While RubyRed Productions in Santa Monica has a superb stash of gear, for the Rig Rundown, songwriter-guitarist-producer Butch Walker gathered these 6-string sweethearts that he uses to create on a daily basis.
(Far left) Butch’s newest tool in the chest is this Taylor 517e Grand Pacific Builder’s Edition V-Class finished in a wild honey burst. The round-shoulder dreadnought features Taylor’s new V-Class bracing designed by PG contributor Andy Powers, torrefied Sitka spruce top, and tropical mahogany back and sides decked out with sapele binding. Butch bonded with it because of its unique, pronounced midrange voice. He says in the Rundown its natural mid-heavy voice lets it potently sit in the mix even among full instrumentation from drums, bass, and electrics.
To its right, Butch has a Japanese-made Yamaha LL56 Custom ARE (an updated, evolved continuation of the company’s LL53 favored by John Denver). Butch loves its beefier voice that works well accentuating electric parts for a wider sound.
The last of three acoustics is one of his oldest flattops, but it’s had a complete makeover to give a second life. From a glance, it appears to be a vintage 1960s Harmony Sovereign completely overhauled, upgraded, and rebuilt by luthier Scott Baxendale. He disassembles the instrument piece by piece and starts from scratch (including reconstructing the bracing into his own formula of scalloped X-bracing heavily influenced in his 30 years of specializing in pre-war Martins). The “new” instrument has its original tonewoods is original, but that’s it. The rest is reformed by way of Baxendale’s expertise and attention to detail. Butch’s opinion on its resurrection: “it plays and sounds like butter.”
The far-left electric is a 1972 Gibson Les Paul Custom he bought from Norman’s Rare Guitars. It’s his only Les Paul in California and the guitar only had one previous owner before Butch— illustrious studio-and-stage guitarist Jimmy Stewart (not the guy from It’s a Wonderful Life). Stewart put that Custom to good and featured it on over 1,200 recordings, worked prominently alongside Gábor Szabó, added guitar to Broadway productions (West Side Story, Bye Bye Birdie, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying) and TV (The Mike Douglas Show and The Tonight Show) and authored Guitar Player’s “The Complete Musician” column from 1971-1981. You’ll see Stewart added some mini toggles to open up the pickups for even more tonal options by splitting/isolating coils.
Next one on the right is a custom, one-off triple-humbucker Yamaha SA2200 semi-hollow loaded with Lollar pickups. Walker went mad scientist on the normal SA2200 layout and requested that it have a master volume (moved that to where the original pickup selector was) and master tone (normally each pickup has its own independent controls). He used the allocated cavity space to add mini toggles to split the humbuckers’ coils, and moved the pickup selector to the pickguard.
Another new friend to the collection is a 2020 Ernie Ball Sabre with a honey suckle burst. Butch has really enjoyed playing and recording with this double-hum guitar because it’s “spanky, spongy, has a pleasing top-end clarity, and can still bite for solos or rocking.”
Last up is a Fender Custom Shop Telecaster Custom that screams Andy Summers and Joe Walsh. Butch had put in an order to the heralded custom shop for a Telecaster. The wrong guitar (the sunburst Tele Custom) showed up, but before letting Fender know their error, he plugged it in. Game over—he wasn’t parting ways with this stud so he cancelled the other order with Fender and has rocked with this one ever since.
All of Butch’s electrics take Ernie Ball Power Slinkys (.011–.048) and he bashes away with Herco HE211P Flex 75 1.01 mm.
Three of these were in the previous frame except for the shedding Strat in the middle-right position. It’s a Fender Custom Shop 1960 Stratocaster Relic Shoreline Gold over 3-Color Sunburst Frankenstein’d with a ’69 reverse headstock, left-handed neck, and beefed up with a pair of Fender ShawBuckers.
For the Rundown and most of his recent L.A.-based sessions, Butch has turned to this Bad Cat Cub IV 40R. He likes its single-channel platform, tonal flexibility (toggle or footswitch between 12AX7 or EF86 preamp sections) paired with sparkly, robust EL34-voiced flavorings.
Enhancing the versatility of the Bad Cat IV 40R is the above Universal Audio Ox Box. (For the Rundown, we heard a direct sound with an emulation of a custom 2x12 cabinet loaded with alnico 50-watt speakers. The mics he chose were approximations of a Beyerdynamic M 160 ribbon, Neumann U67 diaphragm, a blended-in room mic with a 1176 compressor tightening up everything.)
His real-deal pedalboard is host to a TC Electronic PolyTune, JHS Pedals Pulp 'n' Peel, his signature JHS Ruby Red Signature 2-in-1 Overdrive/Fuzz/Boost, Way Huge Conspiracy Theory, MXR Echoplex Delay, MXR Stereo Chorus, MXR Reverb, MXR Carbon Copy, and an Audio Sprockets ToneDexter (for acoustic DI/preamp). Beneath the board, the MXR Iso-Brick brings everything to life.
For quick gigs, sit-in sessions, or fly gigs, Butch will rely on this simple stomp station compromised of a Line 6 HX Stomp, his signature JHS Ruby Red Signature 2-in-1, and a TC Electronic Polytune Noir Mini 2. In the middle rests a Disaster Area DMC.micro MIDI controller while to the right you see a Line 6 G10S Wireless System and a Dunlop DVP4 Volume (X) Mini.
