VST Oscilloscope

Here's a nice free vst oscilloscope from Progress Audio Products available here. The download includes another product which you do not have to install.

Duncan's Tone Stack Calculator

This little program allows you to simulate the tone stack on several different tube amps and effects. Super helpful if you are trying to figure out what a flat or neutral setting would be for a particular amp. Page and download here.

Joe Pass plays a Jaguar

From The Jazz Guitar Blog here's a video of Joe Pass playing a Fender Jaguar. Apparently he played a Jazzmaster during rehab and this was not long after. It's very unusual to see a Jazz player use a Jaguar (or a Jazzmaster for that matter).

Fender Jaguar Wiring

Here's a diagram of the original wiring for a Fender Jaguar.

Fender Jaguar Wiring Mod

Here's a schematic taken from the offsetguitars.com forum for rewiring a Jaguar such that you have series/parallel switching and out-of-phase switching using only the three DPDT switches on the lower bout. You can choose to keep the strangle switch or replace it with and out-of-phase switch. The rhythm circuit on the upper bout is not affected. This is a great mod that allows all switching possibilities for two pickups.

DIY Tremolo Pedal

I finally got around to adding tremolo to my guitar setup this past weekend thanks to the EA tremolo kit offered by General Guitar Gadgets. The kit included the resistors, caps, transistors, LED, PCB, jacks, pots, knobs, footswitch, wire, and case--everything to put together a complete stomp pedal. The instructions are downloaded from their site. The build took about 4 hours from start to finish with a couple breaks and was a lot easier than it first appeared when I opened the box. The most time-consuming part was figuring out the resistor values. I have red-green colorblindness and it took a magnifying glass. The pedal sounds great. It has a volume control which allows you to match the volume when the pedal is bypassed. The speed control has a wide range, as does the depth control. The led flashes at the speed rate when on. I have an 80s-era Fender solid-state amp that has a great clean channel and spring reverb but no tremolo. The amp has an effects loop located before the power amp so I patched the tremolo pedal in. At first I thought that something was wrong in the build, as the pedal only worked when in bypass, but I realized that I had reversed the cables into and out of the pedal. So I quickly fixed that problem. Make sure you use a new battery--I used an old one and didn't realize how great the pedal is until I switched it out. Highly recommended. I am not a great solderer, but this actually wasn't too hard. I used small diameter solder for the first time which works great. It also helped to clip off the extra length of the components as I went along to make more room to get at the next point. Once you start cramming everything into the case the soldering gets a little harder, so measure all the wires carefully to make as much room as possible. I might swap out the red LED for a blue or green one just for fun. I don't have any interest in finishing it--nothing wrong with raw aluminum and masking tape.

Fender Stratocaster Rewiring

Here's the wiring I'm currently running in my Stratocaster. It is based almost entirely on the Strat Lover's Strat wiring available at GuitarNuts here. The basic premise is to use a push-pull pot on the volume knob which adds the bridge pickup in series to whatever you have selected via the 5-way switch. It only works for the first three positions, neck, neck and middle, and middle. Positions 4 and 5 just select the bridge pup by itself. This creates some really interesting humbucker-like sounds. I especially like the combination of the neck and bridge pickups in series. Not a sound that you can usually get out of a Strat. The other change is to use a push-pull pot on the tone knob to allow switching the middle pickup out of phase, which works both in positions 2 and 4 in normal switching and when the bridge pup is added in series. I always like the out-of-phase sound and this offers, in my opinion, the most flexibility. The only other major wrinkle is that I have used the Fender Samarium Cobalt noiseless pups and there is an extra ground wire coming out of each. Purists might balk at these pickups, but I love the lack of noise and they sound a lot warmer that the Fender-Lace pups which were standard on the Strat Plus in the late 80s and early 90s.