Born To Be Mild

You've seen the #1. It dresses in all back. It has three saddles, like a hard-rockin' Coelacanth that the Telecaster is. Straplocks, because you toss the axe around when you're rockin'. A scrunchie on the neck, color-coordinated with the body, like Greg Howe does. Low action and a straight neck. It's a rocker, a bad boy.

But lately, I've noticed. Specifically Wednesday night, playing out. It's ... nice. In a way that the bridge pickup of a Tele caster is Just. Not. Supposed. To. Be. It's think and understated.

I know at least part of the problem. I have it as my country guitar. I have Slinky .009s on it, and especially with single-coil pickups, the smaller the string, the less initial signal. I remember wondering "What happened to my guitar?!?" when I dropped from the .012s I originally had on it. Dropping the strings basically castrated the thing.

But I don't know that I ever got the bridge pickup to a one-true position once I installed the Wilkinson. I've raised it some. And I'm playing on Friday evening. Church crowd, so I won't necessarily get to be a fire-breather.

OK, I'm almost never happy with my mix, and I was going for the clean patches on my multi-effects unit instead of the high-gain ones. I have potential mitigating circumstances galore, should I think I need them. But I think there's more to it.

I just got the SX as a #2, a spare guitar so I can mod one and always have a second around. I am now convinced that the modifications will happen to the #1, and they will include the following.

• 4-way switch, so I can get both serial and parallel
• push-pull on volume pot so I can switch phase on the neck pickup, effectively giving me Baja switching
• a no-load tone pot so I can go direct out
• a black pickup cover
because how much more black could it be? That much more.

And also .010 strings. Give the pickups more to work with.