People who follow me on any social network have probably seen me refer to my Notcaster from time to time. My Notcaster is a guitar I assembled using only components purchased on eBay. I will no doubt write more about the guitar here one day in my Scarebear’s guitars article series. Essentially, the Notcaster is a guitar that looks like a Telecaster, but isn’t. The initial guitar was purchased on eBay as a brand new guitar for $27. So you can imagine the quality of the guitar. Over time I’ve changed many components but one thing remained from the original guitar. The wiring. Thanks to Guitar Sauce (sadly, no longer around), that has finally changed. Luckily, it changed for the better.
I discovered Guitar Sauce on the Guitarist Guild forums originally. In the initial thread, what caught my eye was the mention of free shipping in Australia. I live in Australia and I like free shipping! When I dug deeper I discovered that Guitar Sauce was actually an easy drive away from where I live. This just kept on getting better. I made some enquiries (mainly on account of my inability to use a soldering iron and/or understand electronics in any way, shape or form) and before I knew it, I was getting a quote to not only rewire my Notcaster, but to rewire it the way I’ve always wanted it.
See, readers of my 52 Guitars series from last year may recall that I’m not a fancy man. In fact, the more basic the guitar the better for me. I don’t need tone controls. As right or wrong as it may be, I get tone from my pedals and/or amplifier. Rarely do I adjust tone on my guitar. I may be missing out on a lot there, but I don’t care. I only want/use volume controls. So on my Notcaster, I wanted two volume controls. One for each pickup. Thanks to Guitar Sauce, that’s what I now have.
Not only that, I now have improved tone! I was hoping for that, but I wasn’t counting on that. So I guess I lucked out there.
With the new pots on my guitar (which only just fit because the original pots in my guitar were tiny and cheap), the volume is much more defined (especially on the original and cheap neck pickup). Not only that, but because of the new pots the sound type that each pickup creates is a lot more defined. Whether I’m playing clean or overdriven, the sound difference between the bridge pickup (which is a Wilkinson humbucker) and the neck pickup is simply amazing. Previously I only noticed a volume difference between the two pickups. Now it’s almost like I have three guitars in one (bridge, bridge/neck combined and neck). I don’t have any old sound files to compare with, but I have created the sound file below so you can hear the different tones that my Notcaster is now capable of.
One more thing that I noticed straight away with this rewire was the noise the guitar makes when not playing. There is none. In the guitar’s previous life, the static that existed when simply turning the volume or tone knobs was annoying. I am so glad to no longer hear that. All I hear is awesome.
