The “Dead Spec” Silver Sky, created by PRS for John Mayer’s work filling Jerry Garcia’s shoes with Dead & Company, is a fitting tribute to the Grateful Dead frontman’s famed Fender Stratocaster.
Without stepping on anybody’s toes, I think we can say that the Silver Sky is PRS’s own modern interpretation of the Fender Stratocaster without being a simple and shameless copy. The John Mayer “Dead Spec” model was designed for the guitarist to use with Dead & Company, and it has several alterations that are a tribute to Jerry Garcia’s own Strat, Alligator. The “Dead Spec” was released last November and had a limited production run of 1,000 guitars. So your chances to grab one are really limited, and the guitar is not cheap.
So, what’s inside this guitar and how close can we get with a standard Stratocaster without breaking the bank?
Let’s start with the physical specs, which are somewhat special compared to a standard Stratocaster. In general, the body is made from lightweight swamp ash, and the bolt-on neck is maple with a rosewood fretboard, 22 frets, and a traditional 7.25" radius. Nothing special so far.
Bridge/tremolo construction: The “Dead Spec” has a very special kind of hardtail construction that I’ve never seen before. The tremolo is fitted into the body without springs, and the routing is super tight so the tremolo block can’t move. Next to it is the battery compartment (more about this in a minute).
Photo courtesy of PRS Guitars
If you want to get as close as possible, a hardtail Strat is one option. This is virtually the same but without the tremolo block. If you have a standard Strat tremolo, you can use a wooden block to convert it to hardtail specs.
Bridge/tremolo material: PRS decided to use their own Gen III tremolo—their version of a Strat trem—with a brass inertia bar/tremolo block as a surface-mounted bridge. It should be no problem to find a new brass replacement for your Strat’s tremolo. The brass bar will change the primary tone of the guitar (when playing it without an amp), but how much of this will be audible in the amplified tone depends a lot on the individual guitar. If you want to get as close as possible, a brass bar will be the way to go.
Brass nut: This was very popular in the ’70s and early ’80s, and Garcia’s Alligator indeed had a brass nut. It should be no problem to find a brass nut for your Strat, or at least a brass blank to make one. I would like to second what I said a minute ago: A brass nut will change the primary tone of your guitar without any doubts. How much of this will be present in the electrified tone depends on the certain guitar. So, leaving your stock nut in place is always an option.
String retainer bar: PRS decided to add a “cowboy-style” string retainer bar on the headstock, similar in function to the one found on Alligator, which adds a downward force to control the break angle of the strings at the nut. PRS chose their headstock angle very carefully when designing the Silver Sky, and they don’t need a device like a string-tree or a retainer bar. On the PRS webpage you can read: “The brass nut and retainer bar bring warm, piano-like tone while promoting string vibration and resonance.” Well, I think you simply have to try if you can hear any difference in the electrified tone.
Photo courtesy of PRS Guitars
Alembic Blaster: This is for sure the biggest feature of this guitar. PRS added the active Alembic Blaster booster (formerly known as the Strat-o-Blaster) to this guitar, replacing the traditional output jack plate. This is a very basic preamp/booster design that is still available from the Alembic company. It’s not an overdrive per se; it’s a booster that makes your guitar signal louder so you can drive your amp harder, pushing it into distortion. The Alembic Blaster is powered by a 9V battery and has an internal trimpot you can reach with a little screwdriver through the hole in the plate, allowing you to dial in a boost between 3–14 dB of gain when the booster is engaged. This will add a lot of punch and muscle to your tone and is an interesting option.
Photo courtesy of PRS Guitars
If you do not want to invest in an original Alembic Blaster, you can use any other booster device—there are a lot of copies out there doing a great job.
If you’d like to build your own, the circuit is very basic and it’s just a few parts, so with some experience, it should be no problem. I found several circuit drawings on the internet containing errors, some of them in a way that the circuit will not work. Here is the original and error-free Alembic Blaster circuit for you:
Illustration courtesy of SINGLECOIL.com
If you want to build an improved version of this circuit, here is a drawing by my dear friend Bernd C. Meiser from the BSM company. It features two additional resistors (R5 as a pull-down resistor to prevent popping noises when turning the booster on, and R6 to avoid RF interferences), a different transistor, and some changed part values to make it sound more tube-like.
Illustration courtesy of Bernd C. Meiser from BSM (treblebooster.net)
Pickups: The pickups used in this Silver Sky model are the PRS 635JM, which are basically slightly hotter Stratocaster pickups with pole pieces that match the fretboard radius. All three pickups are identical except the middle pickup is reverse wound/reverse polarity (RWRP) for hum-free operation when used together in parallel with the bridge or neck pickup. The pickups can be bought separately or as a set of three. When looking at the basic parameters of the pickups (alnico 5 magnets, 6.4k DCR, 2.33 H inductance), the Fender Custom Fat ’50s and Texas Specials come to mind as a substitute, but every serious pickup company offers a set like this.
Wiring: The wiring is basically a standard Stratocaster wiring plus the active booster circuitry, so nothing too special. The 5-way pickup selector switch delivers all the well-known Stratocaster switching positions with the pickups connected together in parallel in the two in-between positions, which are both hum-free because of the RWRP middle pickup.
