MODS
BY DIRK WACKER
Hopefully you’ve taken some time to improve the primary tone of
your beloved Stratocaster following our last installment [“Stratocaster
Insight,” September ‘08]. This month we will begin talking about
some of the most popular mods for Stratocasters. We’ll start with a
simple but effective one: the seven-sound Strat. This modification is
one of the oldest ones around. While its origins cannot be confirmed,
some sources claim that it was the idea of the famous Western swing
guitarist, Eldon Shamblin; others attribute the trick to one of the
fathers of the Stratocaster, Bill Carson.
No matter where it came from, the seven-sound Strat mod addresses
one of the major deficiencies with the Strat’s design (or any other
guitar with three single-coil pickups, for that matter). A Strat normally
has three pickups but only a 5-way selector switch, limiting you to
combinations like bridge/neck while keeping other unique choices,
like all three pickups simultaneously, out of reach. With open 5-way
selector switches available from companies like CRL and Oak Grigsby
[now acquired by Electro Switch Corporation], it’s easy to add some
of these esoteric combinations to your guitar. Unfortunately, because
the switch has only five positions, you’ll still have to give up some
options – perhaps not a terrible thing if you never use the middle/
bridge combination, for example.
But if you’re interested in having the most options available – switch
limitations be damned – you’ll want to try the seven-sound Strat mod.
It will leave the 5-way selector switch combinations untouched and
will add two other combinations. But before we begin tinkering, let’s
review the stock positions you’ll find on a run-of-the-mill Fender Strat:
The concept behind the seven-sound mod is simple: add a switching
device that can activate the neck pickup. There are several solutions
available to make this happen, but they all have one thing in common: a simple on/off (SPST) switch. Simply drill a hole in the pickguard and install a small SPST toggle switch near your existing 5-way
selector switch. Wire it according to the following diagram:
Pickups (+)
N
M
B
To Middle
Tone
To Volume Pot
To Neck
Tone
So how does it work? Position 1 of the 5-way selector switch activates
the bridge pickup alone; by engaging your new toggle switch, you
can activate both the neck and the bridge pickups together. Likewise,
with the 5-way selector switch in the second position and the bridge
and middle pickups activated, a flick of the toggle switch adds the
neck pickup to the equation. You can also route the bridge pickup to
