I have a rule – be sure your favorite cat matches your favorite electric guitar.
I bought a brand new Fender Squire Telecaster guitar in 1996 with the purpose of messing with it’s guts – and having fun while doing so. Sometimes projects linger on, and some even take twenty-four years of off-and-on tinkering to take to the next level.
The very first thing I did with this guitar was clamp it to a Bridgeport milling machine and hog out a place for a rock-and-roll-ready, twin-coil humbucker pickup. Being the kind of maker I was back then, I mounted the pickup to the guitar body with pre-abused drywall screws, and some bicycle inner tube for cushioning. Revisiting my work two decades later, I decided to let functioning humbuckers lie, as it’s still holding in place today, and if it ain’t broke, I don’t bother to fix it.
1996 was a crazy year: we threw humbuckers into stuff like we just didn’t care. While I can’t recall where this pickup originally came from, I’d guess it was from a previously destroyed cheap guitar, leaving me with a few useable components. As low-end and rusty as this pickup may be, it sure sounds good to me!
I also thought it would be interesting to add a ‘kill switch’ so I could deliver Morse-code like pulsing sounds. The guitar player could cut the sound by flipping a switch, strum, then re-activate the switch, eliminating the attack portion of the sound. Furthermore this method could be used with effects to make synth-like sounds. A quick trip to the local Radioshack did not disappoint – I was able to find a few different buttons and switches that I could play with.
I realized that I would be able to toggle the sound on-and-off much faster if I were to install two switches: a toggle switch to cut off the sound, and momentary switch I could press rapidly to reactivate it. After figuring out what I wanted to do, I brazenly cut some holes in the steel switch plate.
Nearly every project I’ve worked on is a mix of a lot of fun and a little frustration. I suppose if I don’t get frustrated I’m not really pushing myself or learning much.
I was able to get everything to work pretty well back in 1997, but the guitar only had a three-way switch. This worked fine to select all the options for two pickups – top, bottom, and both. However for three pickups, the switch was unable to offer the combination choices I wanted, particularly since my new middle pickup was a lot louder than the originally equipped single-coils. So with some recently acquired parts, I opened the guitar back up. My soldering from twenty years ago was a horrific to sight to see. While my skills have improved with all the TIG welding I’ve put in, the reworked wiring still isn’t pretty – although I did make things a lot better. As a friend on mine once said “It’s all about heat transfer”!
All the bad soldering in this picture was done twenty years ago – don’t judge me!
I was confused about the wiring at first, as I have a somewhat sophomoric understanding of electronics, however once I separated things into sections I began to understand. Each of the three pickups get soldered to a five way switch, which selects the top pickup, the top and middle, all three, the bottom two, and the lowest pickup. From there it goes to two potentiometers – a tone and volume control. Adding a capacitor turns a plain-old volume pot into a tone pot. These two pots run in a parallel circuit. Typically the circuit would then travel to the plug as well as ground, but here’s where my kill-switches get added; a toggle switch and a push-to-disconnect switch. These cross between the positive and negative part of the circuit, literally causing a short circuit, which cuts all sound from the pickups when both switches are on. I found that if I used the switch to simply disconnect the positive side of the circuit, the guitar would make a lot of noise instead of no noise. Trial-and-error for the win!
Here’s a drawing I made of the wiring, after it was all done.
Once I had everything working with all the guts hanging out, I was ready for the next stage of the project: putting it back into the guitar, having it not work, swearing, re-opening the case, wiggling everything, and repeating the process until all the bugs were worked out. Anyone who has done a project such as this knows this to be a mandatory step.
Here you can see the added humbucker pickup, the upgraded switch, the kill switch and the re-activation button.
What do You Call That Thing?
All great quests begin with a bit of soul searching. What name do you give your electric guitar?
I can’t resist giving inanimate objects of spiritual significance silly names. My customized guitar needed a name that sounded like a viking weapon with a legendary history, even though I haven’t really done anything with this axe at all, other than mess with it’s internals. Besides, a soon-to-be-legendary guitar needs a name that inspires me to try and make interesting music. Most importantly, the name needs at least one umlaut. I brainstormed in my journal for a while, and on the ides of September of 2019, I found such a name.
Wäyvormör! Pronounced “WAY-for-more”. From what I understand from limited Internet research these umlauts are actually legit and help with the correct pronunciation of the name. It’s a take on the phrase ‘wave-former’, which is what this guitar does – it makes waves: sound waves, and potentially even a few metaphorical waves.
Being a graphic designer I wanted to make my guitar unique as well as let everyone know this axe was special. I chose my favorite font of the moment, Avenir Black. YES, I’m that exciting.
What’s in a name? And where do you emblazon said name? And how many Umlauts can I cram into the name?
I downloaded an image of a similar guitar (albeit a much more expensive one), imported it into Illustrator, sized the image to 38.5 inches – the same length of my guitar – and played around with graphics until I was happy. I also played around with the spelling of the name: I dropped the ‘y’ and added a third umlaut, making it even more legendary looking. I printed a mock-up of the graphic to test out before using the vinyl plotter at work. I decided against the upper graphic as I feel like it will wear off when played. The same may happen for the lower graphic, but one of the nice things about vinyl is that if things don’t work out, the vinyl peels off fairly easily.
Looks nice!
You can hardly tell I butchered this classic.
Enough Theory: How Does it Play?
It’s time to ROCK! Here is an example of the cutoff switch (as well as the added humbucker pickup) in action. Please keep in mind that I’m primarily a bass player, and I promise to not quit my day job.
Note that I had to construct my own audience of faithful robot fans. That’s Merry c361, Emma m385, and Ivo a379 in the background.
Here’s a better video of me actually shredding, which most will prefer over my previous chicken scratchin’.
Conclusions?
There are no conclusions when it comes to Wävörmör! I will most likely implement more ways to screw up this semi-classic in the years to come, but for now I’m just happy I can get it to make noises. I very much look forward to using it as an element in my next album.