Making Single Guitar Pickups In this article, we’ll discuss making single guitar pickups, and how building them from scratch can be such a rewarding and worthwhile experience. The design is simple and the steps are easy to follow. Another benefit of the design is that winding the coil by hand offers the opportunity of having […]
Coil-splitting humbuckers Many of our mini toggle switch FAQs begin with an inquiry into whether or not you can coil-split just any humbucker. Theoretically, any humbucker can be split, but in practice, it’s dependent upon the way the manufacturer has built the pickup. To split a humbucking pickup, you need one with four lead output […]
Welcome to Part 3, on how guitar pickups work and how you can build your own. In the last article, we discussed the way the magnets and coils work, and the way they work together to create the sound that you hear. This time around, we’re going to look at the tools, pickup parts, and […]
In Part 1, we’ll take a look at the first actual pedal that we are going to create. It’s called the Piledriver, and it is a Gain Boost pedal that I got from modkitsdiy.com (https://www.modkitsdiy.com/pedal/piledriver). This is listed as a “beginner” pedal and that is one of the reasons that I chose it. Gain Boost […]
To build your own effects pedal, you will usually need to buy a kit for the project. The price of it will vary, based on the kind of pedal that you plan to build. If you’re building the project from a schematic, you will need to buy all of the parts individually on your own.
First things first: what is the Nashville-Style Tele, how is it wired, and can you modify your Telecaster so it produces that tone? A Nashville-Style Tele is just a Standard Telecaster with three pickups instead of two, and a five-way selector switch instead of a three-way selector switch. This Mod was created by Tele players […]
This article will cover how to wire a humbucker pickup so that it can be split into a single coil, using a push-pull pot. For the split you need a four-wire humbucker; you cannot split a two-wire without first modifying the pickup itself. Each coil has a Hot and a Ground, and a determination must […]
Let’s take a look at how to wire a Les Paul three-way switch. While we’re at it, we’ll take a look at the rest of the circuit as well — the two humbuckers, the three-way switch, two Volume controls, two Tone controls, two capacitors, and the output jack.
Let’s talk about setting up 5-way switch wiring in a Fender Stratocaster. Even though this guide is specific to the Fender Stratocaster, the switch and wiring will work the same way in any guitar with one Volume and two Tone controls. If you’re changing your Strat switch, it might also be a great time to […]
Wiring Up a Telecaster Three-Way Switch This article will apply to any similar three-way “Lever” switches that are used in many different Strat-style guitars. This is distinct from Les Paul-style guitars that use a three-way “Toggle” switch — that discussion will be in a different article. For this guide, we’ll use all of the standard […]
Curious about how to wire your own Tone control? For many people, the Tone control itself is just a potentiometer (Volume knob) with a capacitor attached to it. When the Tone control is turned all the way up, the Tone is at its brightest, and as the knob is turned down (off), the Tone darkens […]