Both shredders first established themselves as top-level hired guns—Nita Strauss (left) with Alice Cooper and Jennifer Batten with Michael Jackson—before setting off on their long careers.
It’s a fact: Women and minority artists have often been marginalized, unacknowledged, and even ripped off—both musically and financially. And while the industry has slowly gotten better about amplifying their significant contributions, white male artists have historically been heralded as the heroes and innovators. Even with all of the progress made in recent years, one niche where bias still seems the norm is “hired gun.” The commonly used term “sideman” demonstrates the pervasiveness of male-dominated norms entrenched in our collective psyche. But there are exceptional sidewomen who have broken the glass ceiling with their primetime gigs. And among the most notable are Jennifer Batten and Nita Strauss.
Batten established herself as the lead guitarist for Michael Jackson’s first solo world tour, in support of the album Bad. From 1987 to 1989, she was an integral part of Jackson’s live shows, with her distinctive guitar style and charismatic stage presence. And her 6-string prowess during performances of hits like “Beat It” and “Dirty Diana” (the former featuring Eddie Van Halen’s iconic solo on the record) displayed chops that easily rivaled her male contemporaries. Her work with Jeff Beck on his Who Else! album and subsequent tours further solidified her reputation as one of rock’s most exceptional guitarists. Though decades removed from the bright lights and big stages of those two major gigs, Batten’s career continues to thrive, and she remains an influential figure through the guitar clinics and workshops she conducts worldwide, as well as the solo albums she’s released and continues to tour behind.
Strauss famously cut her teeth with the Iron Maidens, an all-female Iron Maiden tribute band, where she performed under the stage name “Mega Murray.” In 2014, she became the touring guitarist for legendary shock-rocker Alice Cooper, replacing Orianthi, and her modern approach to shred remains the perfect foil to the more traditional classic-rock styles of her Cooper bandmates, Ryan Roxie and Tommy Henriksen. In 2018, she released her debut solo album, Controlled Chaos, which showcased her diverse range of playing styles and songwriting chops, and solidified her reputation as a formidable guitarist in the modern metal scene. In 2022, she was tapped as Demi Lovato’s touring guitarist in support of Lovato’s Holy Fvck, and just this summer Strauss released her second solo album, The Call of the Void, featuring David Draiman (Disturbed), Lzzy Hale (Halestorm), and Alissa White-Gluz (Arch Enemy), among others, as guest vocalists. During NFL football season, she has a standing gig at Los Angeles Rams home games—and a Super Bowl ring to prove it—and has also received several She Rocks awards, including “Best Guitarist” in 2018.
NITA STRAUSS - Victorious ft. Dorothy (Official Music Video)
Premier Guitar hosted a conversation with Batten and Strauss, and got some insight into their similar histories, their work to overcome the status quo, and why it might be best for aspiring guitarslingers to just “chill the fuck out.”
You share strikingly similar career trajectories. Can you give PG readers the CliffsNotes versions of your respective backgrounds?
Jennifer Batten: I started playing when I was 8 years old and, fast forward, I saw an ad in Guitar Player magazine for GIT [now the Musicians Institute]. They had a weekend symposium, and I went up and participated—three really intense days—and understood about 1 percent of what the hell they were saying. I didn’t even know a major 7th chord. In fact, one of the things they asked me to play was Gmaj7. And you know me, I know a G with a 7, first-position cowboy chord [laughs]. So, I got my ass whooped with that. By the time I got the Michael Jackson gig in ’87, I was in five or six different bands, just trying to make it in Hollywood. I got out there and played with as many bands as I could, and said “yes” to every situation until I got an audition with Michael Jackson, and then it was like zoom. I almost got seasick making that big of a jump so fast. Once you play with the biggest pop star in the world, it’s kind of like….
Where do you go from there?
Batten: Well, to Jeff Beck.
