NGD: Strat Partscaster with P-rails

dean2371

Just put this together. Alder body (thanks Jooky), Wudtone Burning Sun finish (Jooky again), Squier CV Strat neck which I had on another body, P-rails with a couple of micro switches. Sounds and plays great

JookyChap

Ooh, that's pretty - nicely done Mr. D

Richardj

How are you liking the P-rails?

dean2371

Thanks Mark. Is that P90 you've got for sale a match for the neck one I bought from you a couple of months ago? Still making the body for that one to go one, not got to routing yet; tempted!

dean2371

The P-rails is great thanks. All my other guitars have either single coils or P90s, so I'm liking having the versatility of the humbuckers. The P90s are also great. There is unsurprisingly quite a volume drop on singlecoil, and I think I'll be using the other settings most. Very heppy so far.

Megii

That is very handsome indeed - extremely well judged combination of parts there, and a great looking result. What pickup/coil switching options do you have there?

dean2371

Thanks Megii. The P-rails operate as humbuckers, P90s or singlecoils. The three way switch gives me either or both pickup, and each can be set differently using the micro switches. I could have a neck Humbucker with a Bridge P90, or any other combination I like. The pots are actually push/push, but I'm not currently using the switch part. I may explore out of phase wiring or see what other possibilities I can find; seems a shame not to use them if they're there.

littlegreenman

Looking very nice there, good parts build. Never tried P90's, what's the ballpark tonewise?

dean2371

Between humbuckers and single coils. I have a couple of strats with series wiring for B and N, sounds a bit like that. Fat powerful single coils if that makes sense. I like them.

dchwhite

That looks very nice

axisus

Nice! I'm a big fan of the P-rails. They are in my main guitar and I love them. I went for simplicity and just have 3 sounds - Humbucker in the bridge, P90 in the neck and combined SC's in the middle. I use all 3 sounds all the time, but I particularly like the graunch of the P90.

Megii

That is very handsome indeed - extremely well judged combination of parts there, and a great looking result. What pickup/coil switching options do you have there?

dean2371 said:

Thanks Megii. The P-rails operate as humbuckers, P90s or singlecoils. The three way switch gives me either or both pickup, and each can be set differently using the micro switches. I could have a neck Humbucker with a Bridge P90, or any other combination I like. The pots are actually push/push, but I'm not currently using the switch part. I may explore out of phase wiring or see what other possibilities I can find; seems a shame not to use them if they're there.

Cheers for explaining! - a nice setup by the sounds of it, very versatile but also not overly complicated, and still intuitive to use. My own experience would suggest a phase switch on one of the pickups could be an interesting addition, as the various different pickup combinations will give a useful range of results, with different amounts of "out of phaseness".  Follow up question: if you select the 2 inner strat/rail coils together, do you get any of the in-between position strat quacky kind of tone happening?

ICBM

Very cool!

You could use both the miniswitches and the push-pulls to give you the option of the P-Rails in parallel as well, but it's tricky! It can be done, since the four sounds from each pickup can be done with two DPDTs - that's how the switching pickup rings Duncan sells do it. (You'd need to replace your 3-way switches with standard 2-way.)

For it to be logical given the layout I think you'd need to arrange something like the knob push-pull turning on and off the P90 coil and the miniswitch the rail (volume knob and front switch for neck pickup, tone knob and rear switch for bridge pickup), so you would get:

Knob and switches down - both in series

Knob up, switch down - P90

Knob down, switch up - rail

Knob and switch up - both in parallel

(No knob jokes please .)

ThePrettyDamned

That looks well nice!

TheOtherDennis

Very nice.

dean2371

Thanks for the comments. Not much quack from the singlecoils together.

I'll have to get my head around those wiring suggestions ICBM, thanks. May be a bit too complicated for me though!

Jalapeno

Looks lovely !

Andyjr1515

dean2371 said:

 Not much quack from the singlecoils together.

Hi @dean2371

I'm a big fan of P-rails, but you're right, other than to produce a really nice humbucker sound combined with the P90, the rails are a bit limited - certainly on their own.  I tend to use either 100% humbucker mode or 100% p90 or one on p90 and the other on humbucker (my fave is bridge on P90 and neck on humbucker).  They produce some great and usable sounds 

ICBM

dean2371 said:

I'll have to get my head around those wiring suggestions ICBM, thanks. May be a bit too complicated for me though!

Think of it as a simple on-off switch for each coil, but with the addition that when both coils are "off" (both switches for each P-Rails down) then they're on in series instead of both being off.

This is the same wiring as the 'series mod' for Fender Jaguars, but doubled!

As a complete spin-off it has also just occurred to me that you could do the same wiring with a Les Paul using four push-pulls... and either P-Rails or normal humbuckers.

dean2371

I'm glad I'm off work over Christmas; plenty of time to figure it out!

Gru

That looks and sound (by spec) fantastic. I do like maple necks on Strats. Nice work