After years of working with eletric instruments I still get in awe of how the right electronic mod can completly change the sound and inspire a player to discover new sounds.
The amount of options available is enormous from parallel, series, out of phase, coil taping, coil spliting, partial coil spliting (both fixed and variable), different passive band filters to simple things like changing the value of tone caps or the value or number of volume/tone pots. All of these options will open up new sounds and that can as easily be great as overwhelming and frustrating.
Recently a client came in with a HSS Strat, he knew what type of sound he wanted, and that he wanted something different and simple. So I moved the neck pickup next to the middle pickup wired them up together and gave them individual volume pots, that's it!
While I was trying it out it felt incredibly versatile but a bit too much for me, a bit overwhelming, rotating one of the pots a tiny bit would result in a completly different sound, and I had trouble getting the sounds I wanted easily.
To him however it made complete sense. I still get surprised with how well he makes it work getting everything from clean sparkly tones, to thick and heavy and even a jazzy defined sound.
On the other hand, my Lag Roxanne has 3 push pulls and other mods, to me it's quite intuitive since day one,
and I never get overwhelmed. Those two little volume pots, though, would take me ages to master.
Mods shouldn't be complicated to the point where you are adding stuff that you need to think about how to use, or end up not using. A great mod should make sense, giving you useable tones at making you feel at "home" with your instrument.
And all things said and done being at ease and knowing your instrument will bring much more versatiliy than 20 switches and pots.
Jay
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