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Gear on Album one
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Pickguard wiring of vintage Schecter Strat
Posted in: Mark Knopfler gear, guitar in general by Ingo on October 20, 2008
Here is an original drawing from Schecter Guitar Research showing the wiring layout of a vintage Schecter Stratocaster pickguard with those F500T pick-ups. I found it in an old German book about guitar electronics from the 80ies, and it seems to be pretty rare so I want to share it with you. It is the same layout that should originally have been in all of Mark Knopfler’s Schecter Strats.

An interesting little detail is the little capacitor and an additional resistor at the volume poti. The capacitor is 0.001 uF (= 1 nF), the resistor is 150 kOhms. The 0.001uF cap is the same value as you can find on a vintage Fender Telecaster. Its purpose is to prevent treble loss when the volume is reduced. With the cap alone you will even get some treble boost when rolling back the volume poti. The resistor equalizes this effect, something you might want to try out since it costs only a few cents. You have to solder the cap and the resistor in parallel from the wiper (middle terminal) to the input terminal (the one with the cable from the pick-up selector). That’s all.
Also note the value of the tone cap. It is 0.01uF. This is much less than Fender (Fender vintage would be 0.1uF, later Fenders had 0.05uF). For this reason rolloing back the tone poti will give you more of a midrange sound compared to Fender.
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Hi,
are those switches 1 pole or 2 pole? And do I need a 2 pole switch for tapped pickups?
Comment by TheWizzard — 15. April 2009 @ 17:04
They are double 2 pole ( 2 x a/off/b) but a single a/off/b switch would do here.
Comment by Ingo — 17. April 2009 @ 13:46
Thank you very much Ingo!
I´ve to replace a pot from my schecter, and I don´t know why it doesn´t sound anymore, sure I made something wrong in resoldering wires, and I was unable to find an scheme for the schecter.
I´ll try with this one, thanks again.
Your blog is very very useful.
Regards from Spain.
Comment by Antonio — 24. April 2009 @ 08:56
Ups, I forgot ask you something.
I haven´t got the metal piece under the pickguard, so, i have to solder ground wires in the pots itselves, right?
thanks again.
Comment by Antonio — 24. April 2009 @ 08:59
yes, they need to be connected unless there is a metal foil or if the pickguard itself is of metal and is conductive.
Comment by Ingo — 24. April 2009 @ 18:23
thanks, I will do it like that.
Comment by Antonio — 26. April 2009 @ 14:15
I´ver try to connect them, but I don´t know wich cable is the one that it´s connected from the volume poti to dpdt, (I mean, the yellow is marked with pots, the purple has some x´s, but this cable has stripes)
Can you help me please?
thanks again.
Comment by Antonio — 26. April 2009 @ 17:39
I bought this no name Strat at a garage sale and pulled the pickguard to find what I believe to be F500T’s. Is there an email address I can send pix to for verification? Thanks, Bob
Comment by Bob — 23. May 2009 @ 16:55
Hi Bob, you can use inra311(at)versanet.de to send me pics.
Comment by Ingo — 23. May 2009 @ 19:32
Hi,
for example I put the switch of the middle pickup down, and the switch on the bridge pickup up (both are tapped pickups), are the pickups out-of-phase then?
Comment by TheWizzard — 3. September 2009 @ 22:23
Hi Ingo, very nice blog! I’m trying to recreate this setup on my Dallas Schecter strat with SD SSL-4’s, a 5-way super switch and a push-pull pot. Any idea on the spec of the vol/tone pots? e.g. 250K or 500K? Linear or log? Thanks!
Comment by Dustparticle — 19. December 2009 @ 05:53
I think they were 250k, log I guess.
Comment by Ingo — 19. December 2009 @ 09:18