This 1968 Epiphone Al Caiola Standard came stocked with P-90s and a 5-switch Tone Expressor system.
Photo courtesy of Guitar Point (guitarpoint.de)
The Epiphone Al Caiola model was built in the Gibson Kalamazoo factory and was similar to an Epiphone Sheraton, with a longer 25 1/2" scale. It was built from late 1963 until 1969 and was available with different pickups like Gibson mini-humbuckers and P-90s. The guitar would be renamed the Al Caiola Custom to make way for the Al Caiola Standard that was introduced in 1966, but both models had the Tone Expressor system.
The guitar has a Telecaster-like wiring configuration: two pickups, master volume and master tone, 2-way pickup-selector switch. Since the circuit only has a 2-way switch instead of a 3-way switch, you can’t play both the neck and bridge pickup at the same time. (Maybe Al Caiola didn’t like a middle-position sound; who knows?) There are also five additional mini-slider switches labeled 1—5 which make up the Tone Expressor system.
“With the individual slider switches of the Tone Expressor system, you can combine all five switching positions in any way you like, so you have countless possible combinations.”
Having a look under the hood reveals the Gibson Varitone system used on the ES models. My first thought was this was new wine in old bottles, but after having a deeper look, there are differences between the standard Gibson Varitone and the Tone Expressor system. The Gibson Varitone uses a 1.5 H inductor, while the Tone Expressor system has a 15 H inductor on board. The Varitone is a rotary switch, so you can only dial in one of the switching positions, no combinations. With the individual slider switches of the Tone Expressor system, you can combine all five switching positions in any way you like, so you have countless possible combinations. Electronically, the Tone Expressor is a switchable band-rejection filter; mids are attenuated and the result is a crisp, more twangy tone.
In this first of two parts about this very special circuit, I want to describe the switching positions of the Tone Expressor system. First, here are the individual parts:
• 500k audio master volume and master tone pot with a 0.02 μF tone cap. This configuration will work with mini-humbuckers as well as P-90 pickups.
• 2-way pickup-selector slider switch. Having the possibility to engage both pickups together (no matter if in parallel or in series) would enhance this wiring noticeably.
• 15 H inductor (choke). The inductor in this circuit creates a series of notch filters together with the caps of the individual switches, so the circuit doesn’t remove all signal above a certain frequency, but only a certain amount above and below that frequency. There is a lot of debate about using an inductor or not, and if so, what type.
Personally, I think adding an inductor is not the best choice. The design may have worked at the time, but today, most of us are looking for different sounds. While the Varitone has its fans, it was never very popular because it can suck tone, and a lot of people say that it doesn’t have a major effect anyway.
If you want to use an inductor and find a matching one, these have center-tapped primaries and secondaries. Use the entire primary or the entire secondary, and ignore center taps for the Varitone wiring. I had the chance to measure several original inductors (labeled TF-90-1C), and they all showed something between 12 H and 17 H; keeping their tolerances in mind, you can use any inductor in this ballpark.
• 10 M resistors. There is a 10 M resistor connected to the circuit in series to each of the five caps. These “pull-down” resistors prevent loud popping noises when using one of the switches—standard when switching capacitance like on the Varitone system.
• 100k resistor. Together with the caps on the switches, the single 100k series resistor creates a frequency selective voltage divider, which is essential to create a proper frequency notch. The value is well-chosen so there is no need to replace it.
On the Varitone rotary switch, position No. 1 is the bypass mode. The Al Caiola, with its slider switches, naturally doesn’t need an extra switch for this. When no switch is engaged, the Tone Expressor system is in bypass mode. In general, we can say that the bigger the cap, the thinner the tone, and vice versa. Or in other words: The bigger the cap, the more the humbucker tone is tidied up towards a more twangy and single-coil-like tone.
An up-close look at the controls for the Tone Expressor system.
