Brain Fertilizer

...my completed guitar project.

Here's what I started with:

Here's how it turned out:

The sound is actually quite good. The good points:
I wired it up so that the neck position double coil splits. My reasoning is that I never use a single coil in the bridge position...I'm a rocker, and a single in the bridge is just too thin. But I do like the difference between a single coil and a double coil in the neck position. To be honest, that a change for me (an advancement in musical taste? ...skill? ...understanding?), since I never used to use the neck position pickup at all. But with better guitars and better pickups, I am finding that I really like the neck position humbucker for jazz, and the neck position single coil for blues/classic sounds. So setting it up that way works well for me. Furthermore, the Carvin AP11 in the middle position puts out enough warm, woodish sounds that it works great for surf songs. Again, this is the first time that I've ever really seen the point of a middle position pickup.

The bad points:
The tone knob doesn't make an appreciable difference. It does make a noticeable difference, but it is very, very little. I may remove the capacitor and see what difference that makes. But I may not, since I rarely use tone knobs due to not really liking the results.
Position 2, i.e., the bridge + middle pickups, is really thin and weak. I think something is wired wrong, so it might just be the bridge single coil. I couldn't find a wiring diagram out there that fit my configuration and needs exactly, so I combined a few different ones. I based my wiring on a Seymour Duncan diagram (I installed Mighty Mite pickups), so its possible that I have it set up for auto-tap without the middle pickup at all, or it might be an out-of-phase result that cancels out overtones/harmonics and leaves the result so thin. After the fun wears off (and I'm fully familiar with all the sounds), I may change a few wire connections and see if I can improve the position 2 sound without affecting the other positions.

The Yamaha trem system is very stable, by which I mean that when you bend one string, the other strings don't drop in pitch. A trem arm for it is on the way from eBay. I'll be upset if the locking system doesn't stay in tune on divebombs, since that's what the advantage of the locking system is supposed to be over the standard strat trem system. But if it doesn't hold tune, I guess I'll just swap it out with the extra Westone Bendmaster trem bridge I have on hand...with any missing parts scavenged from the Frankenstein Westone that I plan to dismantle and sell in/as parts.

All in all, I'm pleased with the results, and this may end up becoming one of my favorite guitars.

Next up: I got a strat guitar kit on eBay for about $75, so now I'll get to assemble a guitar from scratch with all the parts present and accounted for, which is a little different than starting with an assembled neck/body but having to acquire, design, and assemble the electronics.