CRANKY'S
Demonstrator Guitars

I have several guitars here that I use to demonstrate wiring options and my knowledge of guitar wiring.

1) Fender Strat 1985 Japan, White with Maple fretboard. Guitar has 3 true single coil pickups, 5 way switch, Master Volume, Master Tone, Master Bass. The kicker: no hum, none. Thats getting more out of what you already own! Oh yes, no battery. Confused? Now consider that the tones cover a much larger range tonally and in terms or volume. Once you play it, you'll ask why they are not all made this way!

2) My home made Strat copy, Blue-Green, Ebony fretboard . This guitar has 2 full sized Humbuckers, Master Volume, 6-Position Switch, and Master Tone. The Guitar was intended to show how the rules can be broken. All six voices are hum-cancelling. Three are regular humbucker type wiring (series) and three are Fendery (parallel) minus the hum of course. The pickups are S.Duncan. The neck pickup is a "Custom Shop" due to the fact that I special ordered a Jazz model Bridge position pickup with Neck string spacing. So the guitar has 2 bridge pickups. When you hear it, you'll be amazed. The dialogue that goes along with it deals sith "note separation", after all "it shouldn't work".

3) Fender Strat 2000ish Indonesia, Red with Rosewood fretboard, stock machine heads and tremolo (reworked)! This was a horrible guitar. Saw blade fret ends, wavy neck, ug! It got a fretmill. The fretboard was deliberatly edged. The wiring modification was adding 3 Fender Samarium Noiseless Pickups, with unique pickup and tone controls:
Position 1) Bridge pickup alone, Master Volume, Master Tone
Position 2) Bridge and Neck pickup (standard parallel use), Master Volume, Master Tone
Position 3) Neck pickup alone, Master Volume, Master Tone
Position 4) Bridge and Neck pickup (series wired for added power and fullness), Master Volume, Master Tone, Master Bass
Position 5) Bridge, Middle and Neck pickup (series wired), Master Volume, Master Tone, Master Bass
Off the charts wonderful guitar and all-Fender! The Bass control cuts well and is only used in the settings where too much bass might be a Problem.

Remember good distortion means good control over the bass!

4) Schecter H6? Deep Purple, Rosewood fretboard, stop tailpiece. In-progress. This guitar is getting 2 Seymour Duncan P-Rails! The kicker? Duncan makes a Humbucker Bezel (ring) that pretty much conceals 2 little slide switches. What do they do? They allow you to get to the single coil sounds (each of them) which in this pickup are very different: a P-90 (Gibsons' fabulous large single coil pickup) and a "rail" voiced like a strat sindle coil. Mmm. But theres also the hum cancelling parallel mode, and the standard series hum cancelling wiring is Duncan Tweaked to sound like an old PAF (Gibsons' early and much acclaimed Patent Applied For humbucker, touted as possibly the best sounding humbucker ever made). So 2 of those pickups with twe switching bezels, a standard Gibson style 3-way pickup selector Switch, Master Volume, Master Tone.

5) In-progress. Honey-Amber Ash Strat Body, Full 1" thick Maple baseball bat neck. Black Bigsby tremolo. Built for tone. My 3 favorite "Stock" pickups:
Bridge - Gibsons' Toni Iommi. Turned down this pickup defines what a stock humber should sound like! Turned up it gets more brights and mids, perfect to overdrive that tube amp!
Middle - TV Jones (neck) Magnetron. Only TVJ can be so cool! I'm a humbucking pickup that was only available as a special order pickup in Gretsch guitars from 1957-1959. Thanks TV Jones (and Brian Setzer too)! This pickup always has more to give! Full bodied, bright, clear, percussive, and sustaining.
Neck - Fender Vintage Noiseless. Bang! Clang! Sparkling authentic Start Tone! It's perfection without hum. Fender gets it right again!

Wiring: Master volume. 3 knife switches (4,4, and 5 positions). Dont ask unless you promise to remember. I guess the point is that as long as they make sense, and are useful to getting good tone, it really doesent matter what they do. Its not a sectret or anything. I doubt anyone could copy it anyway...even if they did know. Even more to the point - factory guitar wiring sucks and really aught to be more useful.