modifying my favourite guitar
My Fender Bullet is a fascinating guitar. Roughly speaking, it's a mix of Telecaster and Stratocaster, but it has a soul and a sound all its own. The maple neck is very similar to a Tele (at least in appearance; I haven't played many Teles, to judge the feel, but my guess would be that Fender used the same neck). The body is suggestive of a Strat, but it's actually rather different: it is smaller, yet a bit thicker I believe, and it lacks the "comfort carves". So technically, though the shape suggests "Strat", it's actually more like a Tele body which they rounded and shaped for better comfort, while keeping the "thick slab" aspect. The bridge is a string-through hard-tail assembly with six saddles. The pickups are fairly low impedance, 5.5k and 5.6k. The smooth plastic pickup covers are unique to the Bullet (carryovers from the Bullet's ancestors I'd guess), but the shape and readings of the pickups themselves suggest to me they could be Tele bridge types. Of course, the sound is not much like a Tele though, lacking that unusual metal bridge plate of the Tele. The sound is a bit closer to the bridge and neck pickups of many Strats, but particularly because the Bullet bridge pickup is in such an extreme position, about as close to the bridge as it could reasonably be placed, and at a right-angle rather than slanted, the tone is brighter and more intense than a Strat, yet without the "twang" of the Tele. If you like cutting, driving, bridge-pickup lead tones, this might be the perfect Fender guitar. The neck pickup, strangely, is slanted, but I believe this is mainly affectation (did it look too plain with both of them straight?): I doubt it makes an important sonic difference, at that distance from the bridge.
The name Bullet has been used for various guitars in Fender's history. Ones like this, which look approximately like a Strat, were only made for two or three years, I think, in the early 1980s. This is the perfect era for the Bullet. The generation before, which looked more like Teles, had weird cheap tailpieces formed by bending up the metal pickguard. This one, by contrast, has nice solid hardware, excellent "nouveau" Fender American construction, the full scale length, fabulous Tele neck, yum! Everything just right for maximum playing fun. That is, only if you, like me, prefer *not* to have a vibrato arm ("trem"). It's all part of the super-bright, pure tone of this guitar.
Bullets of this era were available with several pickup configurations, including H-H and S-S-S, and my guitar is routed to accept any of them; but I decided to keep my original two pickups in the original positions. However, there are a number of wiring mods possible, without disturbing the original appearance, and I'm basically doing them all. On Strat style guitars (S-S-S), I like to replace the 5-way switch with three separate 3-way toggle switches, which lets me get every pickup combination and also out-of-phase tones; but this of course requires changing the appearance of the pick-guard (I usually mount the three toggle switches in a long, narrow plate which covers the original slot of the 5-way switch). If I had a truly special Strat which I didn't want to visually alter, I suppose I would consider one of those clever 10-position switches which directly replace the 5-way (the switch handle can be clicked sideways into either of two positions, giving the original 5 positions plus 5 more which can be wired as desired for out-of-phase, series combinations, etc.).
For the Bullet, however, since I'm keeping the original two pickups, it becomes easier to preserve the appearance, while adding capabilities. I'm using a 4-way blade switch, and volume and tone pots with pull-switches, so superficially everything looks the same (might have to change the knobs for physical ergonomics, though).
The pickup switch will provide the usual 3 choices, plus a fourth choice which is both pickups in series. I got the switch from guitarelectronics.com; can't comment on long-term reliability yet of course, but the product looks good and they shipped fast. I based my wiring on a schematic from their site (getting this to all work with only a double-pole, 4-position switch is slightly subtle; you might try devising a diagram yourself before looking, if you like a challenge!). However, they had positions 1-3 identical to original, and position 4 was the new series combo. There's a certain logic to that, I'll agree, but on my guitar I definitely want position 1 to be bridge, and position 4 to be neck. Then the two middle positions are the two combination choices, parallel and series. This, to me, is much more intuitive (even to a player who is not initially aware that the guitar has been modded).
The pull-switch on the volume knob will flip the phase (down = in-phase, up = out-of-phase). Of course this will only matter in pickup switch positions 2 and 3. The pull-switch on the tone knob disconnects the tone circuit, which I call "raw mode". The volume control still stays in the circuit (although I'm changing vol and tone pots from 250k to 1M, so the loading is small). I considered making the raw switch disconnect volume as well, in which case I would have swapped the functions of the switches on the two knobs (raw on vol and phase on tone), but I don't think I need or want that.