Nita Strauss: The biggest guitar star in the world. I’ve said ad nauseam that Jennifer is the one that blazed the trail for the rest of us to follow—you went through with the sword, cutting down the barricades. I took the tour at GIT three times. I could actually never afford to get in, but I grew up in L.A. playing clubs, playing in multiple different bands. I went straight from a metalcore tour in Europe, straight into Jermaine Jackson’s band, straight into an Iron Maiden tribute band, all while doing my original thing, doing covers, doing solo shows, playing acoustic guitar with singers that needed accompanists—really anybody that would have me until I got picked up by Alice Cooper in 2014. And that was my introduction to the big leagues.
Batten: When I went to GIT, class of ’79, I was the only female. And that really shocked me because I didn’t expect that. I didn’t realize it was such an odd career choice for a woman. Fifty-nine guys and me. Crazy.
Jennifer Batten's Gear
Batten has been involved in music education in the form of teaching, workshops, and instructional materials. One piece of wisdom she shares: “If you’re going to be somebody that gets hired for different shows, it’s so important to be humble and be aware of what they need, because they don’t necessarily hire you to make you shine.”
Photo by Ana Massard
Guitars
- Suhr Modern Antique
- Washburn Parallaxe PXM10
Amps & Effects
- BluGuitar AMP1
- BluGuitar NANOCAB & FATCAB
- Line 6 HX Stomp XL Multi-effects Floor Processor
- MeloAudio MIDI Commander
Amps & Strings, Picks, & Accessories
- D’Addario NYXL (.008–.042)
- Gravity 1.5 mm
- Lock-It Guitar Straps
- D’Addario XPND Pedalboard
- ASI Audio 3DME in-ear monitors
- Audix i5 Microphone with CabGrabber Mic Clamp
Were there female guitarists you could look to for inspiration or was it just the typical male guitar heroes of that era?
Batten: Yeah, it was all guys. I don’t recall thinking, “Where are the women?” My ears just went to the music that I liked. Jeff Beck was on the radio, with Blow by Blow, and that was good enough for me. I didn’t need another gender to look at.
Strauss: As a young kid getting into shred guitar, it really was a boy’s club, and I was the same way. I didn’t seek out a female guitar hero to be inspired by. I gravitated towards the players that I liked. I was into Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Paul Gilbert, Marty Friedman, and Jason Becker. And then, when I first discovered Jennifer, it was like a kid finding a Barbie that looked like her for the first time—there was somebody like me doing it, and here she is on the biggest stage in the world with the biggest star in the world, and it’s not a chick thing. She’s playing circles around all these guys. She’s not there because she’s beautiful. She’s not there because she’s a great performer. She is all those things, but she’s there because of the technique and the performance and just delivering night after night after night. And that was my biggest thing: If she can do it, I can do it too.
Ready to shred! Strauss poses with her Ibanez Signature JIVAX2, and Batten with her steampunk-styled Washburn Parallaxe PXM10.
Photo by Ana Massard
Batten: When I joined Michael Jackson in 1987, I thought, “Now’s the revolution.” Wendy [Melvoin] & Lisa [Coleman] were already with Prince. And I thought, “Okay, a big change is happening.” And then crickets for 10 or 15 years—it was nothing. It’s almost like it took the Internet to get up to speed. Now I tell people, “Not a month goes by that I don’t see some 7-year-old girl in Indonesia who could kick my ass [laughs].”
Strauss: And what’s crazy, when I see these kids coming up hot on our heels, someone always tags me and says, “You better watch out. They’re coming for you.” And I’m like, “No, I applaud them. I lift them up. This is what we’re here for. Women elevating women.” There’s no competition. I don’t have a sense of competition with anybody else out there. I want to see us all succeed. A rising tide lifts all boats, and women succeeding in this industry is a win for everybody. This is an amazing time to do what we do.
Nita Strauss' Gear
This past summer, Strauss released her second solo album, The Call of the Void, featuring vocalists David Draiman (Disturbed), Lzzy Hale (Halestorm), and Alissa White-Gluz (Arch Enemy), among others.
Photo by Ana Massard
Guitars
- Ibanez Signature JIVAX2
- Ibanez Signature JIVA10
- Custom Ibanez Signature JIVAJR
Amps & Effects
- Boss GT-1000 Effects Processor
- Kemper Profiler
Strings & Picks
- D’Addario NYXLs (.010–.046)
- Grover Allman .60 mm
Can you share how playing smaller venues on your own helps you continue to evolve as yourself, versus the big arena gigs?
