This is a request for ideas in design and components to build an electronic circuit to control the pickups in an electric guitar. It goes beyond the usual modifications published in the music community, and requires some familiarity with standard electric guitar circuitry, understanding of how more sophisticated controls than RC circuits work, and will likely involve custom fabrication, although I'm hoping to avoid that.
The project:
I have spent many years playing guitar. I own what is not a huge collection, but certainly what is decently representative of the various categories and varieties of that instrument. I own acoustics and electrics, solid bodies and hollow bodies, 6 and 12 strings, classical and jazz.
Most of them are well-known makes and models, even if vintage, but then again, so am I.
With the acquisition of a 3 pickup Les Paul SG Custom, I discovered that the stock configuration gave me very limited choices where pickup selection, volume and tone were concerned. I began to consider how I might improve the situation, and that is where the idea for this project was born.
This particular guitar has what are called "tarback" humbucking pickups[1]; they have wound bobbins immersed in a hardened black epoxy resin. There is no way to modify them; any attempts at that will likely destroy them, and considering their particular "vintage" sound, that would be a loss.
Many, if not all, pickups today come with at least 4 lead wires, providing the ability to split or tap the coils in order to provide a wider variety of sounds available from them.
That won't be a part of this project, because as I said, the extra wires are not available on the pickups in question here.
How to control those sounds is an entirely different, and complex, matter. The classic layout for a two humbucker guitar is a pickup selector toggle switch offering three positions (one pickup, the other or both), and a set of four potentiometers controlling the volume and tone of each pickup. The sum output is made available at a jack into which a cable is plugged.
Add a third pickup into the mix, and things become significantly more complicated.
The two largest capacity manufacturers at one point were Fender and Gibson, although I'm not sure if that remains the case, particularly with so many foreign manufacturers, Oriental in particular, now in the game[2].
Their best known and most sold models are, respectively, the Fender Stratocaster and the Gibson Les Paul. Those instruments have undergone a myriad of transformations in configuration, but in the end, each one remains essentially what it was; the Stratocaster a three-single coil pickup guitar, and the Les Paul a two-humbucker pickup guitar.
The Fender Stratocaster has a standard configuration of a 5 position (originally 3, but players achieved the other two by carefully balancing the switch between positions) knife selector switch, a volume and two tone controls.
At one point, it was decided to release a three-pickup version of the Les Paul, widely prized for that additional hardware, and at least the perception of a wider range of available sounds[3]. The same was done with the Gibson SG, of which mine is one.
The 3-pickup Les Paul has a standard configuration providing a choice of the neck pickup (the one farthest from the bridge), the bridge pickup (self-explanatory), or the middle and bridge pickups combined. The four potentiometers provide volume and tone control of the neck and bridge pickups, respectively.
The 3 position pickup selector toggle switch is implemented as a set of leaf springs, where contacts are opened and closed mechanically as the toggle is moved.
That has distinct limitations and issues. One of them is that sooner or later the leaf springs will tire, requiring the switch to be replaced. Another is that adding more selection options would require progressively large numbers of leaves crowded into what is already a restricted space, and with finer distance tolerances, which equates to a problem waiting to happen.
Clearly, that is not a reasonable approach.
Another concern is that as more positions are added to the switch, a larger number of lead wires need to be attached and snaked through to where the pickups are situated (sometimes in a different cavity).
Adding more wires is also highly undesirable, as much for their impact on the circuits as for the real estate they consume.
At best, the market offers a six-position toggle switch. This was a feature of the "Jimmy Page" version of the Les Paul. I don't know the manufacturing source of that part, but apparently it is no longer available. There is a company named StewMac (with whom I also have no affiliation) which markets a "Free-Way" toggle switch that implements the same concept.
The problem is that even that switch doesn't begin to address the possible combinations of a 3-pickup configuration.
It is possible to wire pickups in series or parallel. It is possible to wire them in-or-out of phase with each other. It is possible to wire them in series with one and parallel with another.
Personal taste being what it is, and the history of guitar modifications being as prolific an industry as is that of manufacturing the original instruments, a musician constrained to a handful of options which they had little, if any, say in the matter of choosing, will be left, at best, unsatisfied.
