Tone Shaper for Stratocaster

Step 1: Disassembling

My MIM Fender Stratocaster with strings, pickguard, all electronic parts, volume and tone knobs, jack removed

Close-Up:

Step 2: Mount the Tone Shaper onto the pickguard

The Tone Shaper fits easily into any strat style body pickguard without the need for any drilling or modifications. For me, I replaced the original white pickguard with a cream white pickguard I got from All Parts.

I have to scalp the tone and volume holes of the pickguard slightly with a penknife for the tone shaper to fit through. It's a breeze though, nothing technical at all. The opening for the 5 way selector on the pickguard fits in perfectly without the need for any scalping. Great!

Step 3: Connecting the wires of Pickups to terminal

Your pickups will each have a hot and a ground, so you’ll attach these six pickup wires to the six pickup connection points, making sure to follow the labeling on the board.

HOT = the hot wire (typically white)
RTN (Return) = the ground wire (typically black)

Step 4: Connecting the Jack and Ground

The two jack leads are attached to the small terminal block:

JACK OUT = the hot wire (typically white)

JACK GND = the ground wire (typically black)

GROUND CONNECTIONS: Your guitar will most likely have a bridge ground, which is a wire coming from the tremolo claw in the rear of the guitar (or directly from the bridge if your guitar has a hardtail bridge), and attached to a ground point, such as to the back of a pot. Assuming your guitar has such a wire, then you’ll attach it to one of the two GND points on the ToneShaper.

From this:

To this:

Step 5: Choose Your Preferred Settings

Now, you are ready to instantly modify your strat sound without the mess of soldering! All it takes is a couple of flicks to the switches and it's done!

For me, I opted for the Blender Wiring made famous by Lindy Fralin. Lots of players have added a mini-toggle or push/pull to their guitar so that they could have both the neck and bridge pickups on simultaneously. But Lindy’s idea to use a pot provides more flexibility, since you can add just a little of the neck or bridge, or have it full on, or anything in between.

The bottom control is the blender control, and turning it fully clockwise (CW) removes it from the circuit entirely. Think true bypass, though this is a little different. Same idea though. But in any case, fully CW means it’s not doing anything.

When you roll the blender counter clockwise (CCW), it starts to add in either the neck or the bridge pickup. It’s connected to both, so it works on either. If you have the neck pickup selected with the 5-way, then the blender adds in the bridge. If you have the neck/middle selected, then it still adds in the bridge. Either a little, or fully, depending on how far you turn the knob.

Select the bridge pickup, or the bridge/middle, and now the blender adds in the neck. So you can add a little neck into the bridge to warm it up, or a little bridge into the neck to make it a little spankier. You can get the neck and bridge fully on, like a Tele in the middle position, which is a very useful tone. You can get all three pickups on, which is also a useful tone.

I use a capicitor value of .069uF for my master tone pot. This roll-off lots of treble and gives my strat a super dark mellow tone. I probably change to a lower value the next time as it's too mellow for my liking. No problem though cause all it takes is just a flick of the switch!

I also change my bridge pickup to a Tesla VR-1 for that distinctive vintage tone. It's simply brilliant! Sounds great overdriven. For a tele style, clear punch vibe, I mix the neck pickup with my bridge Tesla VR-1 made possible by the blender wiring. Sweet!

Step 6: Reassembly