The Electronics:
The bridge pickup is a hot rail humbucker, and the neck pickup a single coil, both are Seymour Duncan Telecaster replacements. Originally The wiring was unusual, but purposeful, as the three way switch selected the hotrail in the lied position, both pickups in the mid position, and the single coil and one of the hotrail coils in the rhythm position, so that there was always hum canceling. The sound was switchable from cold and smooth, to warm and twangy, without a major change in volume. Each pickup has its own tone control, with an additional capacitor for the rhythm single coil, wired prior to the potentiometer which cuts some of the unwanted trebles. There was one common volume control, with a built in push pull switch for a built in preamp, that I got from a BC Rich that I rewired, allowing for blasting leads at any pickup selection and desired tone.
Sometime in 2004, the preamp burned out while I was using massive feedback, so I wired the switch to throw the north coil of the hotrail out of phase, but it did not turn out to my liking. I left it that way as I was just to busy with other stuff, and every time I thought about adding another preamp, something else came up, so it never happened. The next picture shows that configuration:
On 11/16/2014, while playing something aggressive sounding that I had come up with, I decided to smash the strings into the hotrail during the lead, in order to get the sound of aggression across, and the hotrail went into single coil mode! It was not wired to do that and I knew I must have damaged the pickup, and now I had to do something about it, and could not put off a rewire for any longer.
I Took out the pickup and low and behold one of the wires had pulled out from underneath the protective tape, meaning that it was disconnected from the less than hair thin wire of the coil. At this point most people would call it done and just get a new pickup, but I am not most people, and decided to fix it, which you can read about here,but you will have to scroll down to the topic called "Dead Pickup".
After fixing the pickup, I decided to undo the wiring of both pickups and give them a listen in different modes and configurations in order to come up with a good switching plan. This also gave me the idea to install a screw connector rail so I could just configure the pickups any way I wanted without having to solder any connections. In doing so I found out that I rather liked the sound of the Seymour Duncan single coil neck pickup by itself, since it had a lot of color to it and responded great to my dynamic style of playing. It was less noisy than I had expected, and I removed the wires, and replaced them with a shielded one in order to reduce noise even further, and it made a great difference.
The hotrail was better served switched between series and parallel rather than throwing one coil out of phase. In the end I opted to use the three way selector switch to act in standard fashion, and switch the pickups as bridge, both and neck, and use the push pull on the volume to switch the hotrail from parallel to series, making it a lead switch. This configuration gives me three rhythm and two lead pickup settings, where in the neck position I can switch the humbucker silently from parallel to series without any difference in sound until I switch the three way back a notch or two. With the hotrail in series there is a significant boost in volume, and that is desirable in my book as a lead should be soaring and pronounced, ala' Jimmy Hendrix and others.
Final Notes:
In an effort to reenforce my standing at the Washburn custom shop, and to prove my skills beyond those expected of me, I asked Grover Jackson our plant manager, if I could show him the guitar I had created, and he agreed to give it a look.
I showed up the next day with my creation, and when I approached him and handed him the case, he said: "Looks like You may get a good dose of reality today, because an old friend of mine is here, who is a well established guitar collector who really knows his stuff". "I will have this back to you in about half an hour." I was not afraid that they would find anything wrong with it, but I was weary as personal taste may come into play, and it is definitely not constructed like most typical guitars.
Two and a half hours went by until Grover and his friend showed up, and I asked if he had forgot about me. He replied: "No, we spent all this time playing this thing, and it is amazing." "Why the hell are you working here?" His friend asked me what I was expecting to sell it for, and I said: "If it were for sale, I could get around $1400." That was the price for most high end luthier made guitars at the time. He replied: "Well, if you ever do think about selling it, don't ask for less than six grand, your craftsmanship is exemplary, don't ever sell yourself short."
Like with most people that I meet for the first time, I had forgotten his name only a few minutes after Grover introduced us. I still have this guitar and although I have got quite a few offers for it, I can not part with it and I play it often, it is my main instrument.
