 |
BluesTone 4™
DIY Kit Version For Blues Players!
 Raise
or lower neck or bridge pickups, electronically!
Have you ever raised or lowered the bridge or neck pickups whilst on a
Tele®
‘middle’ setting... and by doing so found some nice alternative versions
of this tone? You can make it brighter - bridge pickup dominating, or
warmer - neck pickup dominant.
But the down side is you can only have one of those tones at a time,
without re-adjusting the pickup heights to get the original back!
Well, BluesTone™ can do all of this electronically. Yes, it’ll give
you all three variants, and again, in single coil or humbucker
tonalities... just by turning a switch!
How do I get BluesTone™ Fitted?
You can do it yourself or ask your guitar dealer or technician to do it
for you.
Click
here for a MP3 sample of the awesome BluesTone™
in action!
New
For Winter 2004 The BluesTone™ Tone System
 BluesTone™
is a new design developed and expanded from the original BluesTone™ tone
module.
Utilising a four position ‘click’ switch, the Pro version serves to blend
the neck and bridge pickups in some pretty unique ways, providing your
guitar with sounds not thought possible from this style of instrument.
Imagine not one Peter Green sound... but four exciting variants with
single coil or humbucker-like tonalities! Also, a Tele®-like‘middle’
sound... but with two extra variants also in single coil or humbucker
tonality, at the turn of a knob! Think Albert Collins and BB King.
You can also use BluesTone™ to provide single coil or humbucker like
tones of all your regular ‘five-way selector switch’ tones too!
BluesTone Is One Of The Most Exciting Tone Upgrades For Blues/Rock
Guitarists Ever Devised Hear a sound sample on our website The beauty of
BluesTone is... it’s completely passive and silent!
ALL ORIGINAL TONES STILL AVAILABLE THERE ARE NO BATTERIES REQUIRED
THERE IS NO HISS OR HUM CAUSED
Which
Other Instruments Can I Use?
The BluesTone 4 Tone System In MultiTone™-Pro 4 is mainly designed
for Strats® utilising a conventional scratch plate with all the controls
and pickups mounted onto it.
As for Strat®-alike guitars with the pickups and controls mounted onto the
body, you would need to take your guitar to a guitar tech for
installation. This type of guitar should have conventional controls, E.I.
Volume, tone, tone and five way selector switch. If the instrument only
has a volume and tone control, then an extra hole will need to be cut to
facilitate the 6 way selector switch, which is central to the BluesTone™
system. You would also need to ensure that the control cavity has enough
room for the switch.
Award-Session® does not undertake to cut holes or offer any routing to
enlarge control cavities in customers guitars.
We are working to establish a network of regional approved installation
techs who will be able to offer much more specialist services than we can
on a remote basis.
As for Tele® players, we are developing a system for this style of guitar
too. We’ll give you more information on this when we are ready to make it
available. We expect this to be a popular upgrade, especially for Tele®
equipped blues/rock players.
BluesTone™ will work with ANY kind of passive magnetic pickups... from
ANY manufacturer.
Which
Other Instruments Can I Use The BluesTone™ Tone System In?
 Left:
Here’s a photo of the Strat® which the BluesTone range was developed on
and with which the sound demos were recorded.
It is a Korean Squire Strat®, but is a little unusual in that it has a 16”
radius fingerboard with chunky frets. This is how it was made at the
factory. The neck finish is a bit anaemic, but it feels quite nice once
you get used to the rather flat fingerboard, making it superb at note
bending.
Now that the SCS62 pickups and BluesTone 4 module is fitted, it
sounds awesome. The original pickups were not very pleasant at all!
The body wood appears to be some form of Alder or very similar. It has a
nice spanky tone which you would not expect from an instrument costing
just £100 bought from Kingfisher Music in Fleet, Hampshire.
We hope this will inspire you to break with convention and think about
what you could be getting from your Strat.
Right:
Here’s another of
 our development Strats®
with the BluesTone 4 and the SCS62 pickups fitted. In this case, the
neck and bridge pickups have been relocated to Jazzmaster® positions. This
brings the Jazzmaster® sound onto the more comfortable and superior trem
facilities of the Strat® body.
Installing And Using The Award-Session BluesTone
4 Module
(Click on the diagram below to open a larger version)
 Please
follow this guide starting with the switch set to fully anti-clock-wise.
It is important that the NECK and BRIDGE pickups are adjusted for equal
proximity to the strings, otherwise the sounds may not be as full as was
designed.
Position 1 - Funky Tele. This setting gives
you the classic ‘Tele’ middle sound. Both the neck and bridge pickups are
connected together in parallel.
If you want to give it a more humbucker flavour, then turn the TONE
control down to 1. You can even use partial settings of the tone control
too, as you may always have done before fitting BluesTone 4. Turning
the tone control back up to 10 means the tonality of the sound reverts
back to the single-coil camp!
Position 2 - The BB tone. After meeting B B
King at a trade fair in America, I learned from him how he achieves some
of his tones, so this is the BB setting!
He generally uses his ‘Lucille’ guitar with both pickups selected, but he
often slightly turns down one of the PU volume controls so that one of the
two PUs becomes slightly more dominant. Which PU is dominant depends on
the type of song he’s playing.
So, this setting combines both neck and bridge PUs, but with a volume
difference
between them preset by BluesTone. You can then decide which PU becomes
dominant, by moving the main PU selector switch to either Neck or Bridge
positions.
Again, if you want to give it a more humbucker flavour, then turn the TONE
control down to 1. You can even use partial settings of the tone control
too, as you may always have done before fitting BluesTone 4.
Turning the tone control back up to 10 means the tonality of the sound
reverts back to the single-coil camp!
Position 3 - Visit Peter Green. Just dial up
position 3 and you have a good approximation of the soulful tones Peter
was best known for in the early Fleetwood Mack days.
This is best achieved with your amp set-up with a clean tone or a little
‘on-the-
edge’ overdrive. There are two PG tonal versions available by moving the
main PU selector switch from neck to bridge.
Again, if you want to give it a more humbucker flavour, then turn the TONE
control down to 1. You can even use partial settings of the tone control
too, as you may always have done before fitting BluesTone 4.
Turning the tone control back up to 10 means the tonality of the sound
reverts back to the single-coil camp!
Position 4 - Normal unaffected Strat tones.
Just select position 4 (fully clockwise) and you revert back to all your
regular Strat tones, just as the day the guitar was made. The only
difference is that the TONE control response has changed. This should not
annoy anyone, as few players use the TONE control anyway. Now, though, it
is a lot more useful.
Warm humbucker versions of all your regular Strat tones are suggested when
you dial up position 4 and set the TONE control to 1. Great for rock,
standards, jazz or jazz-fusion work.
You will also find that Positions 1-3 create other interesting tones when
the main PU selector switch is set to 2 and 4. Again, the TONE control
will help humbucker-like tone versions.
Only
£45 as a DIY kit using your existing pickups + £3.00 carriage
West London Dealer: Charlie Chandler’s Guitar Experience
www.guitarexperience.co.uk -
sales@guitarexperience.co.uk
Available to the Trade & Guitar Technicians
Available Direct from
Award-Session.
TEL: 01256 477222
OR
Buy Online (UK/EU Orders only):
Add to Cart
* ‘Strat’, ‘Jazzmaster’ and ‘Tele’ are registered trade marks of FMIC,
with which Award-Session has no affiliation |
 |
