I'm about to work on the electrics of my 80s Squire Strat (the volume pot has finally gone scratchy).
Whilst the scratch plate is off I'm considering removing the tone contols on the grounds that I don't use them! Will anyone talk me out of doing this?
The reason I don't use the contols is that, to my ears, the sound goes dead rather than offering a useful variation. I get most of my tonal variety from a phase reversal switch on the middle pick-up and a series/parallel switch on the bridge pick-up.
Are there any change that can be made to tone controls that will give a useful tone change, aiming at warm & mellow rather than dead & muddy?
Put in TBX controls.
You could also add a mid-boost, like on the Eric Clapton model - they can be had from various sources and offer up to 25dB boost (you'll need to find somewhere to put a 9V block battery for this mod, though).
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Put in TBX controls.
You could also add a mid-boost, like on the Eric Clapton model - they can be had from various sources and offer up to 25dB boost (you'll need to find somewhere to put a 9V block battery for this mod, though).
The TBX is a good suggestion. My G&L S-500 (pretty much a post-Fender Leo Strat) came with this, and it works great.
-Greg
-=tension & release=-
I think it's helpful to roll off the tone if you're distorted, but I'm not a big tone knob guy. I took the knob off my bass so I could put the jack where it was.
In my original post I failed to mention that that my Stat has three single coil sized humbuckers, so it's not as "bright" as a conventional set-up in the first place. (They've been on for so long I'd forgotten that mod!)
It's funny how you get stuck in a rut: following Paul's comment I've been messing around with the tone controls with a distorted amp setting, I found the tone controls are more useful than with a clean amp sound. I'm not so sure that I want to totally remove them now :?
So at the moment I'm heading off in the direction Joe pointed me in with the "no load pot". I'm thinking of replacing the neck & middle tone controls with a single overall TBX control that can be switched out when I'm not using it. It would also allow me to tame the bridge pick-up, which can be a little too much of a good thing at high distortion settings.
