ACME ToneShaper

[Bengal65]

Has anyone tried one of these out on a top load Strat guitar? They seem really cool with the possiblities of tone shaping and keeping the clean look about the pickguard.

http://www.acmeguitarworks.com/ToneShaper_for_Stratocaster__P2032C215.cfm

The only drawback is that if you want to adjust the tone very much is that you have to remove the pickguard to get to the switches. On the positive side, no mini switches or push pull pots to deal with. Plus, I like how clean the wiring is done. No soldering

I'm going to set mine up with one of the Tone's as a blender pot and assign different cap values to each of the pickups.

I've got one coming, so I'll post the feed back after I wire it up!

Can't wait!:ROTF:

[Learn Guitars]

That looks interesting. It looks like it could be used on back loader with specifically designed cavaty.

[Bengal65]

Mike, it's 4-1/16" long and 1-7/8" wide on the board with the mounted pots. The switch sits next to it. It took me about 15 mins. to install and wire it up and set the switches for the caps and blender circuit. I haven't put it in a guitar yet. I'm waiting on one right now. I'll post the updates. The instructions are fantastic! Clean and neat installation! I like it so far, I'm thinking of getting another soon.

[Bengal65]

Ok, I like it. They are going in every guitar I can fit them in. The instructions were pretty easy to follow and were color coded. At first, I made a mistake with the capacitor loading and had too many switches on I had like .212uF The caps are in series in each bank. There are two of them in case you choose to retain 2 tone controls. I chose the blender circuit which deletes the tone bank switches near the last tone pot. It's now the "Fralin" tone blender knob which blends the bridge pickup in with the other pups regardless as to where the selector switch is. The setup I have is the Master Volume, Master Tone and (Blender) or Volume mix pot for the bridge.

I get some real neat combinations by mixing the bridge in with the neck pickup or bridge with neck. Cool sounds.

Pros: 1. Can select almost any combination of switching and tone capacitor selections from the CTS micro switches.
2. Clean neat wiring and no solder required.
3. Retains the surface mounted control configuration.

Cons: 1. You have to remove the pickguard or at least lift it for switch access (for pickguard mounted pups) to access the switches. (You would have to do this anyway with soldered in caps.)
2. I can't think of any.

Pictures are from my new Fender AVRI 70's Strat, which is my donor for a Ritchie Blackmore conversion project I'm working on.

[Newc]

Mission Control!

Something about that makes my pants shrink :drool: