The .:: SINGLECOIL Guitars ::. updated interpretation of the world’s most iconic electric guitar, designed in the 50´s in sunny California. We wanted to keep the spirit of this guitar, but we also wanted to add some updates to make it more comfortable to play and to offer a wider range of possible tones. After analysing several original pickup sets from the 50´s and 60´s from guitars we had in the shop for restoration and/or repair work we compared all the collected data and developed our own faithful replica pickup set, giving it the best parameters of both decades, ending up with a very flexible palette of tones. So this guitar has vintage tone down to the bone but without the typical intonation problems when using the whammy bar and the highly contoured body together with the 12″ fretboard makes it playable like butter – even over hours of playing because we only use very light-weighted wood for this guitar. So if you are looking for a very authentic vintage tone without paying vintage prices … here is your ticket !

If you want to find out more about the concept behind this guitar and its wiring, please read my column about it on Premier Guitar here.

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Here are the main specs of the California Sun Special guitar:

body:
– two piece alder or ash body, highly figured
– locally harvested, selected thermo-treated tone wood
– opaque, super-hard and ultrathin satin finish
– highly contoured for maximum playing comfort
– modified vintage tremolo equipped
– open tremolo compartment for maximum tone
– no finish at the contact points in the neck pocket
– super-tight fit neck pocket

neck:
– maple cap neck with double truss rod, highly figured
– locally harvested, selected thermo-treated tone wood
– 12″ radius
– 21 frets (Dunlop 6140) hardened and high polished
– three-dimensional headstock, body matching color
– vintage amber finished
– truss rod accessible from the headstock
– black dots on the fretboard and side dots
– hand shaped bone nut
– custom 6L locking tuners
– two roller string trees
– no finish at the contact points at the heel
– 10´s nickel plated TWANGTONE strings

hardware:
– custom 6L locking tuners
– hand shaped bone nut
– two roller string trees
– four-hole metal neck plate
– two locking-ready strap pins
– oval metal output jack plate
– hand cut celluloid pickguard
– modified vintage tremolo with steel saddles and inertia-bar
– plastic knobs and pickup covers

electronics:
– custom made single coil pickup set
– mil.grade pots with 60:40 audio taper
– treble loss free master volume control
– mil.grade 5-way pickup selector switch
– mil.grade 2-way toggle switch
– mil.grade, extra strong output jack
– mil.spec silver-/teflon wire for maximum transparency
– selected NOS tone caps
– shielded wire for all output connections

wiring:
The mil.grade 5-way pickup selector switch provides classic tones: bridge pickup alone / bridge + middle pickup in parallel / middle pickup alone / middle + neck pickup in parallel / neck pickup alone. The mil.grade 2-way toggle switch provides „7-sound switching“ with the two additional settings: bridge + neck pickup in parallel / all three pickups in parallel. All this options together with the treble loss free volume control and the very effective and even tone controls will provide a very wide range of different possible sounds.