This project is an attempt to address that crying need.
If it is successful, there will be many guitarists crying tears of joy; if not, well, let's say a disgruntled musician is a poor choice of companion.
As for myself, hope springs (at least until the springs tire) eternal.
To begin:
Goal:
The goal is to provide the maximum number of possible combinations of pickup sounds as possible, given the following considerations:
-We don't want to go drilling holes in the instrument if at all avoidable; many people who will find this device attractive own vintage instruments they do not wish to abuse or destroy. Optimally, there will be no apparent change in the appearance of the guitar, in spite of the substantially greater flexibility it gains.
-We don't want to increase the physical count of controls; that would violate the above consideration, and impact another matter which is very significant to a player, especially one who is working professionally. One of the advantages of the limited configurations is that it doesn't require an extended thought process to choose a given configuration and go about their business, namely actually playing music. These are, after all, people who are being paid to entertain an audience, not experiment in a lab. One can hardly stop in the middle of a piece, beg the audience's forbearance while settling on a group of settings, and then proceeding[4].
The typical components which make up the control devices on a Les Paul style guitar are a 3 position toggle switch and four continuous revolution potentiometers, which is to say that they do not have detents with fixed amount of resistance, but rather that the wiper runs along a track applying progressively greater amounts of resistance to electric flow.
The potentiometers themselves, by the way, are also available in a variety of values; typically 250/500k, and with linear or audio taper. We are not going to explore those options in this project, but they are certainly worthy of consideration for a subsequent iteration.
Another feature of the potentiometers we mean to use is that they are available in concentric versions, which is to say that each one is able to contain two independent controls. This will be highly valuable in the sense that we can add controls without drilling, as per consideration #1.
Yet another option is for the potentiometer to have a switch at the end of its revolution, which typically disengages the control from the circuit, but is not really limited to any particular function; it is as useful in the same degree as our imagination is wild.
Still another feature is that of a mechanical "push-pull", where the consequence of having the control "in" or "out" results in changes to the circuit; again, this has no real limitation in terms of how it can be used.
There is a control which has been in sufficient use by significant players to make it worthy of mention, which is the mini toggle switch. Sometimes you have to look closely in order to realize that it is even there. A brief discussion of the uses it has been put to is in note 5 below. I don't want to include it at this time, since it violates both considerations of complexity and cosmetics.
Cosmetically, there are always options such as lighted switches, particularly those which change color depending on their state, which would be a page taken from the world of keyboard technology. In a dark room, it would be a profound boon to the player's clarity on where things are. That is not insignificant, as I mentioned above; the fewer controls a guitarist has to monkey with (no disrespect intended to monkeys), the better off they are.
There are long and bitter debates in the guitar world on the place where all of these options intersect; is it better to have independent controls for volume and tone on each pickup, or is that a complete waste of copper ? Should there be a way to independently control that squirrely third pickup using a potentiometer (raising or lowering the volume in order to include or exclude it in the mix), or should that be handled in the already burdened pickup selector ? What kind of impact does each modification of the stock circuit have on the tone (after all, good tone options is our objective here) ?
I am not going to wade into that quicksand; rather, I am going to impose my view that pickup selection is best done all in one place, and volume and timbre controlled elsewhere. If I have to fiddle with multiple controls in order to accomplish the single goal of choosing my pickup set and configuration, I am in trouble, because a bunch of bars will have gone by before I get all of that done (way too many "b"s there) and am ready to play the next one.
Accordingly, my specific goal is to make the pickup selector offer up as many permutations as I can squeeze out of it.
That will not happen with a 3 position toggle.
Here is what I came up with, after sufficient chemical reinforcement:
A mechanical toggle switch physically makes and breaks the contacts which define the circuit through which signal travels. Getting beyond that count of 3 is not easy; 6 is as far as the manufacturing/engineering community is willing to push it (no pun intended). Mechanical is too limited for our purpose.
This is where I include another feature ordinarily part of a different control, the push-pull action. If I can do that, I double the number of options to 18. That may still not be enough, but it is certainly a vast improvement over 3, or even 6.
