Currently I've sacrificed the neck pickup position until I can figure out a way to convert a pickup into a driver while still preserving the pickup the way you did...I've found an inexpensive rails pickup made by TOG which might be a good candidate. It suddenly dawns on me that the driver coil must actually touch the polepieces and that winding the driver coil around the top 3 mm's of the existing coil won't work; is that right?
I've wired the hot and ground leads to the middle and bridge pickups to the 4PDT switch so that in non sustainer mode the hot leads go to the pickup selector switch and the ground wires go to the common ground, and in sustainer mode the middle pickup is disconnected and the hot and ground leads from the bridge pickup go to the circuit (the ground connectes the the battery's - )
D'oh! Dear sir I do believe you've hit the nail right on the head: I wired the circuit's (the Ruby Amp) ground to the output jack, bypassing the star ground...keep in mind that I only get the fizz in non sustainer mode while using the Variax's power supply. In sustainer mode, no fizz, the sound is clean. Without power (using a plain mono cord) the "straight strat" tone sounds as if the tone's rolled all the way off.
That I have done via the 4PDT switch!
This bit I don't understand...I thought it was muffled no matter what. Normally I would suggest that your circuit is loading down the pickups but you are right to suspect the tone grounding I think.
Nope, I do have a bad habit of skipping from one point to another in my posts, my bad ... but to summerize:
regular cord (no power) - dull sound as if the tone was rolled all the way off - using the tone control has no effect stereo cord (power on from the Variax power supply) clean sound in sustainer mode (I send the signal from the FET transistor to the output jack - oops - that ain't bypassed either when switching to "normal" mode) though there is little sustain so far stereo cord (power on) dull sound like in non powered mode, and fizzy, overdriven sound.
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You are much more patient than I am!
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Hmmm...now I can't wait to add that PVC tape and try it again! Many thanks for the input!