Batten: The only place you really get satisfaction is when you’re improving as a player. Nobody can take that away from you. Whether you’re doing great, or not so great, as far as the worldview—are you famous this week? Every once in a while, I get people going, “I didn’t know you were still playing.” Well….
Strauss: Well, here I am.
Batten: Michael Jackson’s been gone for quite a while, and I haven’t played with Jeff Beck in 20 years. I’m doing my thing on my level and still putting in as many frequent flier miles as I ever did.
Strauss: The mark of a great hired gun, no matter who you’re playing with, is that you maintain your own style, but you’re always able to execute that person’s vision. Whether I’m going out with Alice, or I’m going out with Demi, you can tell that it’s me on stage, but I’m not going to play the same way that I would with my solo band.
Batten: If you’re going to be somebody that gets hired for different shows, it’s so important to be humble and be aware of what they need, because they don’t necessarily hire you to make you shine. When I got the Jeff Beck gig, he was always going, “I should really give you 10 minutes on your own.” And I said, “Hell no [laughs].”
Jennifer Batten - Whatever
Strauss: You have to strike out on your own, especially when the majority of what people know you as “so and so’s guitar player.” You really have to take that stand and say, “I’m not only someone’s guitar player, I’m also my own identity. I have my own creativity. I have my own vision.” The only time that you have to really flex and be creative is when you’re doing your own thing. You’re not executing anybody’s vision but your own, so I think it’s super valuable.
Do either of you take a different approach to the craft when playing with other guitar players?
Batten: Jeff [Beck] is one of those guys—jump and a net will appear. The first time I played with him, I’ll never forget walking into the room expecting a keyboard player, because ever since the ’70s, he had keyboards. And I thought, “Man, this is not going to cut it.” All these songs that I grew up listening to, like “Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers,” have these lush keyboard backgrounds. So, I took it upon myself to dive deep into guitar synthesizer because I thought those pads were necessary. Like we said before, you’ve got to realize what’s needed. I was there to support.
Strauss: I love to play with Ryan [Roxie] and Tommy [Henriksen]. I think it just fills out the sound so much, and we’ve been playing together for so long that we mesh. We even have this brain-meld where our vibrato syncs up in a way that we don’t plan. So, I think once you play with people for a while, you get sensitive to their tendencies. We don’t even really go over parts before the tour anymore. When you play with people for a long time, you just get a good sense of what they’re going to do.
Both guitarists have worked high-profile, hired-gun gigs while maintaining their own solo careers. “The only place you really get satisfaction is when you’re improving as a player,” says Batten.
Photo by Ana Massard
How important is music education to both of you?
Batten: It’s fun to show people stuff that you’ve learned. There’s an energy that just creates momentum. I’ve done a ton of teaching since my early days, and granted, most of the students don’t want to work, but when you get somebody that’s really into it, the momentum really grows.
Strauss: Just throw them in the deep end of the pool and say, “Figure it out kid, I did [laughs].”
Batten: I give them too much information. I send them PDFs and videos and all this crap that’s enough for six months of work. It’s no wonder they don’t come back every week [laughs].
Strauss: They’re like, “This guitar shit looked like fun, but it’s hard [laughs].” I taught myself how to play by watching DVDs, like Jennifer’s, and I had all the REH instructional videos, all the Shrapnel albums. I learned modes from Frank Gambale’s Modes: No More Mystery and Melodic Control by Marty Friedman. I don’t teach one-to-one, but I do clinics. I have an online course called Rock Guitar Fundamentals. I’ve done my Guitar World and Premier Guitar columns [and interviews], and I think that the way that I teach is really understandable because I’m stupid and I didn’t have anybody teach me [laughs]. I approach it from a very practical standpoint because I had to figure it out myself.
I know you each have creative outlets other than guitar. I’m curious about how that influences your music.
