Epiphone S-series customization (video)

[Schizo Sapiens]

This is guitar I bought some time ago - early 90-s Epiphone S-series, I don't know exact model. It used to have HSS configuration but then someone painted it black, removed two single coils, pickup selector and tone knob, and added coil tap switch. It had some bad tremolo that I blocked and never used.

I wanted to sell it, but suddenly changed my mind as I felt strong emotional connection to this guitar, and took it to luthier to repair it and make my dream superstrat.

Changes included:
- New frets. Old ones was heavily worn out, enough said
- New fixed bridge. I like to play in different tunings so the bridge must be fixed. Inilially I was thinking about Tune-o-matic or hardtail, but then my friend suggested telecaster bridge and I loved the idea: unique look and big contact areaю And it's big and metal!
- Drilling "string-through" system for that bridge;
- Routing cavity for neck humbucker;
- New humbuckers (I bought Schaller Golden 50 set from a friend);
- Adding pickup selector and three miniswitches: two of them toggle coil tap on each pickup and third one toggles out-of phase pickup connection. I wanted separate coil tap switches, because some of my songs call for bridge single coil for rhytm and neck humbucker for solo, so two separate swithces would save me from extra mid-song switching.

This scheme gave me 13 different sounds. Combination of bridge pickup coil tap and bridge pickup phase reversal had nice side effect: I can choose which coil of bridge pickup to use. Watch the video below if you're confused

This is how it looks now:

I made video where you can hear all 13 sounds and see the pickup configurations:

 

[Justin Bailey]

send me the old bridge!

 

[Berserker]

How can you possibly use that many sounds? I get confused with a 3 way selector switch and standard wiring! Nice job though...

 

[Pikka Bird]

send me the old bridge!

No, me!!

Wonderful resurrection, man. And I agree that the tele bridge is a very unusual touch, in a good way.

 

[Schizo Sapiens]

send me the old bridge!

I'm in Russia and I left it to luthier, sorry

How can you possibly use that many sounds?

I don't use them all, of course. 13 sounds weren't the main goal, i just wanted separate coil split switches and out-of phase, just to try it.

In my band I use just the basic sounds:
- Bridge pickup, 95% of the time, sometimes with coil split, depending on a song;
- Neck pickup, always on full, for some solos;
- and recently I started to incorporate «both pickups out-of-phase» setting, when I want that nasty, really cutting sound.

But when playing/recording at home it's nice to have those additional sounds. I played around with them last weeks and made some preferences:
- Neck pickup with coil split gives me sweet, singing strat-like clean sound. I didn't use it in recodrding yet, but I love just playing it.
- «neck with coil split + bridge on full, out of phase» setting is my least favourite, it sounds dull and lifeless. However «neck on full + bridge with coil split, out of phase» sound is most cutting of all out-of-phase sounds.

Now thankfully I ended fooling with settings, and returned to writing music

My two other guitars have basic «two humbuckers, three way toggle» configuration, and I like them that way.

By the way, I was thinking of adding middle songle coil to this guitar. It would give me 20 sounds, according to my calculations . But eventually I declined this idea, seems like overkill.

Wonderful resurrection, man. And I agree that the tele bridge is a very unusual touch, in a good way.

Thanks. And I believe that this bridge affected the sound, it gave this guitar's voice some character.