Half Blender Pot Modification
Hey again! Today, we’re discussing the ‘Half Blender Pot’ modification. This variation of the popular Blender Pot modification is incredibly useful and simple to use – all that’s required is our Standard Blender Pot or our Push Pull Blender Pot. You might be asking “Half Blender….?” We’ll get into that, but first, let’s recap what a Blender Pot does:
Standard Blender Pot:
The Blender Pot mod allows you to blend your Neck & Bridge together on a Strat. This is sometimes known as the ‘Seven-Sound Strat’. In essence, you get all of your traditional Strat tones, plus the ability to get Neck + Bridge (a la Telecaster) and Neck + Middle +Bridge (all pickups at once).
We love the Blender Pot mod because the Neck + Bridge tone is so useful. Within seconds, you can turn your Strat into a Tele (not hum-cancelling unless you have a RW / RP neck). But what if you want even more functionality? Enter the Half Blender Mod.
The Half Blender Pot Mod:
If you’re familiar with wiring up the Standard Blender Pot Mod, the Half Blender will look a little foreign to you. However, it’s pretty simple how the switching breaks down. Unlike the Standard mod, the Half Blender only works in Positions 1 & 2 of the switch: the Bridge, and Bridge + Middle Positions. How is this useful? Well, for one, you can have a ‘Telecaster’ type tone in Position 1, then with one flip of the 5-Way switch, full Strat Neck tone: no knob-turning required!
The reverse works as well. You can pre-set your Blender Pot to achieve Telecaster-type tone, and with the flip of the 5-way switch down to position 1, engage the Blender Pot immediately.
Pretty cool, right? We think this mod is useful for those who want to tinker with their tone, but also don’t want to be turning knobs all set long. We hope you found this useful! Keep modding those axes!
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Can this also be set up in a way, that the bridge will be added to position 4 & 5 instead so that the bridge PU in position 5 will always stand alone by itself. So it would the opposite half blender mod? I really like to have my bridge pickup pre-set or a fast switch and think that the Tele like sound would be a better alternative to the neck pos 5.
hello, so position one is the bridge pickup, but by turning the blender, you can dial in the beck pickup? And in position 2, you would have the bridge and middle, and you can dial in the neck pickup for all three? thank you.
How do I do this with HSS with a splitable humbucker?
It might be a great use for our Push Pull Blender Pot. Simply wire the Coil Splitting functionality on the Push Pull section, and the rest you can follow this wiring diagram for the Half Blender.
This get wired in the same when you have duel tone pots and 50’s wiring?
This looks like just what I’m after. Where does the master tone pot get wired?
Many thanks
I just purchased the no load pot and can’t wait to wire it up. One question, are there any phase issues to look out for with all three pickups of a strat together in that 2nd position? Or, is that kind of the point i.e. the tone.
Hey Ryan, as long as your pickups are in phase, there will be no phase issues with the Blender mods. You will experience all three pickups in parallel, which has a distinct tone.
Can the half blender pot be added to a 4-way switch telecaster?
I have a three pot control plate with 4-way selector switch.
i’m a bit confused….what are the position by position differences?
So… will all three pickups be activated in position 2 using the half-blender mod? Thanks.