Control Issues

[MarkII]

Hello there. Many moons ago i fentured forth on a project to restore an old squier strat to something that i would get some use out of, involving a respraying of the body, new pickups and rewiring.

For a long period, nothing happened. And then, all of a sudden, they did! The spraying was finally able to begin and my mind once more wandered to other options i have in customising the guitar.

Basically, my plan is to install two seymour duncan SH-1's in place of the 3 single coils in there. But i also want to change the wiring so that there is just the one tone control for the two pickups, along with the volume, and put in a nice little chrome 3 way selector switch in place of the mddle of the three knobs.

Only, now im left with an open hole in the pickguard and im not completely sure what to do with it. one reason why i want a little flick switch is because ive always (for some reason) really disliked the selector switches on strats... i dont know why. but i dont really want to put one in there. yet i dont want to have a useless gap in the pickguard.

i was wondering if anyone here might be able to come up with an idea of how i could make use of it. ive been wondering about sliding switches, and whether one of them might be made to fit the hole... but i mainly just dont know what use to make of the extra control. or, maybe, not have another control. but in that case, how could i cover up the hole?

I would greatly appreciate your shared wisdom, as i dont really know much about this sort of... thing.

[Nitefly SA]

Kill button/ switch? I have a momentary kill switch in a guitar and it's a lot of fun.

[custom22]

The SH-1 is a humbucker right? I do not know if it is four conductor or not, but if it is you can do coil splitting, parrallel operation, out of phase, and all sorts of stuff.

If its not, you could add a switch that controlls the phase of the two pickups, or possibly the operation of them in series.

Edited August 28, 2006 by custom22

[spazzyone]

how about another pickgaurd with just the two pickup routs you want

and no holes while the are not plentiful if at all availible

but you could get one custom made from here

http://home.comcast.net/~pickguards/

or you could make your own

if its just the switch slot that bothers you try this for a switch

http://www.starrlabs.com/guitar_electronics.html

these things are not cheap though but this is also just a sugestion

[MarkII]

First, thanks for the replies. And second, I have some questions.

What is a kill switch? I dont know anything about electronics, im afraid, and evel less about the technical side of guitars.

The SH-1 is indeed a humbucker, but it does not allow coil splitting. That being the case, what do the other suggested options do? (the phase control and operation in seriese)

[Logical Frank]

A kill switch does just what it sounds like it does. It kill the signal from your pickups. It's basically an on/off switch. You can use it to do Tom Morello-style stutters. It's pretty neat.