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Doing Things Wrong

Silvertone 1457 "Super 63" Guitar

This is the very first guitar I ever built, a hot-rodded version of the old Silvertone 1457. This guitar uses every passive wiring trick in the book. Four - count 'em - four lipstick pickups, wired in series. Six-way pickup selector, and two phase switches. The neck is from AllParts, I paid way too much for it. The finish is glittery acrylic lacquer from the auto parts store. The knobs are from Radio Shack - remember them?

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The aluminum nut has very deep square string slots to allow for the rather extreme angle to the tuners. Just like the original. Finish is rattle-can automotive acrylic lacquer.

I found my old wiring diagram - every trick in the book

6-String Guitars, Body - Built, Body - Hollow, Body - Masonite/Plywood, Body - Tolex Binding, Danelectro, Electronics - Passive, Guitars, Neck - Bought, Projects,

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Passive Distortion

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This is a selectable onboard passive distortion circuit using clipping diodes wired to ground. All solid-state 'artificial' distortion circuits, no matter how expensive, have something like this at their core. Instead of requiring power, this circuit uses the output of the pickups themselves and therefore should work better with higher output pickups. It uses a 2-pole 4-position rotary switch to select various combinations of diodes for different degrees of distortion, or none. You could also select one of the diode combinations and wire it to a push-pull switch for a single level of distortion, or even wire it to a separate 'volume' control to control the resistance to ground and therefore the amount of distortion. The diodes cost pennies. I have yet to actually try this one, but when I get back to building six-strings, I definitely want to.

More: Passive Distortion ...

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