Close up of the recent modifications
Lady Blue is my main guitar. A 1992 stratocaster (a former Hohner ST-59) which has been deeply, deeply modified over the years. I already posted some of the schematics of the strange pickups routing, inspired by the Brian May's Red Special. At that time, pickups were wired in series. I recently put them back in parallel.
True story : this the very first guitar that I have ever owned. It is a gift from my father. We went in a guitar shop of Orleans (were I was born), and he bought me this guitar on Friday, September 18th, 1992.
Since, here is the list of what has been replaced of added:
- Shaller locking tuners
- Birdseye maple neck with ebony fingerboard
- TUSQ graphite nut
- Frets in stainless steel
- Wilkinson floating VS100C bridge (discontinued) which locks as a fixed bridge when the whammy bar is pointing down
- Master tone for the 3 pickups
- EMG SPC adapted for passive pickups (the black knob) giving uo to +6dB boost in the mid frequencies (9V battery needed, placed between springs in the back). See schematics below.
- 3 ON-OFF-ON switches allowing all pickups combination + phase inversion. Pickups are now wired in parallel and no longer in series
- A Kinman Woodstock Regular Set
- A kill switch (the same used on my Punkaster)
- A treble bleed on the 500k volume control (a 1nF capacitor in parallel). It provides some vintage sounds when rolling down the volume, less bassy, more crispy.
TODAY, I soldered a Seymour Duncan Hot Rails SHR1-B at the bridge position. Its dedicated switch provides: Split(one coil)/OFF/Humbucker instead of ON in phase/OFF/ON out of phase as for the other pickups.
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| Schematics provided by EMG that is compatible with passive pickups |
Here is the new version of the complete wiring diagram of Lady Blue. Note the Creative Commons logo. You can use and share it as you like as long as you mention that I did it. But don't use it for commercial purposes.
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| Lady Blue wiring diagram |