Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
Forum Ringside => Pickups => Topic started by: Ollie1005 on November 28, 2023, 11:24:38 AM
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I jumped the gun on black friday and got a MIM Roadworn 60s strat with CS Texas Specials. Absolutely adore positions 5 through 2 but cannot find a use for the bridge sound, even with the tone control having a massive effect. I am thinking a humbucker (cant decide between a single coil sized for ease or full sized for looks) would suit me better here, and questioning what would match the texas specials best to retain their tone? Especially in positions 2 and 4.
What bridge humbucker would sound good matched to these for when I need heavier rock/metal tones? If you have any recommendations for wiring/caps/pots that is welcome too although Id like to keep it as simple as i can.
Many Thanks!
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I can describe the HSS set up I have in one of my guitars if that helps.
Bridge humbucker is a BKP True Grit, the single coils are DiMarzio Injector neck models. As they are slightly hotter than vintage in output, the True Grit should also balance well with the Texas Specials.
I use a 5-way super switch (the one with 4 levels). The positions are as follows:
1 - Bridge humbucker, coils in series
2 - Bridge with the bridgeside coil plus middle. I flipped the magnet in the humbucker to get this position humcancelling.
3 - Middle
4 - Middle plus Neck
5 - Neck
Position 1 has a 500k audio push-pull pot wired to it with a 1000pf (=0.001uf) cap to smoothe the bridge pickup when needed.
The push-pull puts the bridge humbuckers' coils in parallel for a Gretsch-like tone. It also has a 1 meg resistor across the wires of the pickup going to that switch. Does nothing in series mode as the wires are connected but it brings down the load in parallel mode from 500k to about 330k to trim excessive brightness.
Position 5 has a 250k no-load audio pot wired to it with a 1500pf (= 0.0015uf) cap to make the neck single coil sound more humbucker-like when turned down.
In any other positions the tone controls are not connected.
The volume control is a 500k audio pot, which happens to work well with all settings. I don't know how that would work with the Texas Specials, though.
I like this set up because it is still simple but very effective.
Cheers Stephan