Active Electronics
Active electronics can add a lot of fun to a project, as well as save you a lot of soldering. Options range from simple buffers and pre-amps to tone controls to on-board effects.
One of the fun things about building electric guitars is wiring them up. Factory wiring tends to be simple, minimizing the amount of fussy handwork required. Many manufacturers keep strictly to 'classic' designs, seldom if ever changing anything. These designs are generally simplistic, often crude or even stupid, and sometimes outright flawed. There is no need for you to do this. I don't. Here are some of the things I have done over the years. I don't claim to have invented any of this, although some of these schematics I have never seen anywhere else, and had to derive them myself.
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The subject of capacitors in guitars is rife with fraud and nonsense. The fact is, the capacitor is not IN the signal path, it is very much OUT of it, and only has any effect when you select it, which is probably pretty seldom. The capacitor is part of a low-pass ( or rarely high-pass ) filter, basically a frequency-dependent leak to ground. It is not making 'tone', it is taking it away. The type of capacitor that you use for this really doesn't matter at all, as long as you don't use a polarized one the wrong way. Orange Drop, oil-in-paper, film, ceramic -- makes no difference. Anyone who claims it does either has a very vivid imagination or is trying to sell you something.
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