(PS: I should note, I didn't know how much change to expect from the "raw" switch on the tone, I was trying it for the first time. In practice, especially with the 1M pot, I really can't hear any difference between "raw" and just regular "tone on 10". I'm still keeping the mod, because it gives me a little extra confidence that I'll never find myself accidentally playing with the tone turned down, wondering what happened to my sound. I'm an almost-never tone user; I could probably be happy with a volume-only guitar. The only time I think I've ever actually used tone knobs is in debugging/troubleshooting noise and oscillation problems in cables and amp front ends! So keep that in mind. If you wanted to simplify this circuit, you could easily delete the "raw" switch and probably not miss it. Maybe you'd rather use that available pull-switch for a selectable treble-bleed on the volume, or something. By contrast, the phase and parallel/series switching options really create useful new tonal choices.)
In addition to these circuitry mods, I've made a couple of small physical mods to the pick-guard and guitar. I opened up the size of the semi-circular cutout in the plastic, which provides access to the truss-rod adjustment at the base of the neck. This will make it easier to adjust the rod without taking the guitar apart (though I've never needed to adjust it, in all these years of heavy playing interspersed with long bouts of storage at different temperature and humidity conditions). Also, I added another screw to the pickguard, holding it to the guitar. One thing I don't like about this guitar is the straight-in output jack, mounted in the plastic. I investigated putting in a Strat-style angled jack in a metal cup, but there's not room to do it right. Better might be to drill a jack into the bottom edge of the body, like a Les Paul. Then the open hole in the pickguard could be used for another knob or switch. But anyway, failing all those "heroic" moves, the simplest way to fix what I always hated most about the jack, was to add more screws. The Bullet had fewer screws around the perimeter of the pickguard than Strats (come on, guys, bad place to save money!), and when pulling a plug out of the jack, you could feel the whole plastic pickguard flex and bend upward, which gave it a terrible, cheap feeling. The interesting thing is, in plotting approximately where I could place another screw to stiffen up the panel near the jack, wasn't I surprised when I removed the panel and found underneath, that the guitar body had been specifically routed with a little indentation in the outline of the control cavity, forming a ledge which clearly seems to have been intended for the missing screw. The original design was good, they (I'm not blaming this on Leo) knew a screw would be needed there, but then some "genius" further down the line decided to save money/time or simplify the look or whatever... Anyway, now I'm restoring the original intent of the designers, I believe, and only extremely geeky Fender people will ever notice the difference. But I'll sure feel the difference!
I should note, while the screw holes for the 4-way blade switch line up with those of the original 3-way, the slot in the plastic has to be slightly extended on both ends: the 4-way switch moves through a slightly wider arc, and if the slot is not extended then its travel is restricted and positions 1 and/or 4 may not be correctly engaged. I could visually observe this issue as I moved the switch lever, before I even put the guitar back together, so I immediately addressed it.
Oh, one other mod which I have never done before, nor ever read about, but which I think I'll do to all guitars from here on out if it works OK: put a 10M resistor between the bridge ground wire, and actual ground. Know what I'm sayin'?
Just in case it's not immediately obvious, these wiring mods could also be applied to a Telecaster.
(A few notes, from later research.)
They tell me the Bullet is actually thinner than a Strat; I guess it gives the illusion of being thicker, due to the compact body shape.
On the "Trogly's Guitar Show" on Youtube, he reviewed an S-3 Bullet of the Version 2 type, and I noticed that it had the "missing screw" which I had to add on mine. So the story becomes even more curious: apparently only some Bullets were built without the screw.
The Version 2 guitar was only built from mid 1982 through late 1983. They were built in Fullerton, CA. After that, production was moved to Japan and elsewhere, and the guitars were branded "Squier Bullet". Something called "Bullet" was built at least through 2007, but with varying specs.
The bent-metal tailpiece is not definitive of Version 1. It was available on both Version 1 and Version 2, on the so-called "Standard" Bullet. The separate tailpiece is a hallmark of the "Deluxe" Bullet, in both versions.
The neck is the same outline as the Telecaster, but "Trogly" says the neck is noticeably thinner than a Tele.
Apparently, many or most Bullets had only a single-ply plastic pickguard, but mine is 3-ply, white-black-white. Looks good that way, I'm glad it's not single-ply. I would've thought maybe the single-ply came in with the switch to "Squier" branding? But of course, I'm not Fender...
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