Now we come to how the physical implementation of such a device might look.
Well, almost. Before we do that, I want to introduce what I think is critical to the successful implementation of this concept.
This next paragraph is certain to stir up the hornet's nest, so let's all take a deep breath and put on our bee bonnets.
Mechanical controls are prone to failure. My prized Gibson L6-S, which is, as I understand, something of a rarity in terms of how well it has stood up to years of use, has finally come to the state where its potentiometers have become so worn down that setting them produces, at best, inconsistent results.
Electronic (there, I used the word) components are much less so.
At this very moment, hordes of purists are weaving a rope and debating which tree they are going to hang me from, but if I will be allowed a few moments before the chair is kicked out from under me, there is a consideration I want to present.
It is well-known that the farther a signal must travel in a wire, the more prone it is to issues; accordingly, as best exemplified in the microprocessor industry, the less distance that signal needs to travel, the better.
While all sorts of debates rage on about quality of sound as signal progresses through circuits, this is certain: selection of components, such as pickups, for inclusion in a circuit is a discrete and digital act. A pickup is either in or out, in phase or out of phase, series or parallel. There is no known instrument out there (with the possible exception of something Frank Zappa built) where a pickup is engaged in a quasi mode.
That binary state is absolutely best suited to a digital transmission.
So what if I translated the pickup selector state into a digital value transmitted economically through a small set of wires (or even better, optically) to a circuit at the pickup end of the system, where the physical engagement of pickups is accomplished by a set of (relays ?) ?
Now I have eliminated the complexity of the leaf spring device and its mechanical challenges, and efficiently transmitted the neccessary information to the place where it is needed, at the same time dramatically reducing the actual signal path length.
For those of you who insist that having that signal path and mechanical switch lie at the heart of what makes those guitars sound as they do, I have no answer. I'm sure, however, that someone is prepared to make the measurements required in order to feed a pickup modeler circuit (I can feel that next multi-million dollar project coming on) in order to restore whatever magic was lost.
So now we need a 9 position joystick control, with the 9th position being centered, and we need it to have a push-pull action. Then we need a way to detect and encode the state of that switch in order to transmit that information to a receiving circuit at the other end.
The receiving circuit will need to have access to all of the leads on each pickup, which in this case is 6 (2 per pickup), and the ability to route the signal to and through them based on the transmitted state of the toggle.
That is one part of the project.
The second part is the disposition of the 4 potentiometer controls, and the level of complexity I want to impose on them, with specific objectives.
Here we plunge into yet another topic fraught with controversy; which controls to use for what, and how many of them should there be.
The answers to those questions have substantial bearings on the level of complexity where the signal routing circuit is concerned. Not only do I need to apply the player's choice of pickup configuration to the signal path, I also need to get said signal through the series of volume and tone controls which shape the output before it exits the guitar.
As I said above, there are concentric and push-pull options, as well as switch options. I have never seen a concentric push-pull control, let alone one with a switch, but this much is certain: each element adds to the length dimension in a place where there is precious little real estate to be had, so miniaturization is our friend here.
The best possible configuration here would be an open-ended programmable one, where the complete mesh of options could be accomodated. That would require no physical routing, particularly if access to the routing module were made wireless (I shudder at the thought of a USB port gaping from the side edge of a beautifully crafted instrument; that would be absolutely sacreligious).
It would also lead to a dramatically greater level of complexity in the implementation.
At the same time, it would yield a highly personalized configuration, in exactly the way a keyboard player has the benefit of. Even keyboardists who own the same make and model of instrument hesitate to use each others' gear, because the customizations are so involved that the same physical keyboards can sound like two entirely different devices.
In a way, that is part of the goal here; to provide the guitarist with the ability to construct his unique voice.
There is no substitute for practice and technique. All of the dials and buttons in the world cannot produce a superlative musical experience. That requires a human touch.
But there are few things as inspiring as the 64 crayon box (which my sister got, but I never did) on which to build.
In the end, that is what this about; crayon envy.
