The Satincaster

In my search to add wackier and wackier electronics to my Telecasters, I have gone from simple things, like trying to wire different pickups together as a giant humbucker, to more complicated things like trying to create an infinitely variable single coil-to-humbucker knob, and with the latest project, I built a guitar with a knob to continuously select between the bridge and neck pickups.

This guitar project started with a neck, a neck I have owned for a long time. It’s a beautiful neck and I couldn’t resist it when I saw it, but I could never figure out how to use it. So it just sat for a long, long time. 😦

One day I happened across a video from Warmoth in which they discussed their new satin finish for guitar bodies and I somehow came to believe that a Sherwood Green body with a satin finish might work with this neck. So that’s where I began.

I also decided, because I like clean looking Telecasters, to dispense with a pickguard and also with the switch which selects between pickups. Instead, I decided to repurpose the tone control and to use it as an infinitely variable pickup selector.

Here is the wiring diagram I created for this effort. Pretty simple. At either extreme, one pickup or the other is grounded and in between, both are active to some degree.