Photo courtesy of Guitar Point (guitarpoint.de)
Here is what each switching position does:
• Switch No. 1 with 1000 pF cap corresponds to position two of the Varitone rotary switch and has a very subtle effect. It’s an unmistakably PAF-style humbucker tone, but with the bass frequencies tidied up a little. This setting can help cut through a mix and will prevent a boomy, woolly tone when playing full-tilt.
• Switch No. 2 with 3000 pF cap corresponds to position three of the Varitone rotary switch and is my favorite setting. Still a PAF-style humbucker tone, but tighter and with more transparency. This tone never gets too boomy and rides on the edge of the P-90 territory.
• Switch No. 3 with 0.01 μF cap corresponds to position four of the Varitone rotary switch. This reminds me of a typical P-90 tone with a tight bass and clarity in the high frequencies—very cool for some break-up blues playing.
• Switch No. 4 with 0.03 μF cap corresponds to position five of the Varitone rotary switch and is a very twangy and single-coil like setting that sounds like a Stratocaster—very useful and versatile.
• Switch No. 5 with 0.22 μF cap corresponds to position six of the Varitone rotary switch and is the most twangy setting. It reminds me a lot of a good Telecaster, especially with the bridge pickup.
Next month, we will look into different ways to set up and mod this circuit, so stay tuned!
Until then ... keep on modding!
Duane Denison of the Jesus Lizard, EGC Chessie in hands, coaxing some nasty tones from his Hiwatt.
The Jesus Lizard’s sixth album, Blue, served as the band’s final statement from the frontlines of noisy rock for the next 26 years. By the time of their dissolution in 1999, they’d earned a reputation for extreme performances chock full of hard-hitting, machine-like grooves delivered by bassist David Wm. Sims and, at their conclusion, drummer Mac McNeilly, at times aided and at other times punctured by the frontline of guitarist Duane Denison’s incisive, dissonant riffing, and presided over by the cantankerous howl of vocalist David Yow. In the years since, performative, thrilling bands such as Pissed Jeans, METZ, and Idles have built upon the Lizard’s musical foundation.
Denison has kept himself plenty busy over the last couple decades, forming the avant-rock supergroup Tomahawk—with vocalist Mike Patton, bassist Trevor Dunn (both from Mr. Bungle), and drummer John Stanier of Helmet—and alongside various other projects including Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers and Hank Williams III. The Jesus Lizard eventually reunited, but until now have only celebrated their catalog, never releasing new jams.
The Jesus Lizard, from left: bassist David Wm. Sims, singer David Yow, drummer Mac McNeilly, and guitarist Duane Denison.
Photo by Joshua Black Wilkins
Back in 2018, Denison, hanging in a hotel room with Yow, played a riff on his unplugged electric guitar that caught the singer’s ear. That song, called “West Side,” will remain unreleased for now, but Denison explains: “He said, ‘Wow, that’s really good. What is that?’ And I said, ‘It’s just some new thing. Why don’t we do an album?’” From those unassuming beginnings, the Jesus Lizard’s creative juices started flowing.
So, how does a band—especially one who so indelibly captured the ineffable energy of live rock performance—prepare to get a new record together 26 years after their last? Back in their earlier days, the members all lived together in a band house, collectively tending to the creative fire when inspiration struck. All these years later, they reside in different cities, so their process requires sending files back and forth and only meeting up for occasional demo sessions over the course of “three or four years.”
“When the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.” —Duane Denison
the Jesus Lizard "Alexis Feels Sick"
Distance creates an obstacle to striking while the proverbial iron is hot, but Denison has a method to keep things energized: “Practice loud.” The guitarist professes the importance of practice, in general, and especially with a metronome. “We keep very detailed records of what the beats per minute of these songs are,” he explains. “To me, the way to do it is to run it to a Bluetooth speaker and crank it, and then crank your amp. I play a little at home, but when the time comes to get more in performance mode, I have a practice space. I go there by myself and crank it up. I turn that amp up and turn the metronome up and play loud.”