Batten: When I moved to Portland 20 years ago, I took stained glass classes, and I just went bonkers with it. But I moved on from doing glass art to steampunk art. One day I woke up and said, “Gears, I must work with gears,” and I started making these fantasy airships from junk. It’s a really fun place to be. When you get back to music, it’s a lot fresher and energizing. If I can focus on visual arts, I find that a real charge because it’s all the same muscle, it’s all creativity. And I find one muscle helps the other, as the workout queen will tell you [laughs].
Strauss: The workout stuff and the Body Shred challenge [an eight-week fitness challenge created by Strauss] isn’t as much of a creative outlet as a mental health outlet—the better you take care of the machine, the better the machine runs. And when I first started getting healthier and more involved in fitness, I lost some weight, I got sober, and people around me started asking, “What did you do?” I found myself writing Instagram captions and comments. When we created the Body Shred challenge, it was a way to get our community, the guitar and the rock and heavy metal community, more incentivized to get healthier and fit.
Strauss and Batten have outside passions that help fuel their creativity. Strauss does yoga and has her eight-week Body Shred challenge. Batten does steampunk-inspired art.
Photo by Ana Massard
Do either one of you have a secret weapon that isn’t overtly obvious to the average listener or concertgoer that is essential for you when performing?
Batten: I’d say a tremolo. I mean, it should be called an “expression bar” more than a “whammy bar,” but that’s a must-have.
Strauss: Same answer. I’ve gotten to the point where I do a lot of my vibrato with the bar, as a different color tone. When you get up into a really high bend and you get the vibrato on the bar, it gives you a little extra oomph.
Batten: The bar lets you go sharp and flat as opposed to a finger vibrato that’s only sharp. So, it’s not as rounded-sounding. I love it.
Has traveling, whether by air or bus, affected your gear choices?
Batten: My gear is super simple at this point. I’ve been using a Line 6 HX Stomp XL. It’s like I have 30 pedalboards that I can kick into at a moment’s notice. Now, everything I need for sound is in my carry-on. It’s a little heavy to carry, but at least I know, worst-case scenario, I have to borrow or rent a guitar and grab somebody’s jacket, so I don’t look like a hippie [laughs].
Strauss: My rig is so simple. I was a very early adopter of the multi-effect units, so my first pedal ever was a Zoom 505. Now, my touring rig is a Boss GT-1000 direct into the house. I have my tone super dialed into it, and I’m in the mindset of if it’s not broken, I don’t try to fix it. I’m not on a quest for tone unless my tone’s not good. And I love my tone with that pedalboard. They make a palm size one, the GT-1000 Core, so I can throw that in any gig bag and travel all over the world.
Jennifer, do you have a favorite piece of advice that you would give a young guitar player that wants to follow in your footsteps? Asking for a friend [laughs].
Shredding with a smile—Nita Strauss on stage earlier this year.
Photo by Ana Massard
Batten: I remember the angst and the pressure I put on myself to “make it.” And if the record doesn’t do it, my life’s over—that kind of bullshit. As long as you can plant a seed that the only thing that matters is getting better as a musician, things will happen as you put that energy out into the universe. I don’t think you need to stress, as long as you’re spending time with the instrument every day and playing with different people and doing a lot of listening. There’s so much that you can’t control. At the end of the day, if you’re getting better, that’s all that matters. I think the best compliment I’ve ever been given is if somebody comes up to me after a show and says it was inspiring. I go, “Man, that’s the shit.” Because when I go to a show, that’s what I want to get out of it. So that’s my advice. Chill the fuck out.
Strauss: Amen.
After eight years, New Orleans artist Benjamin Booker returns with a new album and a redefined relationship to the guitar.
That evening, Booker played a release celebration show at Euclid Records in New Orleans, which has become the musician’s adopted hometown. He spent a few years in Los Angeles, and then in Australia, where his partner gave birth to their child, but when he moved back to the U.S. in December 2023, it was the only place he could imagine coming back to. “I just like that the city has kind of a magic quality to it,” he says. “It just feels kind of like you’re walking around a movie set all the time.”