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TWA CHEMICAL-Z
Roy Z signature overdrive pedal designed by TubeScreamer creator Susumu Tamura. Inspired by Maxon OD808, OD808X, and APEX808 circuits, Chemical-Z features the "Magic" IC used in APEX808 for less compression & more even frequency response than a standard 808. Increased output level. Two footswitch-selectable clipping modes - normal & hot.
Cory Wong—a funky player with his own signature-model Strat wiring.
Guitarist, songwriter, and producer Cory Wong is renowned for his solo work, his band Fearless Flyers (with Mark Lettieri, Joe Dart, and Nate Smith), and collaborations with artists such as Vulfpeck, Jon Batiste, and Dave Koz. His playing style is deeply rooted in funk rhythm guitar, with a heavy dose of rock and jazz. Well-known for playing a Stratocaster, his signature model was released in 2021, and it’s a unique offering. If you want to build your personal Cory Wong Strat, here is your shopping list, starting with the primary structure:
• Alder body, scaled down to slightly smaller than a regular Stratocaster, with Fender American Ultra body contours
• Maple neck with a rosewood fretboard with rolled edges, modern Fender American Ultra D neck profile, slightly larger headstock, 25.5" scale, 10" to 14" compound radius, 22 medium jumbo frets
• Locking tuners with all short posts, a bone nut, and two roller string trees
• Vintage-style 6-screw synchronized tremolo
• Hair tie around the tremolo springs (which mutes them to enhance the rhythm tone)
• .010–.046 strings (nickel-plated steel)
“While these are all interesting features, resulting in a very comfortable guitar, you don’t need to copy every detail to transform one of your Stratocasters into a Cory Wong-style Strat.”
For the physical build, as you can see, Wong and Fender created a real signature instrument to his specs and wishes. While these are all interesting features, resulting in a very comfortable guitar, you don’t need to copy every detail to transform one of your Stratocasters into a Cory Wong-style Strat. My personal favorite of these is the hair tie for muting the tremolo springs. A lot of my funk-playing customers are doing similar things on their Strats to get a dry sound, and they’re using all kinds of funny things in there, like foam, rubber bands, and pieces of cotton, as well as hair ties.
Now, let’s have a look at the electronics:
• Seymour Duncan Cory Wong Clean Machine SSS pickup set
• Standard 5-way pickup-selector switch with classic Strat switching matrix
• 250k master volume pot with a 90/10 audio taper and Fender treble-bleed circuit PCB
• 250k tone pot with a 90/10 audio taper and Fender Greasebucket tone control PCB for only the neck pickup
• 250k audio push-push tone pot with Fender Greasebucket tone control PCB for only the bridge pickup; the push-push switch overrides the 5-way switch and defaults to middle + neck pickup (in parallel) as a preset
• Middle pickup is without tone control
Let’s break this down piece-by-piece to decode it:
Pickups
The pickup set is a custom SSS set from the Seymour Duncan company with the following specs:
• Overwound hum-canceling stacked bridge pickup with a 3-conductor wire and shield in permanent hum-canceling mode (red wire taped off), bevelled alnico 5 magnets, approximately 14.5k-ohm DCR
• Overwound middle single-coil, RWRP, beveled alnico 4 magnets, approximately 7.1k-ohm DCR
• Overwound neck single-coil, bevelled alnico 4 magnets, approx. 7.0k-ohm DCR
The pickups are voiced for clear highs, which perfectly suits Wong’s funky playing style and tone. While a lot of pickup companies will have pickups in that ballpark, it will be difficult to put together a full set that really works as intended. The Duncans in the Cory Wong Strat are available as a balanced set, so if you want to get as close as possible, I think this is your best bet.
5-Way Pickup Selector Switch
Nothing special here, just the standard 5-way switch with two switching stages that is wired like a classic Stratocaster:
bridge
bridge + middle in parallel
middle
middle + neck in parallel
neck
The upper tone pot is assigned to the neck pickup, while the lower tone pot is connected to the bridge pickup, leaving the middle pickup without tone control.
Master volume pot and treble-bleed circuit.
The 250k master volume pot is a standard CTS pot with a 90/10 audio taper found in all U.S.-made Fender guitars. The volume pot has the treble-bleed circuit from the Fender American Pro series, but uses a ready-to-solder PCB from Fender instead of individual electronic parts. The PCB is available from Fender individually (part #7711092000), but I have some thoughts about it. While using a PCB makes a lot of sense for mass production, it has some downsides for us mortal human beings:
• Soldering on PCBs requires some training and also special soldering tools.
• The PCB is quite expensive, while the individual electronic parts are only a few cents.
• The PCB uses ultra-tiny surface-mount parts, so it’s very difficult to repair or mod it to your personal taste.
I don’t think we need a PCB for adding a treble-bleed circuit, so let’s do this project using conventional electronic parts. The treble-bleed PCB contains a 1200 pF capacitor with a 150k-ohm resistor in parallel, plus another 20k-ohm resistor in series. Using individual parts, it looks like this:
Courtesy of single-coil.com
In general, a treble-bleed circuit will help you to combat the “volume vs. tone problem” when using passive single-coil pickups. When you turn down the volume (even just a bit), the high end or treble loss is not proportionate. In other words, a small cut in volume creates a far greater loss in your guitar’s treble response. Using a treble-bleed circuit is an easy way to get rid of this problem, as long as it is calculated carefully.
ONLINE ONLY: If you want to find out more about treble bleed circuits please have a look here: https://www.premierguitar.com/diy/mod-garage/treble-bleed-mod
Next month, we will continue with part two of the Cory Wong Stratocaster wiring, bringing it all together, so stay tuned!
Until then ... keep on modding!