It’s a proven solution. On Rack—recorded at Patrick Carney’s Audio Eagle studio with producer Paul Allen—the band sound as vigorous as ever, proving they’ve not only remained in step with their younger selves, but they may have surpassed it with faders cranked. “Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style,” explains Allen. “The conviction in his playing that he is known for from his recordings in the ’80s and ’90s is still 100-percent intact and still driving full throttle today.”
“I try to be really, really precise,” he says. “I think we all do when it comes to the basic tracks, especially the rhythm parts. The band has always been this machine-like thing.” Together, they build a tension with Yow’s careening voice. “The vocals tend to be all over the place—in and out of tune, in and out of time,” he points out. “You’ve got this very free thing moving around in the foreground, and then you’ve got this very precise, detailed band playing behind it. That’s why it works.”
Before Rack, the Jesus Lizard hadn’t released a new record since 1998’s Blue.
Denison’s guitar also serves as the foreground foil to Yow’s unhinged raving, as on “Alexis Feels Sick,” where they form a demented harmony, or on the midnight creep of “What If,” where his vibrato-laden melodies bolster the singer’s unsettled, maniacal display. As precise as his riffs might be, his playing doesn’t stay strictly on the grid. On the slow, skulking “Armistice Day,” his percussive chording goes off the rails, giving way to a solo that slices that groove like a chef’s knife through warm butter as he reorganizes rock ’n’ roll histrionics into his own cut-up vocabulary.
“During recording sessions, his first solo takes are usually what we decide to keep,” explains Allen. “Listen to Duane’s guitar solos on Jack White’s ‘Morning, Noon, and Night,’ Tomahawk’s ‘Fatback,’ and ‘Grind’ off Rack. There’s a common ‘contained chaos’ thread among them that sounds like a harmonic Rubik’s cube that could only be solved by Duane.”
“Duane’s approach, both as a guitarist and writer, has an angular and menacing fingerprint that is his own unique style.” —Rack producer Paul Allen
To encapsulate just the right amount of intensity, “I don’t over practice everything,” the guitarist says. Instead, once he’s created a part, “I set it aside and don’t wear it out.” On Rack, it’s obvious not a single kilowatt of musical energy was lost in the rehearsal process.
Denison issues his noisy masterclass with assertive, overdriven tones supporting his dissonant voicings like barbed wire on top of an electric fence. The occasional application of slapback delay adds a threatening aura to his exacting riffage. His tones were just as carefully crafted as the parts he plays, and he relied mostly on his signature Electrical Guitar Company Chessie for the sessions, though a Fender Uptown Strat also appears, as well as a Taylor T5Z, which he chose for its “cleaner, hyper-articulated sound” on “Swan the Dog.” Though he’s been spotted at recent Jesus Lizard shows with a brand-new Powers Electric—he points out he played a demo model and says, “I just couldn’t let go of it,” so he ordered his own—that wasn’t until tracking was complete.
Duane Denison's Gear
Denison wields his Powers Electric at the Blue Room in Nashville last June.
Photo by Doug Coombe
Guitars
- Electrical Guitar Company Chessie
- Fender Uptown Strat
- Taylor T5Z
- Gibson ES-135
- Powers Electric
Amps
- Hiwatt Little J
- Hiwatt 2x12 cab with Fane F75 speakers
- Fender Super-Sonic combo
- Early ’60s Fender Bassman
- Marshall 1987X Plexi Reissue
- Victory Super Sheriff head
- Blackstar HT Stage 60—2 combos in stereo with Celestion Neo Creamback speakers and Mullard tubes
Effects
- Line 6 Helix
- Mantic Flex Pro
- TC Electronic G-Force
- Menatone Red Snapper
Strings and Picks
- Stringjoy Orbiters .0105 and .011 sets
- Dunlop celluloid white medium
- Sun Studios yellow picks
He ran through various amps—Marshalls, a Fender Bassman, two Fender Super-Sonic combos, and a Hiwatt Little J—at Audio Eagle. Live, if he’s not on backline gear, you’ll catch him mostly using 60-watt Blackstar HT Stage 60s loaded with Celestion Neo Creambacks. And while some boxes were stomped, he got most of his effects from a Line 6 Helix. “All of those sounds [in the Helix] are modeled on analog sounds, and you can tweak them endlessly,” he explains. “It’s just so practical and easy.”