When I bought that Gibson L6-S, my first electric guitar, it was featured in an ad graced by Carlos Santana, who called it his rainbow. I found that a powerful motivator in choosing a first instrument, and I was not disappointed. In that case, however, I am loath to monkey with it, both as a consequence of it having so many options as it is (6 position "chicken head" pickup selector, and both tone and midrange controls), and because it is pretty much perfect as it is.
The Gibson Les Paul SG ? Not so much.
If I don't return to continue this project, you'll know that the purists got me.
Notes:
[1] A humbucking pickup is a device which contains a pair of wound bobbins wired so as to cancel frequencies which are considered sonically undersirable. That, of course, is entirely subjective, but given that a huge portion of the market belongs to that type of pickup, apparently it has gained acceptance.
[2] It must be said that although there are indeed companies whose product is substantially inferior, there are many with output which is absolutely superior in every way. I myself am a big fan of Yamaha steel string acoustics (I don't own stock in that company, nor do I have any affiliation with them or get paid anything for saying this). I don't think you can find an instrument of better quality and sound at that price point.
[3] Thankfully, Fender did not respond with a four-pickup version of the Strat.
[4] Interestingly, keyboard players typically deal with vastly more complex interfaces consisting of many dials, buttons and sliders, with a video display and a slew of multi-colored lights blinking at them, and yet they are expected to make all of their selections "on-the-fly" and seamlessly proceed from one section of a piece to another. The response of a guitarist to such a daunting ? would likely be something akin to a deer in the headlights. It may be true that it has become fashionable to have a "pedal board" filled with a dozen or more effect devices, but there have also been many product offerings intended to clean up that situation and fold many effects into a single box. Even so, the keyboard players are clearly at an advantage, given that they deal with anything from 62 to 88 keys, whereas guitarists struggle with six strings. It may explain why guitarists have a bad reputation for smashing their instruments, which is a very rare event among keyboard players, indeed.
[5] Mini switches as used on guitars are always toggles, usually with two positions. They have been used to include or exclude individual pickups from the signal path, splitting the pair of coils in the pair within a humbucker pickup, and controlling other options. The issue is that by the time you have added enough of these to manage all of the options, that surface resembles a pincushion more than a guitar top, and may result in injury to the instrument, the player or both.
The project:
I have spent many years playing guitar. I own what is not a huge collection, but certainly what is decently representative of the various categories and varieties of that instrument. I own acoustics and electrics, solid bodies and hollow bodies, 6 and 12 strings, classical and jazz.
Most of them are well-known makes and models, even if vintage, but then again, so am I.
With the acquisition of a 3 pickup Les Paul SG Custom, I discovered that the stock configuration gave me very limited choices where pickup selection, volume and tone were concerned. I began to consider how I might improve the situation, and that is where the idea for this project was born.
This particular guitar has what are called "tarback" humbucking pickups[1]; they have wound bobbins immersed in a hardened black epoxy resin. There is no way to modify them; any attempts at that will likely destroy them, and considering their particular "vintage" sound, that would be a loss.
Many, if not all, pickups today come with at least 4 lead wires, providing the ability to split or tap the coils in order to provide a wider variety of sounds available from them.
That won't be a part of this project, because as I said, the extra wires are not available on the pickups in question here.
How to control those sounds is an entirely different, and complex, matter. The classic layout for a two humbucker guitar is a pickup selector toggle switch offering three positions (one pickup, the other or both), and a set of four potentiometers controlling the volume and tone of each pickup. The sum output is made available at a jack into which a cable is plugged.
Add a third pickup into the mix, and things become significantly more complicated.
The two largest capacity manufacturers at one point were Fender and Gibson, although I'm not sure if that remains the case, particularly with so many foreign manufacturers, Oriental in particular, now in the game[2].
Their best known and most sold models are, respectively, the Fender Stratocaster and the Gibson Les Paul. Those instruments have undergone a myriad of transformations in configuration, but in the end, each one remains essentially what it was; the Stratocaster a three-single coil pickup guitar, and the Les Paul a two-humbucker pickup guitar.
The Fender Stratocaster has a standard configuration of a 5 position (originally 3, but players achieved the other two by carefully balancing the switch between positions) knife selector switch, a volume and two tone controls.
