Hi, I'm Tom San Filippo the lead guitarist of the NY based Dead band called "Half Step" and I recently had my 25 year old Vantage VA900 modified to a Tiger set up. Being that the guitar was collecting dust and ironically had a similar blueprint to an Alembic it seemed to be a no brainer. So I commissioned luthier Joseph Jesselli on Long Island to do the work.(http://www.jesselli-guitars.com). After getting Waldo's preamp buffer and schematics, an SDS1 and a pair of Super IIs and all the other parts needed, Jesselli went to work. He and I are beyond pleased with the final outcome.
The original set up of the guitar had two humbuckers with separate coil taps, a pre amp boost and a 3 way toggle. Visually similar in looks to John K's backup Vantage, only it had one volume, one pre amp volume and one tone as opposed to two volumes and two tones and one tap switch. Joseph installed a 5 way switch and did some custom brass work for the inputs and pickups. The only part that I could not find was the 250k/500k ganged pot so we went with 500k/500k instead, so there is a touch of Wolf in there as well. Well the guitar is faithfully functional and it sounds and looks great! Thanks to Mike Wald for all his invaluable knowledge and input every step of the way. So here is where I hope you guys on the forum can help me out...
The only thing that bothered me was the gapping hole where the 3 way toggle used to be. So I had this idea to have a 25k mini blend pot installed that would blend the wet signal with the clean, giving me the ability to control the amount of effect level when the OBEL is active. So I ran it past Waldo and Jesselli and they both seemed to think that it could work but it has never been tried before. So Joe attempted to make it work without a schematic and soon realized that although it seemed possible it wasn't as easy as we thought because (to my ignorance) both clean and wet signals are never active at the same time. Duh!
Does anyone have an opinion on this addition to the classic tiger design? In theory it sounds useful and would be awesome to have that added control but if it compromises the circuit then it's obviously not worth the trouble. At least I have a dummy pot in the toggle's place, but it would be cool for it to actually have a purpose. Any help devising a schematic would be greatly appreciated! Thanks to everyone on this site for their passion.
The original set up of the guitar had two humbuckers with separate coil taps, a pre amp boost and a 3 way toggle. Visually similar in looks to John K's backup Vantage, only it had one volume, one pre amp volume and one tone as opposed to two volumes and two tones and one tap switch. Joseph installed a 5 way switch and did some custom brass work for the inputs and pickups. The only part that I could not find was the 250k/500k ganged pot so we went with 500k/500k instead, so there is a touch of Wolf in there as well. Well the guitar is faithfully functional and it sounds and looks great! Thanks to Mike Wald for all his invaluable knowledge and input every step of the way. So here is where I hope you guys on the forum can help me out...
The only thing that bothered me was the gapping hole where the 3 way toggle used to be. So I had this idea to have a 25k mini blend pot installed that would blend the wet signal with the clean, giving me the ability to control the amount of effect level when the OBEL is active. So I ran it past Waldo and Jesselli and they both seemed to think that it could work but it has never been tried before. So Joe attempted to make it work without a schematic and soon realized that although it seemed possible it wasn't as easy as we thought because (to my ignorance) both clean and wet signals are never active at the same time. Duh!
Does anyone have an opinion on this addition to the classic tiger design? In theory it sounds useful and would be awesome to have that added control but if it compromises the circuit then it's obviously not worth the trouble. At least I have a dummy pot in the toggle's place, but it would be cool for it to actually have a purpose. Any help devising a schematic would be greatly appreciated! Thanks to everyone on this site for their passion.