The tools have only changed slightly since the band’s earlier days, when he favored Travis Beans and Hiwatts. Though he’s started to prefer higher gain sounds, Allen points out that “his guitar sound has always had teeth with a slightly bright sheen, and still does.”
“Honestly, I don’t think my tone has changed much over the past 30-something years,” Denison says. “I tend to favor a brighter, sharper sound with articulation. Someone sent me a video I had never seen of myself playing in the ’80s. I had a band called Cargo Cult in Austin, Texas. What struck me about it is it didn’t sound terribly different than what I sound like right now as far as the guitar sound and the approach. I don’t know what that tells you—I’m consistent?”
YouTube It
The Jesus Lizard take off at Nashville’s Blue Room this past June with “Hide & Seek” from Rack.
In general, Leo Fender’s credo was that “the design of each element should be thought out in order to be easy to make and easy to repair.” His approach was to build high-quality instruments while maintaining low manufacturing costs with mass production. When thinking about the design of the Stratocaster, there are at least two elements where one can have some doubts about the easy-to-repair approach, at least from today’s perspective: pickguards you can’t take off without removing the strings and truss rods you can’t access without removing the pickguard.
Within the historical context of Leo Fender’s time, I think he would say that he did everything right. Right from the start, the Fender company cared a lot about setting up their guitars before they were shipped out. The setup was meant to be set-it-and-forget-it, so truss rod access was not very important—accessing it from the neck heel was the design following function.
I’m not sure if this was really easier to build this way compared to accessing it from the headstock, but it was the method that offered better headstock stability and longevity. Nine out of 10 Stratocaster headstock repairs I see in the shop are guitars with truss-rod access from the headstock. Because of its design, this is a weak spot in the wood, so drilling a hole to access the truss rod will weaken it more. In old Fender papers I found an interesting bulletin that the neck was never meant to be repaired or refretted. Instead, a customer was simply meant to change the complete bolt-on neck.
Back in the ’50s, things like replacement pickups, mods, push-pull pots, multi-stage pickup switches, and the like were not yet invented, so there was no need to design the Stratocaster pickguard for easy access. It would only have to be removed for a serious repair, which shouldn’t have happened very often.
Times have changed noticeably, and today it is usual to perform a setup regularly to compensate for changing weather conditions, different string gauges, and so on. And trying new pickups, tone caps, mods, etc. is a kind of popular sport among most guitarists—set-it-and-forget-it was forgotten long ago!
“Back in the ’50s, things like replacement pickups, mods, push-pull pots, multi-stage pickup switches, and the like were not yet invented, so there was no need to design the Stratocaster pickguard for easy access.”
The design of the Stratocaster hasn’t changed much since the mid ’50s. Of course, standard procedure is now to have truss-rod access from the headstock, so at least the setup thing is finally solved. But Stratocasters with access to the pickguard from behind is something that would make a lot of things much simpler. Let’s see what can be done to make things easier and, of course, faster when you do have to remove your guitar’s neck or loosen the strings to get to the pickguard.
The gold standard way of servicing a Stratocaster is to remove the old strings so you have full access to the pickguard. This is especially perfect when you want to do some work under the hood of the pickguard like changing a pot, pickup, or any other electronics work. You can test everything before you put on the new strings and there is no additional work to consider. For setups this is a great starting point—you can roughly pre-adjust the neck to your preferences, but for the final setup, there is no way around putting on the new set of strings. Here are two of my favorite hacks in the shop to save some time and nerves.
