Melody Maker controls

[loos]

I’m writing again about my Melody Maker. It is a 1965 two pickup model and has three knobs, two volume and one tone. The original pickups have been replaced with mini humbuckers. I find that one of the two volume knobs is really in my way, especially when fingerpicking and I'd like to convert it to a two knob setup. I’ve been playing a Telecaster and don’t have a problem with it’s two knob three position switch setup so I’m thinking that this would make for a more playable guitar for me. Slightly less versatile I know but I would rather not try to learn to keep my hand off that third knob. The Melody Maker body is so dogonne thin I can’t put a push pull pot on it and there just isn’t a whole lot of room on the pickguard. So I’m wondering if anyone here can give me a reason to keep things as they are. Is there anything aside from having to adjust volume and tone when switching between bridge and neck pickups? I can see that I’ll loose the ability to adjust the tonal balance in the middle switch position and wish there was another solution but i can’t see that there is one.

Again, advice much appreciated, Loos

 

[curtisa]

On 26/07/2017 at 4:52 AM, loos said:

So I’m wondering if anyone here can give me a reason to keep things as they are. Is there anything aside from having to adjust volume and tone when switching between bridge and neck pickups?

Value?

If you're willing to make the change to a Tele-style control layout it might be sensible to make it such that the mod can be reversed without damaging anything.

Is a stacked potentiometer an option? Some of the skinnier versions only need 20mm depth below the pickguard to fit in.

[loos]

Very likely I could have chosen that stacked potentiometer. I didn't think I had enough depth in the Melody Maker cavity and so I chose to use a six position Free-way switch which will give me in addition to the standard three choices: bridge, bridge and neck, neck I'll have the pickups in series, parallel out of phase and pickups in parallel. The Free-way switch is only ~9.5mm deep. I'm putting this on a new pickguard with 4 wire mini humbuckers, one volume pot and one tone so I will be able to change back easily if I don't like the result.