic (especially since some of the setting are out of phase, etc), but it is fun to play with and has tons of interesting sounds. I'm thinking this setup will be a lot more elegant and intuitive to use. I'm glad to hear you had good results with the GuitarNuts shielding.

So which tone cap value is most common/best (loaded term, I know) for a bright maple-boarded Strat?

 

[subversivepinko]

Originally posted by Keithrick
FYI: I am far from an expert on the subject, I am an experimenter just like you just relaying my own personal experience.

But to try to answer your question, I believe the larger the pot resistence with single coils pups adds more presence, treble and noise some might refer to as the "ice pick."

FWIW the products were comparing are not the same and you might be extremely happy with the results.

Thanks for taking the time to respond again, much appreciated. I've heard good things about this particular mid-control in Strats. I'll probably give it a try, and report back on my experiences.

 

[alderbody]

Originally posted by subversivepinko
So which tone cap value is most common/best (loaded term, I know) for a bright maple-boarded Strat?

Nowadays, the most common value for strats is the 0.022ìF

Early (maple boarded) strats had a 0.1ìF cap... (this might be too dark for your humbuckers)

of course the most common "inbetween" values are the 0.047ìF and the 0.033ìF...

Since you llike to have many options in your guitar, you could try to install a small toggle DPDT switch to be able to choose between two caps. This could be, one cap mostly for humbuckers and the other for singles.

Such a switch can fit very easily in the space between the 5-way and the pots in a typical Strat pickguard, but you'll have to drill a small hole...