Guitar talk, and easy guitar lessons from beginner to jazz with Birdsnake Brown
I really like that cool strat quack tone on the 2nd and 4th setting. In this lesson I share tricks to setting your pickup height or even matching different pickups to make your stratocaster have that quack sound on the in between settings.
There is quite a bit of talk online about Stratocasters not playing well with Dumble style amps, so I made this video to show how I set my Dumble clone to get a great strat tone. I think the whole video is just the neck pickup which is an Amalfitano 60s style.
I go through different tones with the clean and overdrive, as well as the bright switch, mid boost, and PAB boost.
I can always get a great clean with the Strat and Dumble but sometimes when I’m playing live I struggle to get a balance with the overdrive channel.
I wired up my Stratocaster with the super-switch so that I could get all of my favorite pickup settings. Neck, Neck + Middle, Neck + Bridge, Bridge + Middle, and Bridge. I also put the a treble bleed circuit on a push-pull knob… when it’s in the “in” position there is no bleed. I usually don’t like the treble bleed but it’s still a cool option to have.
Here’s a really ugly diagram for the super switch wiring:
I consider the Pro Track to be the absolute best single coild sized humbucker ever made. It’s another piece of gear that I sold once and the rebought.
I had one of these in my Eric Johnson strat and I loved it. It gets really close to the sound of a PAF style humbucker. Eventually, I went through a phase where I decided to make my Stratocasters as “authentic” as possible. I also had a hook up on pickups made by Jerry Amalfitano, so at the time I felt like I didn’t need the DP188 anymore. I was wrong.
About a year ago I bought another Pro Track and put it in my EJ strat again… it is awesome! It sounds like any great humbucker should sound but it fits in a strat sized package.
DiMarzio Pro Track DP188: https://amzn.to/2Kyuwli
My goal is to share my love of guitar and jazz music with as many people as possible. I have a whole curriculum of lessons in production, and whether you are a beginner with your first guitar or someone who’s dedicated to a lifetime of jazz studies, there is something for you.
I’ve been a professional musician for 21 years, and I’ve been playing guitar since I was a kid. I have been teaching one-on-one lessons on and off since the early 2000s and recently I decided to start publishing my lessons online so that I can share the joy of guitar with as many people as possible.
I love playing the guitar! The challenge of learning something new and the accomplishment of perfecting it is just about my favorite thing in life. There is nothing more fulfilling than learning something new on guitar, working on it until it’s easy, and then integrating it into your style.