Haddo-caster 5.0 - Controls

The control plate that I ordered off of eBay ($7 for a chunk of stainless steel) did not have the right sized holes. For nice, clean holes, through a thick piece of hard steel like this, the only solution is a unibit. This is a Greenlee stepper bit, with a little electrical tape on there to tell me how far to go. Note the 3-in-1 oil in the lower right - I used this for some lubrication and cooling. The last thing I would want to do is to have that bluish off-color look of overheated steel!

The nice thing about a unibit is that it cuts such small pieces. A regular bit might make those spirally sharp pieces of metal spin off, and scratch the surface. Many Telecasters use a chrome plated control plate, for that extra shine. However, my Glendale bridge is not really shiny, and has a similar brushed stainless steel look to it. This picture does not show it, but I needed to place a hole between the volume and tone controls. This is to add a little toggle switch that turns the bridge pickup on and off in the 1st and 2nd positions. The first position could be the neck only, or the neck and bridge combination, depending on the toggle switch. The neck+bridge is a standard Telecaster combination, and it would be a shame to miss out on it.

Here you can see the controls loaded. The toggle switch can also make all three pickups on at the same time. Basically, if you know the Stratocaster 5-way pickup selections, this is that plus two more (neck+bridge, and neck+middle+bridge). For you Telecaster purists, sorry - you are probably cringing now. (The middle pickup might be enough to turn you off.)

I got this from an older version of Fender's American Deluxe. In 1998, they came out with a three-pickup version that has a 5-way switch and a toggle switch. Many of their diagrams, like this one, can be downloaded from the Fender Support pages.

This took a little finangling to get the control plate to fit right. I had to take some of my perfectly cut control holes and file them a little to move things around. It is actually a tight fit in that cavity! The controls cover this up, but it bugs me that I had to do it. Before you wire this up, make sure the controls fit the cavity without modification of the plate. Here is a nearly complete image. Note the nasty finger prints, grime, and dust all over this thing! I had a little try out this evening, and things turned out quite nicely, more on that next post...

--gh