The three 250k audio controls are a little bit different compared to a standard Stratocaster with a master volume and the upper tone control for the neck and middle pickup while the lower tone control only affects the bridge pickup. The common tone cap is a standard 0.1 µF type.
The guitar does not have a treble-bleed circuit. The PRS standard is a 180 pF cap between the input and output of the volume pot, though I recommend using a 470 pF cap instead for better control with 250k pots. For clarity, I’ve shown the booster as a module, not the Alembic Blaster plate with the switch and the output jack installed on it. The toggle switch for the booster is a standard DPDT type. Please note that you need a stereo output jack to add power management to the circuit—the ring tab of the stereo jack is used to only engage the battery when a guitar cable is plugged in. This will prevent draining the battery by accident.
Illustration courtesy of SINGLECOIL.com
That’s it! Next time, we will talk about the Fender guitar that never really existed and its wiring, so stay tuned!
Until then ... keep on modding!
John 5 in 2019 with another of his flashy Teles.
I have to confess that this is a matter of heart for me because I’m a John 5 fan. I’m really fascinated with his playing style. This guy can play it all. No matter if he’s picking country swing or shredding death metal, his playing is very close to the traditional tones and techniques, but is always in his own style. Besides this, he’s a very humble guy with a great sense of humor, so I’m really happy to write a piece about his new signature Telecaster.
Fender worked very closely with John 5 on this model. At its core, this guitar is a standard HH Telecaster in arctic white—including the neck and fretboard—with red accents that include the binding, nut, knobs, pickups, and more. It’s a matter of taste, if you like this flashy aesthetic or not.
Let’s have a look at the basic features, so you have a shopping list if you want to build your own:
- alder body with HH pickup routings and binding
- maple neck with a medium C shape, 9.5" radius, and 22 narrow tall frets
- 42 mm synthetic bone nut
- string-through Tele bridge with humbucker pickup cutout and six block steel saddles
- sealed locking tuners
- 1-piece pickguard/control plate combination in mirrored chrome
- .009–.042 nickel-plated steel strings
What makes this guitar really stand out besides its appearance is the wiring, which I think is very special but also minimal. You can put this wiring inside any Telecaster, as long as it accepts two humbuckers. It consists of:
- two DiMarzio D Activator humbucker pickups
- master volume control (most likely 500k audio) without treble-bleed network
- Gibson-style 3-way pickup-selector toggle switch
- momentary kill switch
That’s all John 5 needs to sound like no one else, so let’s go through the pieces step by step and see what is under the hood.
Pickups
The DiMarzio D Activator humbuckers are passive mid-output pickups with ceramic magnets that have been available since 2006. In the John 5 Ghost Telecaster, both pickups are permanently wired to run as full humbuckers with both coils in series. For the wiring diagram, I used the DiMarzio color code: Green and bare wire are going to ground, black and white are connected and taped off, red is the hot output. If you want to use different humbuckers, you will have to transfer the colors of the wires using one of the numerous color code charts on the internet.
On the Ghost Tele, the pickups are red, but they are available in many different colors, too.
Pots
There is only a single master volume control, without a treble-bleed network. I haven’t had an opportunity to look at one of these guitars in person, and Fender has not released a wiring diagram, but I’m pretty sure they choose a 500k audio pot together with these pickups, so that’s what I also recommend using.
John 5 chose a Gibson-style “speed knob” in red, but any knob will work.
Selector Switch
The John 5 model uses a standard Gibson 3-way pickup-selector toggle switch (with a red tip, of course) mounted to the upper bout for swift pickup switching. It should be wired like this:
- bridge pickup as full humbucker alone
- both pickups as full humbuckers in parallel
- neck pickup as full humbucker alone
Kill Switch
Instead of a tone control, there is a kill switch beside the master volume pot (in red ... what else?) that Fender calls “arcade style.” And yes, it reminds me a lot of the hardware of the ’80s game consoles .... Space Invaders or Donkey Kong, anyone?
A kill switch is a momentary switch that is usually used for machine gun sounds or stuttering effects. (A momentary switch only cuts off your guitar’s signal against ground while being pressed and resumes normal sound when released.) For a kill switch, you only need a basic on/off 2-position switch. An SPST (single pole-single throw) switch is ideal. SPST switches have only two contacts on the bottom and the switch simply connects (or disconnects) these two terminals to each other when the switch is pressed.
“What makes this guitar really stand out besides its appearance is the wiring, which I think is very special but also minimal.”
Be sure to buy a good quality switch, and make sure it’s a momentary and not a latching type. The type you need is a “normally open” (off) switch. When you are pressing the switch, you make a connection between the two contacts. The switch returns to the off position when you release the button.
There are special high-quality, all-metal kill switches for guitars available. There are also models with an LED inside if you are looking for a cool look. But keep in mind that you will need a battery for the LED, plus space inside the guitar to install it.
Here we go for the wiring. As usual, I substituted all ground connections with the international symbol for ground to keep the diagram as clean as possible. The wiring itself is very easy to do and is also a good beginner’s project.
Fig. 1
Illustration courtesy of singlecoil.com
That’s it! Next month, we will take a deep dive into something I received many email requests for, because it’s always confusing and not easy to understand: phase and polarity, and the difference between these two pickup parameters. So, stay tuned!
Until then ... keep on modding!