My 1972 Stereo 350 Model

[oipunkguy]

Hey guys,

I finally got my pics uploaded for ya. hope you guys enjoy.

[oipunkguy]

here's some pics I took while I did some work on my new baby. the first thing I wanted to do is wax the pickups, so I took this pics and made a diagram of the wiring before I did anything. next was to disconnect the pickups. these humbuckers have four conductor wiring (2 white wires, 2 black wires, and the bare ground) for this guitar the pickups were made into a 2 conductor set up, center wire is hot and the outer wire is ground.
the bare grounds is attached to the guitar ground. this is the spiral colored white and black wire.








note: the small copper wire running from each jack is non original. I just added that temporary so I could use both pickups in a mono setup.

[oipunkguy]

hey check it out, this guitar is a 5 screw bolt on neck

[oipunkguy]

because this made me mental I decided to drill out the pickup covers so the screw head would screw down past the top of the pickup cover. this was particularly nerve racking because one false move and I could break the coil wrapping and bye bye pickup. i drill out the holes using a drill bit and drill it out by hand (no power tools)
this is what one of the pickups looked after I was done.

[oipunkguy]

now it was time to wax the pickups. to do this I use a hot wax hand treatment unit made by Revlon. these are cheap to buy, and much safer then doing this on a stove. I set the heat to medium, so not to damage the pickup, and I just drop them in. I wouldn't leave them in longer then 5 minutes, and I roll the pickup around to make sure I get all the air out of the pickup.

after the air stops coming up, I'll pull out the pickup and let it cool so the wax can harden.





notice the air bubbling out of the pickup:

[oipunkguy]

after the wax had cooled, I rubbed off the extra wax using a paper towel and now I was ready to reinstall these pickups. however, I wanted to try something different, and thought it would be cool to wire this guitar up so I could split the coils. to do this I would have to remove the two conductor wiring and add new four conductor wiring to turn off one of each coils.

[oipunkguy]

since I never have a use to play in stereo, I made each jack a mono jack and changed the mono/stereo switch to a coil spliting switch for both pickups. to do this I would have to replace the two way SPDT switch for a DPDT switch. These are pretty easy to find at any radioshack, and is the same switch used as a pickup selector of fender jazzmasters and jaguars. these are made by switchcraft.

[oipunkguy]

next was to just wire it all up, but I felt like experimenting yet again. I thought why just have two mono jacks just the same??? So I started experimenting hooking up the pickups to different caps, diodes, resistors I had laying around. After some trail and error I found that using a .997k ohm resistor in line of one side of the pickup and a 227k ohm resistor hooked to the other side gave me a increase in pickup output. the pickups read 5.25k ohms by themselves, but with the resistors the output jumped to 6.9k ohms.
So I hooked the resistors to one jack, and lift the other jack alone, basically giving me a low and high output, kinda like an old marshall jcm 800, but on the guitar!

[oipunkguy]

here's the guitar all together again. I love how this guitar plays now.












The gang's all here, lol....

[Veenture]

Fascinating Aaron, I wouldn't dare touch the elctronics on any of my guitars but then I'm not as knowledgeable as you are in this field either. thanks for sharing the stages of your customization job ...as a 4th. July-treat!
Hope the guitar is now fully to your liking sir...