The IKEA Hack
You all know these plastic kitchen sealing clips for resealing opened bags and packages. I like the IKEA model because they’re super sturdy, well-made, and will last a very long time. Take one of these clips—we will need the large version—open it, and cut six small grooves in it using a round needle file or any other similar tool for this. Try to come close to the string spacing behind the nut with your grooves. I usually take a black sharpie to mark the spacing on the plastic clip before using the file.
Photo courtesy of SINGLECOIL
After you’re finished, loosen the strings but don’t take them out of the tuner posts. Slide the opened clip under the strings behind the nut, put each string in one of the grooves, and close the clip. Now, you can pull the strings out of their posts and put them aside to have full access to the pickguard and the neck-heel truss rod. Because the modified clip will hold the strings in place, they will not tangle up into a bird’s nest of strings. For vintage-Kluson-style tuners or locking tuners, it can be very easy to pull the strings out of the posts and back in. For other types, you’ll need a little bit more patience to get the strings back in place, but it’s worth the effort.
The Old-Style Capo Hack
My first capo that I got when I was around 10 years old or so is still alive and employed in my shop. It’s a Dunlop 11C toggle-action capo that is still in production, and I bet a lot of you started with this capo, too. I use the curved version that my parents bought by accident for my classical guitar because they didn’t know about flat and curved fretboards. This one works great on all electric guitars.
Photo courtesy of SINGLECOIL
Loosen all the strings slightly so they will not slip out of their posts. Put the capo on the first fret and close it. The strings can no longer slip out of the nut, the string trees, and the posts of the tuners.
Photo courtesy of SINGLECOIL
Now, when you remove the neck, the capo will hold the strings in place. Putting the neck back on will be very easy: Fasten the screws, take off the capo, and tune the strings to pitch.
You see, there are at least two alternative ways to avoid changing the strings, especially if they are as good as new with only a few playing hours upon them. Often, little gizmos make a big difference.
Next month we will dive down into Epiphone history and see what they electronically cooked up in the mid ’60s, so stay tuned.
Until then ... keep modding!
Illustration courtesy Singlecoil
Let’s have a deep look into what can be done to get rid of single-coil hum, which can be very annoying, especially when playing live. I’m sure you all know the situation: Your band managed to get an important Friday night gig at, let’s say, Bob’s Country Bunker. You and your bandmates arrive in time to set up your equipment, naturally with everything plugged into the same circuit as Bob’s popcorn machine, dishwasher, and sandwich maker. You plug in your Strat, turn up your amp, and there’s a loud humming noise coming out of it.
A single-coil pickup has one coil with six magnet rods and two bobbins holding everything together. It not only picks up the strings, but also all kinds of external magnetic fields generated by transformers and other electromagnetic devices. But when two coils are wound in opposite directions and are working together, the hum will get canceled. This is an old principle dating back to the beginning of the 20th century, and it’s how a humbucker pickup works. In the past, guitarists had to struggle with radio stations, fluorescent tubes, transformers, and the like; today, it’s more digital fallout and, of course, digital power supplies of all kinds.
The pickup industry created all kinds of hum-canceling pickups in single-coil shape, most commonly stacked and double-rail-style pickups. So, a humbucker pickup can be the ticket out of such unpleasant live situations. But all of these options generate a different magnetic field compared to a single-coil pickup, resulting in a different tone. The resonant frequency is shifted downwards a little bit because the ohmic resistance and inductance of the two coils are added together. The tone gets milder and warmer, with more midrange—you all know this tone. Splitting such a humbucker will sound more single-coil-like, but it will pick up hum again. Connecting both coils in parallel rather than in series will also sound more single-coil-like and is hum-canceling, but it’s not a real single-coil tone.
Using a reverse wound, reverse polarity (RWRP) pickup such as a Strat’s middle pickup will get you at least two hum-free switching positions (bridge+middle and neck+middle), but even this sounds different. Going active is another way to fight humming noises, and these special pickups sound more or less like a real single-coil, too.
But what if you don’t want to compromise? Is pure single-coil tone with no hum possible? Yes and no! It is possible to come close, but one day, a digital gremlin may find a way to annoy you to a certain degree. And there are extreme situations where only a humbucker will work.
