Allo all.. Been a while since I posted anything in here. Not been back at my builds yet
But hopefully will soon.
Anyway, in the meantime I was given a Strat to look at.. Now Strats are not my area of expertise. I have not built many with that kind of pickup configuration or with that type of switch.. BUT whats really got me is that bridge tone pot.. From what I gather its some kind of treble bleed type thing?? I always thought that sort of pot was for duel control knobs.. But its just a normal knob and when you turn it, it feels broken. Issue is I have never used that kind of pot before... So is it meant to feel different from a normal knob? It works but its doing that thing where it continually turns...
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Indeed it does... Fender say it stands for 'Treble and Bass eXpander', but in fact it does nothing of the sort - what it does is that at the centre detent position it artificially strangles the treble and bass by loading the pickups with that little 82K resistor you can see, so when you turn it to either end you appear to get more, but in fact you're just getting less of the less! Below the detent it acts as a normal(ish) tone control, and above it it acts (more or less) as a progressive no-load tone control, but it has the remarkable characteristic of going from dull to shrill, somehow without passing through good...
They were originally designed for active guitars - the Elite Strat and Tele - in which they do actually work properly and sound good, but why Fender in their wisdom decided to apply them to all the passive guitars as well, I have no idea.
It may actually be broken, in which case simply get rid of it and fit a standard 250K tone control, and the guitar will sound better. Or it may be that it's sticking at the detent and the knob is just spinning on the shaft - they can do that. In which case get rid of it and fit a standard 250K tone control, and the guitar will sound better!
If it's not actually broken and you want to keep it - to find out what it does or for originality reasons - then you can jam a bit of cut-down pick into the shaft slot, put a small piece of tape around it, and the knob should grip it well enough to turn it.
You can also make it much better-sounding - although more limited in function - simply by cutting the resistor (do it right at the pot terminal, so it can be re-soldered easily if you ever want to, leave it attached at the pot casing end and just bend it slightly out of the way), which will give you a true standard tone control below the notch and a simple 1M (near enough no-load) above it.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
http://www.rabswoodguitars.co.uk/
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Or just remove the link wire on the switch so the bridge position has no tone control at all, as God intended .
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein