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How to install a Fender Eric
Clapton Mid Boost 25DB kit with No Routing Modifications Required! After searching high and low
on forums on the net I discovered that there is absolutely nowhere that
shows you in pics or description, how to install a Fender Clapton Mid Boost into a
Stratocaster whether you want to route holes to accommodate the circuit
board and battery or not! So I decided to post some pics and my own
instructions from my own trial and error in hopes of helping those
who want to install one as it is a fantastic upgrade to any Strat! What does it consist of: A small 9v battery powered circuit board around the size of a half a pack of smokes that you install inside your Strat and replace the volume and 2 tone pots with a new set that consists of a 50k pot replacing the 250k volume control, a 250k pot that becomes the gain control and a TBX split tone pot that when in position 1-5 acts like a regular tone pot, then it catches at a detent and then from 6-10 expands the treble frequencies like the Buddy Guy tone or Clapton tone. This all usually comes with the kit. Sometimes it is referred to the Clapton Mid Boost Kit while others refer to it simply as the Fender Clapton PRE-AMP KIT MID BOOST 25 DB UPC Part No. 005-7577-000, 717669160210 (pics of the full kit at the bottom of this page) I think this is probably the best active pre-amp circuit out there since it uses real transistors, metal film capacitors, etc. vs. some of the newer miniaturized ones where the entire miniaturized circuitry is all built into a single mini circuit board attached to a vole/tone type pot. I'm kind of leery of those types for fear that the miniaturization might make for a nasal type. Hey, if it's good enough for Clapton and Buddy Guy, I think I'll stick with this one even though it's kind of a pain to get it installed without routing and changing batteries requires removing the strings and the pickguard to access it. How it works: There are countless combinations of tone you can get with this little baby but basically, the 50k volume control still controls the overall volume, while the gain control when left on zero still add a beautiful top end sparkle and spankin' shine to your tone because the circuit is always active. As you gradually turn up the gain it gets more violin like sustain and fatness and becomes more like a humbucker. It retains the same volume level which is great because you can be playing a clean rhythm and then just turn up the gain some to do a singing solo and then back it right down to clean again without blasting people's ears out on the solo. The thing about gain though is as gain is increased, more compression happens so if you really crank up the gain, it actually sounds less loud because of the compression but it probably isn't. I usually only notice it as I turn the gain from 2 to around 4 and in those spots I just increase the master volume a tad. I'm no expert on compression except to know that the more compressed you get the muddier it sounds. So I like to leave it just around 0-2 for some nice clear yet blooming blues tone then crank the gain up to 10 for soloing. When the gain is turned all the way up, it can really sing with beautiful sustain and no tone coloration, at least to my ears. Think of the lead solo on "Sunshine of Your Love". The TBX pot is really cool too. It's like 2 tone pots stacked on top of each other. Set on 1-5 it acts just like any tone pot and controls the tone of all 3 pickups which is great since most Strat wiring only controls the neck and middle, leaving the bridge wide open at ear piercing level. So now you can roll that off. Also it gets a really sweet tone set at the detent at 5 and then when you click it past 5 you start going into the Buddy Guy/Clapton Stevie Ray quack zone! (with standard wiring-other modded wiring of TBX control below). It just sounds fantastic. What separates this circuit from a regular Boost pedal is the fact that it's on board with total control over gain, fatness and level and it just seems to have a lot more presence than for example the Fulltone Fat Boost or OCD though I still use those in combination to really slam the amp's front end for the really big blues and lead tones since my amp doesn't have it's own preamp stage. I've also heard that it makes your guitar low impedance, thus giving better tone though I have no idea how true that is because when I measured the output of the guitar with the preamp installed, the output is around 70k vs. the usually low 6k for a Strat pickup! I've also read in places that since it is a 25DB Boost that you need noiseless pickups to make it work or you'll get lots of noise. This is completely false! The Mid Boost sounds great with regular vintage style pickups and is no noisier than having any boost pedal in your effects chain and in fact if you just run the guitar straight into the amp it is virtually dead quiet on positions 2 & 4 if you have a RWRP middle pickup and very quiet when set with the gain on clean with just a tad of noise when cranked. This