One step in the right direction is shielding the pickups and cavity of your guitar. Shielding the compartment of a guitar the right way is a challenge on its own, and I will cover this in a future installment of this column. But even if all the shielding is done the right way, the sound of the pickup will be altered to a certain degree, which is the nature of the beast. And the shielding is always there, so you can’t switch between pure single-coil and shielded single-coil tone.
So, what about switchable hum-canceling for your guitar? This way you could have both: pure single-coil tone and hum-free operation when needed. And if this could not only be made switchable but also controllable, you could balance your tone between the two.
Here is a solution based on principles from Bill Lawrence, which my dear friend Bernd C. Meiser from the BSM company has refined in order to make it more controllable: a variable dummy coil.
“But what if you don’t want to compromise? Is pure single-coil tone with no hum possible? Yes and no!”
In simple terms, a dummy coil is an additional pickup that is identical to the other pickups but without magnets. It has a phase, but no polarity. A dummy coil accepts the electric signal created by the magnetic single-coil pickup and reverses it, which will remove a large portion of the hum. In the process, a very small amount of the treble signal is lost as well. However, this treble loss is far less compared to stacked or dual-rail humbuckers.
The specs of the dummy coil need to be close to the pickup you are complementing. So, any universal dummy coils advertised to work with all single-coil pickups will only work to a certain degree but not perfectly. Instead, it’s best if you order a dummy coil that matches your pickup. The company who made your pickup will know the formula, and a dummy coil from them will be super effective. If that pickup is from a larger manufacturer, you’ll need to find out specific parameters—wire gauge, wire type, number of turns—so a custom pickup company can make a matching dummy coil for you.
The simplest way to set up a dummy coil would be to connect it permanently, so it’s 100 percent active all the time. For more flexibility, you can add a switch to turn the dummy coil on and off. But the most flexible way is to use a pot to control the dummy coil, so you can dial in pure single-coil tone, 100 percent dummy-coil hum-removing, and everything in between—in other words, so you can balance tone and hum-free-ness depending on the certain playing situation.
To do so, connect a 0.01 uF capacitor in parallel to the dummy coil. The high-end frequencies will no longer pass the dummy coil and its inductance; they will be drained low-resistance to ground. For the bass frequencies, the capacitor is still high-resistance so the dummy coil is active. This way you will have humbucking functionality for the bass frequencies, but pure single-coil tone in the high frequencies—what a perfect and clever solution from Bill Lawrence. If you now connect the capacitor and the dummy coil to a pot, you have a controllable dummy coil as described above.
You can experiment with the capacitor value for fine-tuning your system; 0.01 μF is a pretty good value to start. With a smaller cap, you shift the humbucking effect toward the high frequencies and vice versa. A smaller cap means more overall humbucking (bass and highs) and a larger cap means less overall humbucking, with the high and middle frequencies staying untouched.
A Stratocaster is perfect for this mod because it has two tone controls. One will be converted to a Telecaster-style master tone control, while the other will become the new dummy-coil controller.
For a Stratocaster with three vintage flavored single-coil pickups, I recommend the following pot configuration (all audio taper): 250k volume, 500k tone, 500k dummy-coil controller. This way, in humbucking mode, the two coils are connected in series rather than in parallel, so the resonance peak will be dampened. The two 500k pots will help compensate for this. The 250k volume is always the way to go in a passive guitar system to ensure the best and most even control. The 500k tone pot can be a little bit over the top in pure single-coil mode, but simply roll it down a little and you are in the 250k ballpark—problem solved!
Here we go for the wiring. It’s not hard to do and mostly uses the parts that are already there:
Illustration courtesy Singlecoil
That’s it! Next month, we will talk about some alternative ways to service a Stratocaster that can be real time savers, so stay tuned.
Until then ... keep on modding!
I think it’s fair to say that the Fender Marauder, like Gibson’s Moderne, was ahead of its time, and neither guitar made it beyond the prototype stage—at least not as originally designed.
