Esquire wiring options: cocked Wah / Eldred mod

fretmeister

My in-build telecaster was originally going to be a SH pickup layout but I’m thinking of having a single pickup guitar for the first time.

The bridge pickup will be a Seymour Duncan BG1400 stacked noiseless. 500k pots and treble bleed.

What capacitor value would give me the cocked wah sound in position 1? Would those pots and high-ish output pickup mean something different from a usual capacitor value for the Eldred bit?

ta.

Funkfingers

In a way, the whole point of the Eldred mod is that you can chose a capacitor value to suit your playing style and amp/pedal rig. A cap that suits a dynamic valve saturation player probably would not suit a Germanium fuzz fiend. Trial and error is the thing.

FWIIW, there is now a BG1400 neck position pickup - albeit at Custom Shop price!

fretmeister

I saw the BG1400 neck, that’s a pricey pickup!

I wonder if anyone has done the Eldred with a rotary switch with a couple of different cap values.

paulnb57

Ive done the Eldred mod a couple of times and the novelty soon wore off, for me a volume and a tone pot on the the single pickup works best

fretmeister

I’ll still have those options though.

Dave_Vader

I liked the Eldred mod so much I've put cocked wah switches in 3 more of my guitars. 

I did also discover that I can't live without a neck pickup though.

paulnb57

fretmeister said:

I’ll still have those options though.

True…

fretmeister

ADave_Vader said:

I liked the Eldred mod so much I've put cocked wah switches in 3 more of my guitars. 

I did also discover that I can't live without a neck pickup though.

All telecasters or others as well?

Dave_Vader

fretmeister said:

ADave_Vader said:

I liked the Eldred mod so much I've put cocked wah switches in 3 more of my guitars. 

I did also discover that I can't live without a neck pickup though.

All telecasters or others as well?

A strat, an old Ibanez Roadstar, an Ibanez SB70 and the Frankenstrat I originally put it in. My tele is still all tele.

fretmeister

Nice!

fretmeister

@Dave_Vader ;

Have you got a wiring diagram for the tele Eldred mod with 2 pickups? Are you using a 4 way or a push pull? Something else?

Dave_Vader

It's literally just an spdt switch with the tone controls on one side and the smaller cap on the other so it bypasses the main tone controls when it's on. I don't have a diagram, but it's very simple. 

fretmeister

That sounds easy enough. I've decided to make my current build an Esquire but I quite like the idea on my strat too.

Thank you.

Dave_Vader

No worries. It's a very simple mod, and easy to reverse if you change your mind. You can even put one in a push/pull dpdt if you don't like drilling new holes.

fretmeister

Did you muck around with cap values to settle on something you like? Any differences for single or humbuckers?

Dave_Vader

I bought a big pack of 0.0047uF caps because that was what this page said to use for the Eldred mod.

https://sixstringsupplies.co.uk/pages/esquire-eldred-mod

I was happy with it and was probably inspired to do more of them because I had bought a big pack of them.

They work great with everything, but are particularly lovely on P90s.

fretmeister

It makes me laugh that buying a stupid amount of caps / resistors etc is always cheaper than just buying 5.

ICBM

You can always use a large number of the same value resistors or caps to make up different values, by adding them in series or parallel - it's not very neat, but allows you to experiment without buying vast numbers of different values, especially given that the number of useful final values is relatively small.

Resistors and caps sum in opposite ways - resistors sum in series (two gives twice the value) and divide in parallel (two gives half the value*), whereas caps sum in parallel and divide in series.

*It's not a simple division unless the values are the same - to calculate resistors in parallel or caps in series, the total is 1/(1/V1 + 1/V2 + 1/... etc), but if V1, V2 etc are all the same then you just divide by the number of them.

So for example if you've got a lot of .001uF caps, and you want to try .0015uF, connect two in parallel and then one more in series with those.

fretmeister

Thread bump!

Just a few repeated riffs with the 3 switch positions:



That preset is somewhat over-gained! It is the stock "Default" tone on the plugin. Needs the gain reduced by 20% I reckon, but it will do for this.

koneguitarist

I used the cocked wah sound in my Esquire. Hated the sound clean but worked really well with overdrives. I used pos 1 straight out bypassing controls
pos 2 using vol and tone
pos 3 cocked wah. 

Make a single pickup guitar very versatile. 

fretmeister

koneguitarist said:

I used the cocked wah sound in my Esquire. Hated the sound clean but worked really well with overdrives. I used pos 1 straight out bypassing controls
pos 2 using vol and tone
pos 3 cocked wah. 

Make a single pickup guitar very versatile. 

It's a bit dull on clean, but as you say, great on drive.

I did think about having one position without any controls but I do ride the volume control occasionally and I thought I'd end up with loads of feedback by accident!