is only due to how Strats sound in the first place. So if you don't want to sacrifice your vintage pickup tone, don't! Noiseless pickups can sound fake and sterile at times so why bother when you can have the best of both worlds! Notes: Ok so here we go. If you want to install this little gem in under an hour and not want to have to make a permanent commitment, you absolutely can but it's a little tricky. The regular Clapton and Buddy Guy Strats have a cigarette pack sized hole routed in the front of the body next to the pickup and control cavities (see below examples) and then a 9v battery hole routed in the back next to the spring cavity which you have to leave the spring cover on to hold in place. With the no-route method, the battery is concealed under the pick guard alongside the 5 way selector switch taped to the underside of the pick guard and the circuit board is mounted to the control cavity floor just under the battery, volume and tone pots and all those associated wires in addition to several wires protruding from the circuit board of the Mid Boost. So it's all a little tight and you have to be careful where all the wires lay when you press the pickguard down to screw back on so there's no pressure coming from the pots & wires down on top of the circuit board but once it's all together it works great! Also, the battery lasts around 6-12 months depending on how much you play so you can always pop in a new one every several string changes, no biggie. It's probably a good idea to op off the PG anyway after several string changes just to make sure the pots are all nice and tight and not grounding out from loose washers and nuts and you should always hold the pot in place from the underside while tightening the nut or you risk turning the pot and breaking wires. Installation Preparation: You will need a 40 watt soldering pencil like the ones sold at Radio Shack to solder the wires to the pot shells as they need lots of heat to melt solder to. Best to do the main soldering of the resistors and cap on the TBX pot in some little vise or something as not to melt the pickguard since this can happen if it gets too hot it you try to do it with the pot mounted on the guard. Then you need some good solder and a small pair of wire cutters. First, set the circuit board inside the control cavity with the part where the wires are protruding out of it facing the neck. You will note that the board's outside corner down near the jack end is in the way. You will need to snip about 1/4 inch off for it to fit. Since it is brittle, just snip a tiny part of the tip being careful not to cut into where the circuit is embedded in the board. A small piece is really all it takes and then the board drops right down in. Then, put a 2 inch wide piece of the furry side of Velcro down inside the floor on the control cavity to kind of cushion the circuit board and keep it from grounding out it you have any kind of shielding or shielding paint as many Strats do under the paint. Then just put 3 small screws like the kind that screws your pickguard on into the 3 remaining screw holes of the circuit board. You can screw them in without any drilling, just a few turns to keep the board steady but NOT enough turns to make the screw come through the back of the guitar! I screwed mine in on a slight angle to allow a couple more turns. Once you have that mounted in there, put the TBX pot together with the resistor and capacitor. The diagram that comes with the Fender Kit is a little confusing. So I used another diagram I found which was helpful to see how the resistor and cap gets wired. Plus the input jack wiring is easier to see and understand where the wires go than in the Fender diagram that comes with the kit, to me at least. See Fender Clapton Mid Boost Wiring Diagram With the TBX, use this link to see the resistor and cap placement but use the Fender diagram supplied with the kit to see how the TBX connect to the 5 way switch because they are different. On the above diagram, it shows the yellow wire from the circuit board going to the 5 way switch at the same lug as where the center wire from the TBX goes. However, on the Fender diagram, it shows the yellow wire going to the center lug on the TBX and then another wire going from that same center lug to the 5 way switch. It will probably work either way. I just chose Fender's way on this part as it seems to make more sense to me to only have the one wire traveling to the switch. NOTE: If you are using passive pickups such as custom '69, Fat '50s or even stock Fender pickups instead of noiseless pickups such as Lace Sensor Gold pickups, Lace Hot Gold Sensors, etc. then this diagram is suggested for wiring the TBX pot a little bit differently. Fender Clapton Mid Boost On/Off Switch Mod One thing that's not so great about the active mid boost circuit is that there is no on/off switch! To turn it off, you have to yank your instrument cable out every time you're finished playing or it will drain the battery. Being a quick forgetter, I don't really like to have to do this because I think it