The Marauder’s ’60s production model came with three pickups in a Jaguar-style body, many rocker switches, German carve headstock, and some even with slanted frets. It was later offered as part of the Modern Player series as well as through the custom shop. But the original design and concept of the Marauder was quite different.
In order to see what Leo Fender cooked up in the mid ’60s, we will have to take a short journey back in time, firing up the flux capacitor in our DeLorean with 1.21 gigawatts of energy. Our destination is the Fender factory in California, somewhere between 1963 and 1964—the early beginnings of the space age. The United States worked on the Apollo program at the same time the former Soviet Union worked on the Luna program on the other end of the world. Europe was busy developing and building the Concorde, and Leo Fender, sitting on the porch of his home in Orange County, was ready for his next stroke of genius.
Today, “less is more” is a common approach, not only in the guitar industry. But back then, it was “more is more” and “the more, the merrier.” Leo Fender offered the Esquire with one bridge pickup, and the two-pickup Esquire/Telecaster followed soon after. The next step was the Stratocaster with three pickups, which was mostly influenced by Bill Carson, one of Leo’s favorite guitarist guinea pigs in the ’50s. The next logical step was a guitar with four pickups, and that was exactly the idea behind the Marauder project. There are other guitars with four pickups, like the Japanese-made Teisco/Kawai EG-4T (nicknamed the “Hertiecaster”), or the Italian-made Welson Kinton, Galanti Grand Prix V4, and Eko 500/4V. But Leo Fender went the extra mile with his Marauder concept and installed the pickups underneath the pickguard for a very sleek aesthetic.
“The next logical step was a guitar with four pickups.”
Let’s have a look under the hood: The patent for the Marauder was filed March 6, 1964, and granted December 6, 1966—US patent #3290424—so we can say that developing and prototyping probably started somewhere in 1963. In addition to the four pickups under the pickguard, the original Marauder had a 3-way switch for each of the pickups, plus a Telecaster-style master volume/master tone configuration. On the patent, you can clearly see that the guitar was planned as an offset-type like the Jazzmaster or Jaguar using the same hardware.
There was, however, a one-off prototype built around a Stratocaster that has a dedicated 3-way lever pickup selector switch from the Telecaster and Stratocaster (the 5-way switch was not yet invented then) for each pickup, which looks really weird.
The Pickups
The pickups in the Marauder were designed by a man named Quilla “Porky” Freeman, a Western-swing musician and tinkerer based in Missouri. These large, slightly offset experimental pickups featured a dozen pole pieces and deep armatures, which helped give it a percussive tone. To compensate for the distance from the strings, the pickups were overwound. The patent document clearly states that all four pickups had the same winding direction (phase), but different magnetic polarity. The first (bridge) and the third pickup had south polarity, while the second and fourth (neck) pickup had north polarity, which was a clever move. This was the start of what is known as a “stealth pickup” today, often used as the hidden neck pickup on an Esquire. For such a construction, it’s important that the pickguard material is non-magnetic.
The Switching Matrix
Each of the pickups is connected to its own 3-way on-off-on switch, allowing the corresponding pickup to be on, off, or on with reversed phase, resulting in a total of 48 different sounds between the four. If the idea of these 3-way pickup selector switches sounds familiar, that’s because this is the basic design of Brian May’s “Red Special” guitar that he built with his father Harold in 1963. While that’s the same time frame, it’s close to impossible that Leo Fender knew what Brian May was doing in the U.K., so two geniuses simply had the same idea at the same time.
Here we go with the wiring: The four toggle switches are double-pole on-off-on types, volume and tone are 250k audio, and the tone cap is a 0.05 uF type. To keep the diagram clean, I substituted all ground connections with the international symbol for ground.
Illustration courtesy of Singlecoil
That’s it! Next month, we will talk about a very cool and clever way to integrate a variable dummy-coil into a guitar, so stay tuned.
Until then… keep on modding!