With the ‘000’ Hommage to Tony Zemaitis ‘out-of-the-way; so to speak, and garnering super-positive reactions, I now allowed myself the expenses for another guitar build, this time not an hommage, or imitation of anything, but rather my ‘little boy in the toy store’ guitar: WHATEVER YOU WANT, YOU CAN BUILD IN THERE! I promised myself. This is also when I started my ‘list of bitchings‘, a list of any and all misgivings, frustrations, criticism, and poor experiences I had with existing guitars. This turned into an ever-growing list of quick notes and comments, a list to myself of DO’s and mostly DON’Ts, for example I absolutely wanted three humbucking pickups, because of the sonic possibilities, and because three-pickup-guitars just always looked cooler…
BUT I insisted to myself: NO forest of micro-switches, and NO rotary switches either. Thank Heavens I found a Strat-style lever switch, multi-decked! THAT plus my tested in the ‘000’ Mood-knob would certainly give me the sounds I wanted, and all organically accessible via a ‘normal’ control harness of one switch and four knobs: an ‘Add cream and sugar to taste’ kinda control circuit. ‘For MORE of a certain sonic flavor, turn corresponding knob to the right, and for less, turn it to the left. End of instruction.’ Organic, intuitive, concentrate on playing, no tap-dancing or feeling for small switches needed. To achieve this ‘fly-by-wire’ operation, I had to completely re-think the whole hookup of pickups, pots and switch, and I again thanked the thorough lessons on 1930’s hifi thinking I had received from my genius father, who had been building tube amps before WWII disrupted his young years.
By hooking up everything the wrong way around I was able to control 3 pickups with two volumes, one master-Tone and one master-Mood knob.