wears on the output jack and eventually you will have cable failure from all that yanking if you're like me and just leave your guitar plugged in on a stand. Plus you want to only have to remove the pickguard every 6 months or so to change the battery right?! So for $2.99 you can grab a SPST Submini Toggle Switch at Radio Shack Part No. 275-612 To Install it, you simply cut the black battery wire that is running to the center lug of the stereo output jack. I actually extended this wire by a few inches to give me a little breathing room to move the switch in between the 2 tone pots. Then you just eyeball and drill a 1/4 inch hole where you want to put the switch, making sure that the square bottom part of it will clear the cavity walls when the pickguard is pressed back down to the body. It doesn't matter which end of the battery wire is soldered to either of the 2 switch lugs. Just think about how you want to position your switch and if you add a few inches of wire you can turn it whichever way you want. I believe the short lug is off position and long is on. Careful not to overheat the lugs as the plastic holding them can melt fast and don't over tighten the nut to the pickguard! I destroyed 2 of them. First one cracked in half but was a cheaper make with black plastic and the second one I over tightened and it pulled the thread shaft off the switch. So grab a couple! The switch itself is very solid though once installed and shouldn't give you any problems. This is also a cool mod for un-plugging the guitar cable with your amp on - No noise when switch is turned off! Stereo Jack One thing that can be a bit of a challenge installing this whole thing is using Fender's standard method of de-activating the circuit to avoid battery drain, they include a stereo output jack. How this works is you take the black wire from the battery clip (other red wire is already soldered to the circuit board), and you solder the black wire to the center lug of the stereo output jack. So now when you plug in your instrument cable it turns it on and when you unplug it turns it off. If you install the on/off switch mod as suggested above, you now have 2 ways to turn it off. Either by switch or by unplugging the cable. One problem I had with this stereo jack is it didn't want to fit down inside the cavity without shorting the whole circuit out when I tightened down the 2 outer screws to hold the jack in place. So I wound up having to use a drill (which I wouldn't recommend because I chipped some paint around the outside of the cavity) to lengthen the cavity enough for the jack to fit. I also noticed an indentation inside the jack wall from the jack tip when plugged in so I drilled a little in there to give the tip some extra room as well. If you run into this problem and you're not comfortable messing around with any part of modifying your Strat's body, you can eliminate the stereo jack altogether and use your regular mono jack. Just solder the black battery wire to the same sleeve lug that your main ground wire is soldered to. However, with this method, you definitely will need to install the on/off switch. Otherwise, the circuit will always be active and draining the battery. By installing the switch, you can turn it off and keep your existing mono jack. So here we really go. The first pics are what a Clapton Strat body looks like routed for the circuit board and battery, which you can just as well have done for probably under $100 at your local guitar or carpentry shop if you don't mind altering your Strat's body, though I'm still hesitant and since this no-route option works, why bother. There are also other alternatives to the battery from this thing called XBat-9 which allows you to power the circuit externally, which I haven't tried but found while researching this all, though I'm not sure I'd want to be tied into using a stereo instrument cable. See http://precisionmusictech.com/xbat.htm Soldering tips: When attempting to solder all the ground wires etc. to the backs of the pots, first hold the tip on the back of the pot for 5-10 seconds till it starts getting nice and hot with the 40watt iron and then hold the solder on to it and melt a nice little puddle. Then grab the wire(s) you want to solder down, hold them with some needle nose pliers or something in place. Then heat that puddle back up to melting point and lay the wires on that wet puddle. It should be just enough to make them stick. Then, melt more solder on top of the wires and try to make it all seal down to the pot with a good connection. Testing: A great way to test this out or any pickup soldering job is to get one of those little Mini Amp-U-Plug-N-Play for around $28 like sold at http://stores.ebay.com/MusiciansBoutique-com-Store That way you can plug it directly into the input jack without cables or hearing loud pops on a larger amp to tap on the pickups with a screwdriver, etc. to make sure everything is connected and working correctly before closing it up and re-stringing. If I missed anything, you can contact me
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