At one point, it was decided to release a three-pickup version of the Les Paul, widely prized for that additional hardware, and at least the perception of a wider range of available sounds[3]. The same was done with the Gibson SG, of which mine is one.
The 3-pickup Les Paul has a standard configuration providing a choice of the neck pickup (the one farthest from the bridge), the bridge pickup (self-explanatory), or the middle and bridge pickups combined. The four potentiometers provide volume and tone control of the neck and bridge pickups, respectively.
The 3 position pickup selector toggle switch is implemented as a set of leaf springs, where contacts are opened and closed mechanically as the toggle is moved.
That has distinct limitations and issues. One of them is that sooner or later the leaf springs will tire, requiring the switch to be replaced. Another is that adding more selection options would require progressively large numbers of leaves crowded into what is already a restricted space, and with finer distance tolerances, which equates to a problem waiting to happen.
Clearly, that is not a reasonable approach.
Another concern is that as more positions are added to the switch, a larger number of lead wires need to be attached and snaked through to where the pickups are situated (sometimes in a different cavity).
Adding more wires is also highly undesirable, as much for their impact on the circuits as for the real estate they consume.
At best, the market offers a six-position toggle switch. This was a feature of the "Jimmy Page" version of the Les Paul. I don't know the manufacturing source of that part, but apparently it is no longer available. There is a company named StewMac (with whom I also have no affiliation) which markets a "Free-Way" toggle switch that implements the same concept.
The problem is that even that switch doesn't begin to address the possible combinations of a 3-pickup configuration.
It is possible to wire pickups in series or parallel. It is possible to wire them in-or-out of phase with each other. It is possible to wire them in series with one and parallel with another.
Personal taste being what it is, and the history of guitar modifications being as prolific an industry as is that of manufacturing the original instruments, a musician constrained to a handful of options which they had little, if any, say in the matter of choosing, will be left, at best, unsatisfied.
This project is an attempt to address that crying need.
If it is successful, there will be many guitarists crying tears of joy; if not, well, let's say a disgruntled musician is a poor choice of companion.
As for myself, hope springs (at least until the springs tire) eternal.
To begin:
Goal:
The goal is to provide the maximum number of possible combinations of pickup sounds as possible, given the following considerations:
-We don't want to go drilling holes in the instrument if at all avoidable; many people who will find this device attractive own vintage instruments they do not wish to abuse or destroy. Optimally, there will be no apparent change in the appearance of the guitar, in spite of the substantially greater flexibility it gains.
-We don't want to increase the physical count of controls; that would violate the above consideration, and impact another matter which is very significant to a player, especially one who is working professionally. One of the advantages of the limited configurations is that it doesn't require an extended thought process to choose a given configuration and go about their business, namely actually playing music. These are, after all, people who are being paid to entertain an audience, not experiment in a lab. One can hardly stop in the middle of a piece, beg the audience's forbearance while settling on a group of settings, and then proceeding[4].
The typical components which make up the control devices on a Les Paul style guitar are a 3 position toggle switch and four continuous revolution potentiometers, which is to say that they do not have detents with fixed amount of resistance, but rather that the wiper runs along a track applying progressively greater amounts of resistance to electric flow.
The potentiometers themselves, by the way, are also available in a variety of values; typically 250/500k, and with linear or audio taper. We are not going to explore those options in this project, but they are certainly worthy of consideration for a subsequent iteration.
Another feature of the potentiometers we mean to use is that they are available in concentric versions, which is to say that each one is able to contain two independent controls. This will be highly valuable in the sense that we can add controls without drilling, as per consideration #1.
Yet another option is for the potentiometer to have a switch at the end of its revolution, which typically disengages the control from the circuit, but is not really limited to any particular function; it is as useful in the same degree as our imagination is wild.
Still another feature is that of a mechanical "push-pull", where the consequence of having the control "in" or "out" results in changes to the circuit; again, this has no real limitation in terms of how it can be used.
