Meet Nigel…

TonyFlyingSquirrel

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Meet Nigel.
Nigel came to me recently without a home by way of a gracious neighbor who knows what I do with instruments. Nigel didn’t like being just another run of the mill Southern California “S” styled guitar, so Nigel and hi had a chat. It was agreed that the normal styled pickguard in white would be discarded for a custom cut pickguard by my friends and former employer Warmoth Guitar products. I will make a very important disclaimer for their benefit to save them the phone calls. I personally cut the bridge pickup slot. I ordered the pickguard with the bridge pickup cut omitted specifically with the intent of custom placing this pickup position. The inspiration behind this was two fold. The first, so I could get more brightness overall, and second, so I could custom filter the brightness of the bridge pickup only by having the tone filter affect it, and NOT the neck and middle pickups. This will allow me to custom filter just the bridge pickup when in the bridge only position, or to impact the influence of the bridge pickup when played in conjunction with the middle pickup. Think of the in between position like a humbucker with its two coils spread far apart, with a tone control on just one of them. Since tone controls are passive, meaning that when you turn it down, it just bleeds treble to ground, so having it set up this way allows me to filter off softly the harshness, or dial it back in, to taste as needed. Add a black PRS style bridge with a push in arm for one of the smoothest feeling “S” style tremolo, along with locking tuners with an 18:1 ratio, finish all appointments of this instrument in Spinal Tap “Smell The Glove” or “None More” black with some beautiful sounding EMG SV pickups, and Nigel is quite happy. Thanks again to my generous neighbors who informed me that a family member had the body, neck, original pickups and hardware laying around in surplus context, and wanted to know if I wanted them. I thankfully agreed to adopt Nigel and his little brother, a more economy/Costco version which will become wall art in the shop.
Major props to my sis Natalie for a “Smack yo Gramma right in the mouth” delicious meal for Nigel and I, called Hoppin John’s, which is pictured here as well. It’s full of Polska kielbas, black eyed peas, diced/caramelized onions, chicken broth(from paste concentrate) and collard greens. If you’ve never had collard greens, you probably grew up in a town with more than one zip code. My town barely had a zip code, and this is just good eats!

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Is the custom bridge pickup location something new, or have you experimented with it before in other guitars?
 
I like them, they’re sweet, balanced, a touch less output than say the SA’s. Not as bright as I would have expected, but then again, I’m playing them through the same Bogner Uberschaal and Diezel VH4 that I normally use for my Humbucker shredsticks.
 
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The bridge pickup location is an experiment.

I understand your tone control is a passive one without any buffer amp, so the loading of tone control will affect bridge and middle pickups equally when position 2 is selected. I hope you will post your results and conclusions.
 
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