One Legacy, 5 Pups, a lotta sounds

So here is my Legacy, which has been the constant victim of mods and custom work for a very long time. At some point I let my sister in law paint the pickguard; it's a little much for me, but it's unique.

Anyway the way this thing is set up, I think of it like a set of strat, tele, and LP pickups all wired on the same axe. One tone knob has been replaced by a rotary switch. Position one: wired just like a strat, position two: wired like a tele with the two added pups, position three: wired like an LP with the neck and bridge sets wired in series.

I like it because it's easy to think about and doesn't have a million extra switches or knobs like is easy to get carried away with in mod projects. The 5 way switch works for every setting, it just has two redundant positions for the "tele" and "LP" settings. Right now it does strat sounds well (of course), and it gets pretty thick and gritty in series. Doesn't do tele well though, and I'm planning on experimenting with a Seymour Duncan TwangBanger in the bridge, not sure what to try in the neck.

So there you have it, I know it's been abused a bit, but I love this axe, get's me a ton of different sounds.






-TC

pretty darn cool looking G&L you have there !!

Tell your sister-in-law that I like the pickguard!

Never seen Lace AlumiTone pickups used that way -- interesting!

All those options in one guitar, very cool. Along with Jag, I like the pickguard as well.

i agree with other guys here. Very cool to have so many options in one. I think the pick guard is nice just not matching the body. If you had either orange or black painted body it wouldn't be too much IMO

Looks real cool bro. The Lace AlumiTone is interesting. Glad to see there is a Lace fan around here. So many players put them down. I have Hot Golds in my Legacy. The Last time I seen Jeff Beck and the last time I seen Buddy Guy they both used Lace at some point on stage. I never heard anyone call their tone "cold or sterile".

I have a couple of 'test bed' bodies laying around that get tweaked when the mood hit, so Yeah I dig it! Like the use of lace alumitones as well. Very cool.

I don't mind the pick guard at all. Pretty cool for a custom job. Tell your sister well done.

Tom

I’ve actually been looking for such a project .. for my next guitar.
Btw...that pickguard looks killer, in my book.

Do you want to expand on that rotary switch approach ?

I’m thinking i want a HSH approach with 2 Single coils together in each of the H slots. That way i am thinking :

Neck
upper coil - strat neck PUp
lower coil - Tele neck PUp

middle
Mid Strat PUp

bridge upper coil - Strat bridge PUp
bridge lower coil - Tele bridge PUp

Ideally i’d be able to use the Twin single coil setups as Humbuckers.
And i would be able to choose between Strat or Tele.

what do you reckon ?

thanks

I did some wiring for the Ed Tyler Band in Fayetteville, AR years ago for his Strat. Ed added a second angled bridge pickup to his Strat and wanted the bridge to work as a humbucker, back angled coil alone, front angled coil alone.

In adding a second angled single coil pickup at the bridge one has to decide about the location of the coils. Keep the original location and add another pickup closer to the bridge? Keep the original location and add the second coil towards the neck? Move both coils to a new location? In this case we chose to locate the new second coil closer to the bridge.

After wiring it up and verifying the pickup selections were working properly we were a little disappointed with the bridge pickup results. The new second coil had very little output due to the effect of the bridge on string vibration close to the bridge, there's less string motion (upper harmonics are emphasized).

So as far as the bridge is concerned I'd keep the Tele pickup where it would normally go and put the Strat second coil towards the neck. The Strat by itself won't sound quite right but the Tele will. Whatever the location the humbucker mode will be interesting, the inductance and DCR will be doubled cutting the highs but the other frequencies will power through. Consider a bass cut tone control like several G&L models feature.

You've got a similar issue at the neck regarding locating the pair. I'd recommend keeping the Strat pickup in the normal location and moving the Tele towards the bridge.

Other considerations:
1) For your self made humbucking pairs I'd leave the Tele pickups grounded per the original design and using the Strats ungrounded second coil. In the single coil mode the ungrounded Strats shouldn't create any issues as the only metal pieces your can touch (screws and pole magnets) aren't ground referenced typically.

2) The Tele bridge pickup with 3 screws creates some mechanical complications as well as if you decide to use a Tele bridge. There are some Strat mount Tele equivalent bridge pickups available that will simplify things for you, I can't vouch for how those sound.

3) Lots of ways to do the switching. It appears you can use your existing 5 way slider with 2 SPDT center off switches to give you the switching you want. the 5 way works like it does now. Each SPDT center off controls each humbucker to select Tele/Strat/Humbucker modes. To wire these SPDT center off switches the center lug of the switch goes to the mid point of each humbucker, then one lug of the switch is wired to ground and the remaining lug to the output of your humbucker pair. In the off position you're in humbucking mode, when selected to ground you'll be grounding out the Tele pickup of the pair (remember it's the only one of the made up humbucker that has a ground reference) and running in Strat mode, in the remaining position you'll be shorting out the Strat coil and running in Strat mode. You'll need to drill a couple of holes for these switches. I'm not aware of any pot/switch combos that have On/Off/On positions. I personally like this switching arrangement as the 5 way is intuitive and you only have to think about what mode you're running your neck and bridge humbuckers.

4) You're going to increase the magnetic deflection of your strings (stratitis). This may require you to position your pickups lower than you normally would. Or you could tilt or shim your neck and increase the string height. 1/8" goes a long way to alleviating excessive magnetic pull on the strings.

5) Your Strat pickups have to be ungrounded for this to work.

Good luck. Projects like this are frustrating fun.

I should have added, when making a humbucker out of two of Leo's single coil pickups - you'll need to clip the ground lead on the pickup that has one wire to the output circuit. Clipping the S-500 ground connection is easy and quick. Clipping a Z Coil is much more involved.
Rodney Hamblen

Cool guitar, and great discussion under the header.

I am a big fan of switching between different mods with a rotary switch. I really don't care for push pull pots.