For those not loving their guitars with a dark and moody soul we’ve lightened the mood with the Warblades now with white bobbins and cream / ivory bobbins. You can find neck and bridge versions, in both colours, in our webstore along with the ever popular dark hearted black ones of course.
Wiring up a 3 way mini toggle switch to act as pickup selector switch is really easy. It gives the option of bridge pickup, neck on its own or, in the mid position, both together. All it takes is wiring some jumper wires side to side across the switch lugs of the switch. Then connect the hot wire from the neck pickup to one end of the switch. Next connect the hot wire from the bridge to other end of the switch. Lastly wire a hot out wire from the centre connections to the connector for the tip of the jack socket. That’s it, job done. Easy guide to Wiring a pickup selector switch.
Just make sure you use a 3 position Double Pole Double Throw ( DPDT ) on-on-on type toggle switch.
Only a small 6mm hole is needed to mount the switch through. You can usually find room to squeeze one in somewhere. These switches are also used as series, parallel, coil cut switches. This is explained here.
These types of switches were used often on vintage Japanese guitars from the 1980s
There’s some new stuff arrived and making its way onto our store this week including our new Maelstrom single coil sized alnico humbuckers, our Vintage 5/2 Tele neck pickup with mixed Alnico V and II magnets inside, along with some new colour variations for our popular Twin Loco and Destroyer models.
A Different Kind of Dirt – Passive Distortion Mod
Fancy giving your guitar a little extra attitude without splashing out on pedals or fancy gear? One of the simplest ways to do it is with a passive distortion circuit using Schottky clipping diodes. These little guys are cheap, widely available online or by mail order. They can transform your clean signal into a gritty, snarling tone in seconds. It’s a low-cost way to add a bit of edge to your playing. The kind of mod that makes your guitar feel like it’s got a secret personality.
The circuit works by using two diodes wired in opposite directions. This is called symmetrical clipping. Essentially, it squashes both halves of the audio signal evenly, which is what gives you that classic distorted sound. Think of it as giving your signal a gentle squeeze until it growls just right. No batteries, no active circuitry – just pure, unpretentious tone magic.
To get the most out of this mod, fit a 250k pot as your distortion control. You can use either A or B taper depending on how you like your distortion to respond. An A taper will give you a smooth, gradual increase in crunch as you turn the knob. While B taper will make the effect kick in faster. Perfect if you want instant bite at the flick of your wrist.
Because it’s a passive circuit, it won’t totally replace a dedicated distortion pedal. It does give you something unique and versatile straight from your guitar. Do it right, and you’ll have a subtle growl for bluesy bends, or push it harder for full-on rock attitude. Either way, it’s a cheap, easy, and fun way to add a bit of flavour to your tone. You don’t need to leave your bedroom or breaking the bank to get great tone.
An easy modification to get more tones out of your pickups is to wire in a phase reversal switch. This basically swaps over the signals from your hot and ground wire. A pair of pickups are wired “in phase” where they work in tandem adding to each others signal. When you reverse this signal they start to work against each other “ out of phase” and produce a thinner more trebly tone.
The further the pickup coils are away from each other the better, so this works best for neck and bridge positions. If you tried to do it on the two coils on the same humbucker, putting them out of phase with each other all you would acheive is a very thin, cancelled signal with a massive volume drop. Only one of the pickups needs to be wired with a phase reversal switch. Wiring two pickups this way would acheive nothing . Reversing the signal on both pickups would put them back in phase. End result – zilch tone change.
If you are planning on doing this on a 3 pickup guitar, like a Strat with 3 single coils fitted, then put the phase reversal switch ion the wiring of the middle pickup so that you can have positions 2 and 4 usable with it.
You can use either a standard toggle switch for this mod or a push pull potentiometer.
Its a fairly easy wiring job. First solder the two criss cross wires. Next solder the leads from your pickup to the two end pins of the switch. Finish off by soldering your output wires to the two pins in the middle. Then these two output wires go to your other guitar circuitry.
Job Done !
You can find push pull potentiometers for this job here