Witness was a ruminative, lonesome record, an interpretation of the writer James Baldwin’s concept of bearing witness to atrocity and injustice in the United States. Mavis Staples sang on the title track, which addressed the centuries-old crisis of police killings and brutality carried out against black Americans. It was a significant change from the twitchy, bluesy garage-rock of Booker’s self-titled 2014 debut, the sort of tunes that put him on the map as a scrappy guitar-slinging hero. But Booker never planned on heroism; he had no interest in becoming some neatly packaged industry archetype. After Witness, and years of touring, including supporting the likes of Jack White and Neil Young, Booker withdrew.
He was searching for a sound. “I was just trying to find the things that I liked,” he explains. L.A. was a good place for his hunt. He went cratedigging at Stellaremnant for electronic records, and at Artform Studio in Highland Park for obscure jazz releases. It took a long time to put together the music he was chasing. “For a while, I left guitar, and was just trying to figure out what I was going to do,” says Booker. “I just wasn’t interested in it anymore. I hadn’t heard really that much guitar stuff that had really spoke to me.”
“For a while, I left guitar, and was just trying to figure out what I was going to do. I just wasn’t interested in it anymore.”
LOWER is Booker’s most sensitive and challenging record yet.
Among the few exceptions were Tortoise’s Jeff Parker and Dave Harrington from Darkside, players who moved Booker to focus more on creating ambient and abstract textures instead of riffs. Other sources of inspiration came from Nicolas Jaar, Loveliescrushing, Kevin Shields, Sophie, and JPEGMAFIA. When it came to make LOWER (which released on Booker’s own Fire Next Time Records, another nod to Baldwin), he took the influences that he picked up and put them onto guitar—more atmosphere, less “noodly stuff”: “This album, I was working a lot more with images, trying to get images that could get to the emotion that I was trying to get to.”
The result is a scraping, aching, exploratory album that demonstrates that Booker’s creative analysis of the world is sharper and more potent than ever. Opener “Black Opps” is a throbbing, metallic, garage-electronic thrill, running back decades of state surveillance, murder, and sabotage against Black community organizing. “LWA in the Trailer Park” is brighter by a slim margin, but just as simultaneously discordant and groovy. The looped fingerpicking of “Pompeii Statues” sets a grounding for Booker to narrate scenes of the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles. Even the acoustic strums of “Heavy on the Mind” are warped and stretched into something deeply affecting; ditto the sunny, garbage-smeared ’60s pop of “Show and Tell.” But LOWER is also breathtakingly beautiful and moving. “Slow Dance in a Gay Bar” and “Hope for the Night Time” intermingle moments of joy and lightness amid desperation and loneliness.
Booker worked with L.A.-based hip-hop and electronic producer Kenny Segal, trading stems endlessly over email to build the record. While he was surrounded by vintage guitars and amps to create Witness, Booker didn’t use a single amplifier in the process of making LOWER: He recorded all his guitars direct through an interface to his DAW. “It’s just me plugging my old Epiphone Olympic into the computer and then using software plugins to manipulate the sounds,” says Booker. For him, working digitally and “in the box” is the new frontier of guitar music, no different than how Hendrix and Clapton used never-heard-before fuzz pedals to blow people’s minds. “When I look at guitar players who are my favorites, a lot of [their playing] is related to the technology at the time,” he adds.
“When I look at guitar players who are my favorites, a lot of [their playing] is related to the technology at the time.”
Benjamin Booker's Gear
Booker didn’t use any amps on LOWER. He recorded his old Epiphone Olympic direct into his DAW.
Photo by Trenity Thomas
Guitars
- 1960s Epiphone Olympic
Effects
- Soundtoys Little AlterBoy
- Soundtoys Decapitator
- Soundtoys Devil-Loc Deluxe
- Soundtoys Little Plate
“I guess I have a problem with anything being too sugary. I wanted a little bit of ugliness.”
Inspired by a black metal documentary in which an artist asks for the cheapest mic possible, Booker used only basic plugins by Soundtoys, like the Decapitator, Little AlterBoy, and Little Plate, but the Devil-Loc Deluxe was the key for he and Segal to unlock the distorted, “three-dimensional world” they were seeking. “Because I was listening to more electronic music where there’s more of a focus on mixing than I would say in rock music, I think that I felt more inspired to go in and be surgical about it,” says Booker.
