Effects? Who needs 'em?

[Ge_Whiz]

Okay, just wanted to get your attention.  

Well last night I completed ten days of blood, sweat and (very nearly) tears screening and custom-wiring my Burns Marquee guitar (a British Strattish axe, but nicer). Not bad considering that on Sunday night I was tearing my hair out trying to get Mike Richardson's switching circuit from GuitarNuts to make sense. Where the hell did he get a 4P5T selector switch with two wafers that go 1,2,3,4,5,common and two others that go common,5,1,2,3,4? Madness!

Anyroadup, I now have a three-pickup guitar with SIXTEEN different pickup sounds - all combinations series or parallel (except middle alone - well, you gotta compromise somewhere) plus neck pickup phase switching, with volume, tone, and a varitone switch thrown in for good measure. If you want variation in sounds, try making the most of pickup combinations first. Okay, it's not 'active' effects, but 'passive'. However, as I have discovered, this is not for the faint-hearted - there were moments when I seriously thought I'd killed my favourite performing guitar. But, now it's done, like, WOW...

[petemoore]

Like what you describe [coil taps, phazing, etc] IMO are the ]only?[ biggest 'real' improvements to guitar technology since the magnetic pickup...
 I like being able to get different sounds from the ONE guitar that I'm used to, put [new] strings on all the time, setup, and work with
 Hybrids allow users to do just that ... get a much wider variety of tones out of one guitar....most effective
 The one thing it WONT do is move the position of the pickups on your guitar...strats pickup placement is part of what makes a strat a strrat. using a single coil [say neck position on a Les Paul] gets close...er...but not quite strat...that little bit of[non] strattiness is a sacrifice Im willin to make considering the cost of strings, two guitars, setups, getting used to working with two guitars etc...plus once I had two guitars stolen from the same back seat [put em in the trunk guys] this only presents one guitar per visit to any would be guitar grabberz.

[joesuspense]

I've also got one of those Burns Marquee guitars. I don't use it that often since I tend to stick to my SG, but you may have inspired me to do some wiring tricks to make it more versatile.

[Ge_Whiz]

Joe

I've got two. The original is a early greenburst model fitted (accidentally) with a figured maple fretboard and a bit of a rarity. For this reason, I'll leave it stock except I'll probably screen the interior with copper foil. Having the jack socket on the same scratchplate as all the rest of the electronics makes customising a doddle. However, I just HAD to buy another for re-wiring, and when a red one came my way at reduced price, I had to have it. Fantastic value for money. Best of all, the volume control is out of the way when playing, and the vibrato arm doesn't clash with the pickup switch, hence better than a Strat.

Phil

[sirkut]

Here's an interesting problem. I have an old washburn with a bill lawrence pickup. For over 6 years I've just left it in the guitar case, untouched. I decided to take it out and plug it into an amp. I can't get any sound out of it unless I really BANG on the strings, then it slightly fizzs out. The amp is perfectly fine as I try it with my cheap japanese strat copy. Any ideas what could be wrong?