Extra Spdt Switch

[Keegan]

My strat has 1 vol, 1 tone, and the third hole is occupied by an On/on switch that I'm just using as a kill switch for now. I'd like to get more use out of it. Are there any cool small passive circuits around?

[psw]

Well...if you are tired of playing with your kill switch...

A spdt might do it (otherwise swap for a dpdt of the same size) and make a neck pickup on switch. On a strat this gives you the ability to combine the neck and bridge and all three pickups in selections 5 and 4 with standard strat wiring...both great sounds otherwise unobtainable...makes your 5 way a seven way

pete

[Keegan]

Hmm, possibly, but that'd just be in parallel, and I never found that switch useful on the G&L S-500 I had.

What about the Black Ice? Would that be possible on a SPDT?

Edit: Like this, would this work?

Edit 2: I just found this http://www.projectguitar.com/tut/blackice.htm Does anyone know where I can get one of those? Or how to build a simple clipping circuit myself?

Edited December 1, 2008 by Keegan

[psw]

The black ice disappoints...lots of threads about it here so do a bit of a search and see what others have said...it is simply a pair of diodes...so also, search here for the cheaper easy diy version "strawberry ice".

As a passive circuit, to get any kind of clipping effect really, you need to drive the input as hard as you can...that means powerful pickups or actives...a strat just doesn't cut it and it might have little or no effec at all. It also isn't really an attractive sound or one that is particular useful in almost everyones opinion...but as I say, seek and you will find.

Perhaps you should consider going active and have a switchable boost with a preamp...a simple preamp lasts a long time so battery access is not so much of an issue, often one can be squeezed into the trem cavity.

If you want to keep it passive and extra pickup selections doesn't appeal...depending on it's location, you might be able to fit a really big switch in there and rewire the whole guitar to get a whole new selection of sounds...maybe 10 with a 4pdt...this was done by hooglebug recently on a GOTM entry and details of JohnH's and other wiring things are at the guitar nut's forum. This kind of complex wiring would get you in the realm of series and parallel wiring options as with brian mays guitar.

You might consider a smaller dpdt replacement and wire a phase switch perhaps...a single pole switch is pretty limited really...give you thinner funky sounds traditionally, but wired to the middle pickup it tends to give a more HB like midrange sound on a strat if combined with the neck or bridge...kind of an opposite effect to the hollowed out positions 2 and 4 sounds you normally get...

pete

[Keegan]

The strawberry ice links are dead.

My pickups should be hot enough, they're all wound to 10k+, and I'd probably only use it with the bridge, which is 12k, and they're pretty close to the strings.

I thought about the EMG PA2, but I didn't want to boost the noise that the guitar is already making.

I found some diode part numbers in some of the old threads I might try though, 1N5817 specifically. It's .45V to put it into clipping, the lowest I could find. Can I check the voltage of my guitar by simply using a multimeter at the end of the cord? Also what do G, RL, and RLG in the diode part numbers mean? Do I want to avoid those and get ones that are just 1N5817(as opposed to 1N5817RLG or something like that)?