Part of that precision meant capturing the chaos of our world in all its terror and splendor. When he was younger, Booker spent a lot of time going to the Library of Congress and listening to archival interviews. On LOWER, he carries out his own archival sound research. “I like the idea of being able to put things like that in the music, for people to just hear it,” says Booker. “Even if they don’t know what it is, they’re catching a glimpse of life that happened at that time.”
On “Slow Dance in a Gay Bar,” there are birds chirping that he captured while living in Australia. Closer “Hope for the Night Time” features sounds from Los Angeles’ Grand Central Market. “Same Kind of Lonely” features audio of Booker’s baby laughing just after a clip from a school shooting. “I guess I have a problem with anything being too sugary,” says Booker. “I wanted a little bit of ugliness. We all have our regular lives that are just kind of interrupted constantly by insane acts of violence.”
That dichotomy is often difficult to compute, but Booker has made peace with it. “You hear people talking about, ‘I don’t want to have kids because the world is falling apart,’” he says. “But I mean, I feel like it’s always falling apart and building itself back up. Nothing lasts forever, even bad times.”
YouTube It
To go along with the record, Booker produced a string of music videos influenced by the work of director Paul Schrader and his fascination with “a troubled character on the edge, reaching for transcendence.” That vision is present in the video for lead single “LWA in the Trailer Park.”
Note the cavity cover on the back, which houses the components of Andy Summers’ mid-boost system.
In general, you can use any Telecaster and convert it to Andy Summers’ specs. If you want to stay as close as possible to the original guitar, the way to go is an alder body—just like Andy’s, which is 2-piece—with a 3-tone sunburst finish and white double binding.
The neck should be quarter-sawn, 1-piece maple with a C profile, 21 vintage-style frets, and a 7.25" fretboard radius. Of course, you can choose your own specs here, too. The original guitar has a brass nut rather than bone or plastic, and it should be no problem to find a brass nut blank for a Telecaster. You will need different tools to work on it compared to bone, plastic, or graphite, so keep this in mind. If you do not have the right tools or don’t feel comfortable making nuts, you should leave this task to your local guitar tech. Summers’ guitar has Schaller M6 tuning machines, which are still available from the German Schaller company, and two chrome butterfly string trees. You may not really need two of them—usually one for the B and the high E string will do the trick, especially with a well-made nut.
The original has a heavy brass bridge plate with six individual brass saddles, which will increase overall weight significantly. You can still buy this type of brass bridge from several companies, but there are much lighter bridges on the market.
The stereo output jack is installed in a rectangular chrome plate, like on a Les Paul, which I think is superior to the typical Telecaster jack cup. Interestingly, the plate on Summers’ guitar is only held by two of four screws, but do yourself a favor and use all four to make this spot as strong as possible. You should attach the plate really tight, especially when you use an output jack with a tight grip for the plug.
“Electronically, there is nothing too specialized that you will need for the controls.”
The rest of the hardware is chrome and standard: two regular strap buttons, a standard Telecaster control plate, ’60s Telecaster flat-top knobs, a black ’60s-style top-hat switch knob on the 3-way pickup selector switch, and two flat-lever mini-toggle switches. You should have no problem getting all of these parts from any guitar shop. The pickguard is a 3-ply mint green pickguard with a standard humbucker routing for the neck pickup.
Electronically, there is nothing too specialized that you will need for the controls: a standard 3-way pickup selector switch, two 250k audio pots for master volume and master tone, a gain control pot for the booster, and two additional mini DPDT on-on toggle switches for switching the booster on and off and for the phase control of the bridge pickup. The resistance of the gain control pot depends on the booster you want to use: e.g. for the Fender Clapton mid-boost kit, a 500k type will work great.
