Fender Modern Player Marauder mods?

[Dollywitch]

I love this guitar to bits, the neck is great for jangles and shoegaze and the humbucker in rear gives some really nice high gain tones. But the other riple bucker positions, while useful enough for me to not want to swap out for a regular HB lack a bit of character - it feels as if they're under a blanket somewhat.

I've heard a couple of suggestions - first off flipping the TB around entirely. This would bring the bridge single coil close to the actual bridge, for starters. Secondly, a TBX pot. Most TBX pots are 250k, however, until the 1M Pot kicks in meaning I'd lose the exact tone I currently have as it uses 500k pots AFAIK. At the same time having a 1M pot would give it a mroe authentic JM sound in the neck.

Any other ideas? I should probably look at strings too

[alexpigment]

I agree about the TBX tone pot. I've used them, but they're really only ideal if you have one pickup that is best served with a 250k pot. I also don't really find them to be the best solution for a situation where one of the pickups needs a different pot value than the other.

I would suggest trying the 1M pots and see how it sounds. If you find that one pickup sounds perfect and the other is too bright, you can put in a resistor from one of the pickups to darken it up a bit. See the section called "Faking out your single coils with resistors":

https://www.fralinpickups.com/2018/10/1 ... itars-101/

[hwestman]

I love this guitar to bits, the neck is great for jangles and shoegaze and the humbucker in rear gives some really nice high gain tones. But the other riple bucker positions, while useful enough for me to not want to swap out for a regular HB lack a bit of character - it feels as if they're under a blanket somewhat.

I've heard a couple of suggestions - first off flipping the TB around entirely. This would bring the bridge single coil close to the actual bridge, for starters. Secondly, a TBX pot. Most TBX pots are 250k, however, until the 1M Pot kicks in meaning I'd lose the exact tone I currently have as it uses 500k pots AFAIK. At the same time having a 1M pot would give it a mroe authentic JM sound in the neck.

Any other ideas? I should probably look at strings too

Wouldn't you hit 500K on the way from the detent point to fully open? And if that is the case you should be able to replicate your 500K tone somewhere in between.

[alexpigment]

Wouldn't you hit 500K on the way from the detent point to fully open? And if that is the case you should be able to replicate your 500K tone somewhere in between.

While that is certainly true, I think the whole point of the detent in the TBX tone control is to quickly find the sweet spot. Sure, a tone control is there for a reason - to fine tune the tone - but when you're switching pickups in a live situation, you don't want to also have to change the tone knob too much at the same time, especially when you're fighting against the physical resistance of the detent in the pot. In other words, I don't think it's a petty thing to want the detent to be at 500k rather than 250k. Likewise, I don't think it's petty for someone to want their ideal tone to be all the way open at 10 on the tone knob. These are both positions you can find without looking.

I can almost hear people over at the TDPRI moaning at my statement, but hey, I've got 20+ years of experience playing guitar, and I have an opinion too

[hwestman]

Wouldn't you hit 500K on the way from the detent point to fully open? And if that is the case you should be able to replicate your 500K tone somewhere in between.

While that is certainly true, I think the whole point of the detent in the TBX tone control is to quickly find the sweet spot. Sure, a tone control is there for a reason - to fine tune the tone - but when you're switching pickups in a live situation, you don't want to also have to change the tone knob too much at the same time, especially when you're fighting against the physical resistance of the detent in the pot. In other words, I don't think it's a petty thing to want the detent to be at 500k rather than 250k. Likewise, I don't think it's petty for someone to want their ideal tone to be all the way open at 10 on the tone knob. These are both positions you can find without looking.

I can almost hear people over at the TDPRI moaning at my statement, but hey, I've got 20+ years of experience playing guitar, and I have an opinion too

K,

Your guitar - your choices!!! And I'm cerainly not trying to belittle them.

I can totally understand the desire to have the fully open volume at a certain resistance. As a matter of fact I got a wiring kit from Mad Hatter that allows you to try out 250K, 500K or 750K without soldering.

Tuning the internals including tone control cap values (I like 015) and treble bleeds (or 50s wiring) makes a huge difference.