My Fender Stratocaster just turned fifteen. Or maybe only five? It has spent the last ten years stripped down in its gig bag, after all. See, i had a plan. I wanted to turn it into a single (bridge) pickup guitar. I had Warmoth make me a custom pickguard, bought a Fender noiseless pickup, gathered all the components i needed — and then, life happened.

So much time has passed that my guitar is now a historical artefact of the time before Fender moved the production of its Standard Series from Mexico to Indonesia. They don’t even sell red Stratocasters with maple necks in Europe anymore! I guess now is as good a time as any to finally mod my guitar.

But first, i had to remember what i actually wanted to do. I’d bought two CTS volume pots: a 250 kΩ, which is standard for single-coil pickups, and a 500 kΩ, which is more commonly associated with humbuckers. When i found a TBX tone control at the bottom of my parts bin, it suddenly made sense. I’d wanted to emulate Eric Clapton’s soloing tone on the cheap.

The TBX tone control is essentially two potentiometers stacked on top of each other, creating a unique tonal palette:

• from position 0 to 5, it cuts the treble using the 250 kΩ pot and a 2200 pF capacitor;
• on the center detent, it’s (almost) out of the circuit and lets the pickup’s natural voicing come through;
• from position 5 to 10, it cuts the bass using the 500 kΩ pot and a 82 kΩ resistor.

In other words: it allows you to go from jazz comping tones to blues soloing sounds in one fell swoop.

The noiseless pickup is pretty hot for a single-coil, so the 500 kΩ volume pot should be a great match. Seymour Duncan doesn’t have a wiring diagram for a “single-coil one-volume one-TBX no-selector” guitar, which is anything you have to know about this weird idea, but i found salvation on the Strat Talk forum.

My soldering skills were rusty at first, but by the time i was connecting all the grounds, my joints were shiny and round. (I got extra practice after accidentally breaking a volume pot while reassembling the guitar — fun.) It was satisfying to find ways to weave the components through the TBX’s legs and around its body to minimize wire runs and keep things tidy.

Even though the cavity was already coated with conductive paint, i lined it with copper tape for additional shielding against electrical interference. I also packed it with cross-linked polyethylene foam to dampen any unwanted resonance. After screwing in the pickguard and stringing up a fresh set of 09-42 D’Addario XL Nickel Wound strings, the guitar was finally awake from its ten-year sleep.

Which means it’s finally time to christen it. I always name my instruments after fruits, and this one is cherry red, so it had to be “Cerise”. The first notes were incredibly satisfying. The TBX tone control delivers exactly what i’d hoped for — rolling it back gives me compressed tones perfect for rhythm work, while cranking it forward opens up the high-end for singing lead lines. The noiseless pickup lives up to its name, staying quiet even under high gain, yet retains that essential Stratocaster bite.

Cerise is a surprisingly versatile little guitar that’s become an absolute joy to play. After ten years of patient waiting, it’s finally ready to make music. Now, to make up for lost time…