There is a control which has been in sufficient use by significant players to make it worthy of mention, which is the mini toggle switch. Sometimes you have to look closely in order to realize that it is even there. A brief discussion of the uses it has been put to is in note 5 below. I don't want to include it at this time, since it violates both considerations of complexity and cosmetics.
Cosmetically, there are always options such as lighted switches, particularly those which change color depending on their state, which would be a page taken from the world of keyboard technology. In a dark room, it would be a profound boon to the player's clarity on where things are. That is not insignificant, as I mentioned above; the fewer controls a guitarist has to monkey with (no disrespect intended to monkeys), the better off they are.
There are long and bitter debates in the guitar world on the place where all of these options intersect; is it better to have independent controls for volume and tone on each pickup, or is that a complete waste of copper ? Should there be a way to independently control that squirrely third pickup using a potentiometer (raising or lowering the volume in order to include or exclude it in the mix), or should that be handled in the already burdened pickup selector ? What kind of impact does each modification of the stock circuit have on the tone (after all, good tone options is our objective here) ?
I am not going to wade into that quicksand; rather, I am going to impose my view that pickup selection is best done all in one place, and volume and timbre controlled elsewhere. If I have to fiddle with multiple controls in order to accomplish the single goal of choosing my pickup set and configuration, I am in trouble, because a bunch of bars will have gone by before I get all of that done (way too many "b"s there) and am ready to play the next one.
Accordingly, my specific goal is to make the pickup selector offer up as many permutations as I can squeeze out of it.
That will not happen with a 3 position toggle.
Here is what I came up with, after sufficient chemical reinforcement:
A mechanical toggle switch physically makes and breaks the contacts which define the circuit through which signal travels. Getting beyond that count of 3 is not easy; 6 is as far as the manufacturing/engineering community is willing to push it (no pun intended). Mechanical is too limited for our purpose.
This is where I include another feature ordinarily part of a different control, the push-pull action. If I can do that, I double the number of options to 18. That may still not be enough, but it is certainly a vast improvement over 3, or even 6.
Now we come to how the physical implementation of such a device might look.
Well, almost. Before we do that, I want to introduce what I think is critical to the successful implementation of this concept.
This next paragraph is certain to stir up the hornet's nest, so let's all take a deep breath and put on our bee bonnets.
Mechanical controls are prone to failure. My prized Gibson L6-S, which is, as I understand, something of a rarity in terms of how well it has stood up to years of use, has finally come to the state where its potentiometers have become so worn down that setting them produces, at best, inconsistent results.
Electronic (there, I used the word) components are much less so.
At this very moment, hordes of purists are weaving a rope and debating which tree they are going to hang me from, but if I will be allowed a few moments before the chair is kicked out from under me, there is a consideration I want to present.
It is well-known that the farther a signal must travel in a wire, the more prone it is to issues; accordingly, as best exemplified in the microprocessor industry, the less distance that signal needs to travel, the better.
While all sorts of debates rage on about quality of sound as signal progresses through circuits, this is certain: selection of components, such as pickups, for inclusion in a circuit is a discrete and digital act. A pickup is either in or out, in phase or out of phase, series or parallel. There is no known instrument out there (with the possible exception of something Frank Zappa built) where a pickup is engaged in a quasi mode.
That binary state is absolutely best suited to a digital transmission.
So what if I translated the pickup selector state into a digital value transmitted economically through a small set of wires (or even better, optically) to a circuit at the pickup end of the system, where the physical engagement of pickups is accomplished by a set of (relays ?) ?
Now I have eliminated the complexity of the leaf spring device and its mechanical challenges, and efficiently transmitted the neccessary information to the place where it is needed, at the same time dramatically reducing the actual signal path length.
For those of you who insist that having that signal path and mechanical switch lie at the heart of what makes those guitars sound as they do, I have no answer. I'm sure, however, that someone is prepared to make the measurements required in order to feed a pickup modeler circuit (I can feel that next multi-million dollar project coming on) in order to restore whatever magic was lost.
So now we need a 9 position joystick control, with the 9th position being centered, and we need it to have a push-pull action. Then we need a way to detect and encode the state of that switch in order to transmit that information to a receiving circuit at the other end.
