I got a great mod a few years back, a Mexican Telecaster to dress to the 9's. A customer brought in his Clapton Strat for some work and in conversation, he said he'd love to have the overdrive chip from the Clapton Strat in his Tele. That is a pre-amp, powered by a 9V Battery and controlled by the bottom knob on the strat. As it's turned up, the nice creamy overdrive kicks in. He got the components on E-Bay, along with new tuners and the cool perloid pick guard, and I set to work.
After disassembling the instrument, I needed to route some space to accommodate the circuit board and battery and of course, the inevitable extra wires. Next, I had to rewire mini potentiometers to make room for the extra pre-amp boost control. Instead of the usual 250K pot for volume, I wired in a 25K to handle the post end of the overdrive circuit. For more fun, I replaced the 3 Way switch with a 4 Way switch, adding two options when both pickups are selected; Parallel, and Series. The customer supplied me with new black tuners, control knobs, and the perloid pick guard to dress it up.
I put the guitar in his hands, he turned it up, played with the controls, played his heart out and smiled with eyes sparkle!
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