For the bridge pickup, there is a standard early-’60s-style Telecaster single-coil pickup, and every pickup company will have something like this in their catalog. Because the bridge pickup is installed to an out-of-phase mini-toggle switch, your pickup will need three conductors, with the metal base plate separated from the pickup’s common ground, and a third wire that connects the bridge plate individually to ground. If you have a regular two-conductor model, you need to break this connection, soldering a third wire directly to the base plate.
Interestingly, the bridge pickup on Summers’ Tele is installed directly into the wood of the pickup’s cavity. I see no reason why you shouldn’t install it the regular way on your guitar.
Here’s a close-up of the bridge on Summers’ historic Tele.
Photo courtesy of Ten-Guitars (https://ten-guitars.de)
In the neck position, there is a ’59 PAF humbucker with a conventional two-conductor wiring installed directly into the pickguard in the standard way, with the open pole pieces facing towards the neck. The choice of late-’50s PAF copies has never been better than it is today. You can buy excellent versions from a lot of companies, just make sure to choose the correct string spacing, which is usually called “F-spacing” or something similar, and is usually 2.070" (52.6 mm). (Gibson spacing, or G-spacing, is 1.930" or 49 mm.)
You’ll need humbucker routing on your body to make it fit. If you don’t have a body with humbucker routing and don’t want to get your Tele body re-routed, you can consider one of the numerous stacked humbuckers that will fit into a standard Telecaster neck pickup cavity. My experience is that there is a noticeable difference in tone compared to a full-sized humbucker, and it will be a compromise.
Next is the active booster. Finding a good booster module and wiring it up is much easier than fitting it into the tight space of a Telecaster body. There are a wide range of available booster options. There are complete DIY sets available that include the PCB and all of the necessary parts to build your own, and there are also drop-in PCBs that are already populated, like the well-known Fender mid-boost circuit kit. You can also find mini-sized booster modules using high-quality SMD parts, which only require a fraction of space compared to the regular PCBs.
“Finding a good booster module and wiring it up is much easier than fitting it into the tight space of a Telecaster body.”
The available options include treble boosters, mid-boost circuits, full-range boosters, etc. Choose what you like best. The problem will be that you need to stuff it into a Telecaster body. As you know, there is not much space inside a Telecaster, and you need to add the booster itself, the 9V battery, an additional pot for controlling the booster, and two additional mini-toggle switches—one for turning the booster on and off, and the other to get the bridge pickup out of phase. This is a lot of stuff! On Summers’ guitar, this problem was solved by adding a large cavity on the back and closing it with a plastic back plate, as on a Gibson Les Paul.
A look inside the cavity for the mid-boost unit.
Photo courtesy of TeleManDon from Vancouver Island, BC (https://tdpri.com)
You can clearly see the two big routings for the booster’s PCB and the 9V battery, plus the additional pot to control the amount of boost as well as the mini-toggle switch to turn the booster on and off. If you are not afraid of routing two big chambers into your Telecaster’s body, this is a suitable way to go.
On a Telecaster, there are not many alternatives I can think of to fit all these parts. One possible way of saving space would be to use a stacked pot with two 250k pots for volume and tone, so you have the second hole in the control plate available for the gain control pot of the booster. Between the two pots, it should be no problem to place the two mini-toggle switches. Or you use a push-pull pot for the gain control to save one of the mini-toggle switches. The guitar will look much cleaner, at least from the front side. But you still have to put the booster PCB and the battery somewhere. A customer of mine did this by completely routing the area under the pickguard. But even with only a regular single-coil neck pickup, it was a really tight fit, so with a regular-sized humbucker, it will be close to impossible. So, you or your luthier will have to be creative, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a company offers Andy Summers Telecaster bodies with all chambers already routed.
Here we go for the wiring. Wherever possible, I tried to keep the diagram as clean as possible. The wiring of the booster is only an example and depends on the booster you want to use, but the basic wiring is always the same.
Here’s a helpful schmatic of the Andy Summers‘ Telecaster wiring.
Illustration courtesy of SINGLECOIL (www.singlecoil.com)
That’s it. Next month, we will take a deep look into guitar cables and wires, what really makes a difference, and how you can use this to reshape your guitar tone. So stay tuned!
Until then ... keep on modding!