The receiving circuit will need to have access to all of the leads on each pickup, which in this case is 6 (2 per pickup), and the ability to route the signal to and through them based on the transmitted state of the toggle.
That is one part of the project.
The second part is the disposition of the 4 potentiometer controls, and the level of complexity I want to impose on them, with specific objectives.
Here we plunge into yet another topic fraught with controversy; which controls to use for what, and how many of them should there be.
The answers to those questions have substantial bearings on the level of complexity where the signal routing circuit is concerned. Not only do I need to apply the player's choice of pickup configuration to the signal path, I also need to get said signal through the series of volume and tone controls which shape the output before it exits the guitar.
As I said above, there are concentric and push-pull options, as well as switch options. I have never seen a concentric push-pull control, let alone one with a switch, but this much is certain: each element adds to the length dimension in a place where there is precious little real estate to be had, so miniaturization is our friend here.
The best possible configuration here would be an open-ended programmable one, where the complete mesh of options could be accomodated. That would require no physical routing, particularly if access to the routing module were made wireless (I shudder at the thought of a USB port gaping from the side edge of a beautifully crafted instrument; that would be absolutely sacreligious).
It would also lead to a dramatically greater level of complexity in the implementation.
At the same time, it would yield a highly personalized configuration, in exactly the way a keyboard player has the benefit of. Even keyboardists who own the same make and model of instrument hesitate to use each others' gear, because the customizations are so involved that the same physical keyboards can sound like two entirely different devices.
In a way, that is part of the goal here; to provide the guitarist with the ability to construct his unique voice.
There is no substitute for practice and technique. All of the dials and buttons in the world cannot produce a superlative musical experience. That requires a human touch.
But there are few things as inspiring as the 64 crayon box (which my sister got, but I never did) on which to build.
In the end, that is what this about; crayon envy.
When I bought that Gibson L6-S, my first electric guitar, it was featured in an ad graced by Carlos Santana, who called it his rainbow. I found that a powerful motivator in choosing a first instrument, and I was not disappointed. In that case, however, I am loath to monkey with it, both as a consequence of it having so many options as it is (6 position "chicken head" pickup selector, and both tone and midrange controls), and because it is pretty much perfect as it is.
The Gibson Les Paul SG ? Not so much.
If I don't return to continue this project, you'll know that the purists got me.
Notes:
[1] A humbucking pickup is a device which contains a pair of wound bobbins wired so as to cancel frequencies which are considered sonically undersirable. That, of course, is entirely subjective, but given that a huge portion of the market belongs to that type of pickup, apparently it has gained acceptance.
[2] It must be said that although there are indeed companies whose product is substantially inferior, there are many with output which is absolutely superior in every way. I myself am a big fan of Yamaha steel string acoustics (I don't own stock in that company, nor do I have any affiliation with them or get paid anything for saying this). I don't think you can find an instrument of better quality and sound at that price point.
[3] Thankfully, Fender did not respond with a four-pickup version of the Strat.
[4] Interestingly, keyboard players typically deal with vastly more complex interfaces consisting of many dials, buttons and sliders, with a video display and a slew of multi-colored lights blinking at them, and yet they are expected to make all of their selections "on-the-fly" and seamlessly proceed from one section of a piece to another. The response of a guitarist to such a daunting ? would likely be something akin to a deer in the headlights. It may be true that it has become fashionable to have a "pedal board" filled with a dozen or more effect devices, but there have also been many product offerings intended to clean up that situation and fold many effects into a single box. Even so, the keyboard players are clearly at an advantage, given that they deal with anything from 62 to 88 keys, whereas guitarists struggle with six strings. It may explain why guitarists have a bad reputation for smashing their instruments, which is a very rare event among keyboard players, indeed.
[5] Mini switches as used on guitars are always toggles, usually with two positions. They have been used to include or exclude individual pickups from the signal path, splitting the pair of coils in the pair within a humbucker pickup, and controlling other options. The issue is that by the time you have added enough of these to manage all of the options, that surface resembles a pincushion more than a guitar top, and may result in injury to the instrument, the player or both.
