Almost everything you need to convert your stock STRATOCASTER® to USB fits in this
Tiny White Box!
Cherrystone Design's STRAT® COMPAT' DIY USB KIT
You have questions. I have answers.
- What's in the box?
- Why would I want one?
- How much does it cost?
- What's missing?
- Do I need to know how to program?
- How soon can I get one?
What's in the box?
Everything you'll need to transform your Stratocaster® to an unpretentious master control center!
The essential list:
- A powerful but friendly PJRC Teensy 4.0 USB microcontroller
- A Cherrystone Designs' BlackPearl™ stereo codec & special feature circuit board
- A Cherrystone Designs' WhiteGold™ Strat® interface & special feature circuit board
- Two Cherrystone Designs' Cinnamon™ RGB LED rotary encoder circuit boards
- Two compatible RGB LED rotary encoders, with integral pushbutton shafts
- All the connectors you'll need to solder the circuit boards together
- All you need to splice three noiseless Seymour Duncan 4c shielded cable pickups
- All the other wire splicing kits you'll need
- A USB Jackplate
- A Panel Mount USB-B female to Micro-B Male Cable
- A Micro USB-B connector to splice on the end of the USB cable
- A virtual pushbutton in the form of a ground-able solder lug to force the Teensy into programming mode to recover from bad code
Why would I want one?
The short answer:
- It's better. Waaaaay better.
The long answer:
- Your 1950's telephone switchboard era cable only carries monophonic audio, & it's lossy.
- Digital signals transported by the USB protocol are intrinsically lossless.
- USB can transport MIDI messages along with the digitized audio.
- The digitized audio format supports stereo, unlocking your creative processing options.
- Your lame euphemistically labeled "Tone" controls can be replaced with anything controls.
- There are multiple ways to process your sounds before it leaves your guitar, or
- You can process your signal using highly-acclaimed 3rd party VST plug-ins in your laptop.
- You can dump your big, clunky, heavy effects pedal board with all those knobs you never change.
- The replacement for your obsolete hardware pedal board can fit inside your Stratocaster®.
- Your virtual effects can fit inside your laptop which can fit inside your gig bag with your guitar.
- Your virtual effects pedal boards don't weigh very much. At all. Bring them all to the party.
- The number of virtual pedal boards are countless, growing and customizable.
- You can swap entire virtual pedal boards using your stock 5-way switch, or not.
- You can customize what your old school tone controls control. And can quickly change what they control.
- Do you want noiseless or single-coil pickups? Why choose? You can have both. Automatically.
- Do you want to blend your neck pickup with the others, or process them differently? Doable!
- Do you want to replace your stock pickups with bridge sensors impervious to EM noise? Doable!*
- Do you want to blend your "quietized" Strat® pickups with bridge sensors? Doable!*
- Do you want to control your sound using motion? Doable!*
- Do you want a whammy bar that never causes your guitar to go out of tune? Doable!*
- Do you want your whammy bar to control something besides pitch? Doable!*
- *Special Order for qualified customers only.
How much does it cost?
- You can have everything I can fit in the box for $375
- But you'll need to provide your own laptop, stereo audio interface, VST host and plugins.
I personally also use a D-Link DUB-H7 or equivalent (found price: $20.99) to get more serviceable USB cable length, an Audio Optimized DJ TechTools Chroma Cable right-angle USB-B cable [$17.99], and Dunlop U.S.A. 1.5mm guitar picks. But your choices are your own.
We prefer Cockos Reaper [$60] as a VST host but there are many other very good ones. Some are free and very good. Some are very good and not so free. Everyone will have their favorites. That's what makes you you. There's a useful list in the 3rd Party Software link.
What's missing?
A Stratocaster®
You're going to need a common right-handed Stratocaster®, either genuine or an authorized clone, routed to Fender's specifications.
A conventional 51993 5-way switch
Some Stratocasters® have a needlessly complicated 4-pole 5-way switch. It isn't compatible with our BlackPearl™ blade switch interface.
The BlackPearl™ can do what the messy 4-pole switch does, and much more. But you'll need a conventional 2-pole 51993. The new tricks it can do will blow you away!
ELECTROSWITCH acquired Oak Grigsby and CRL/Centralab, both suppliers of the 2-pole 5-way blade switch. There are lists of their retail distributors at their website.
A Volume control
If your wild playing style painfully collides with the vertical height of a dual concentric knob and you're too old to learn better control (*wink*), there are options, but both require some software editing:
- You can bypass the left channel potentiometer connector and control it with the secondary rotary encoder.
- You can omit the primary (middle) rotary encoder and replace it with a second (lower profile) volume pot (for the next pickup).
Because it's a personal choice, you'll need a volume control. I like Guitar Fetish's CPOT-100 100K Concentric Pot Module because it's compact, pre-wired and is available with a handsome set of black, chrome or gold knobs. The connector is a nice touch, but will have to be replaced. I chose a more compact connector on BlackPearl™ so the CPOT-100 doesn't fit and my wiring sequence is superior.
Skills
You need to know how to solder, or have a very good friend who does. This is not a turn-key module, but a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) project kit. Skills are not something that can fit in a box. But a project like this was my inspiration to learn electronics. Sparkfun has a great soldering tutorial here:
DIY Electronic Tools
I made a list of tools on my bench that I use often. To obtain them today would cost about $1,000. That doesn't include test equipment like a DMM, Oscilloscope or bench power supply. The list in the 3rd Party Hardware here.
DIY Instructions
Video tutorials will be posted and updated here.
VST Software
This is also a personal choice and you may already have software that works. I've used Native Instruments Guitar Rig 5 until I updated my Laptop from an Intel processor to an Apple. That didn't survive the update. I bought Guitar Rig 6 which didn't work the same way and I could never figure out what they did with MIDI control. At that point, I discovered that Reaper allowed me to control any VST plugin on my computer. It is now my GO TO VST host!!! Guitar Rig 7 works well though it was a puzzle to discover. Apple's MainStage 3 is a champ, but you're on your own sorting that out. That interface still confuses me.
Reaper will set you back $60 but constantly sends out updates as they improve things. I've never noticed anything that needed improvement, though. It's quite powerful and would take a long time to learn all the crazy stuff you can do with it.
Reaper comes with a long list of their own visually spartan but very useful plugins, and I've listed several sources of free VST plugins so you don't need much more.
I’ve also listed other VSTs in the Software folder that I really like that aren't free. Your choices may be different.
Do I need to know how to program?
No, but if you do, you can make it your own. Simply download Arduino's free IDE software with the Teensyduino add-on, then download our default sketch BP_A1_WG_A1_R061025 on the Software Documentation page which you can use out of the box and you can use out of the box and never write a line of code. Updates will be available from Cherrystone Designs and perhaps 3rd party hobbyists and entrepreneurs.
For more advanced DIY'ers, enter "Teensy 4.0 Neural Amp Modeler" or "TGX4" in your search window, and have fun!
PJRC has included a powerful audio effects gui graphic interface which I have yet to explore, but they have a video that demonstrates how you can create your own guitar effects before the signal even gets to your laptop. Our BlackPearl™ circuit board uses the same SGTL5000 codec as PJRC's audio cape. Even that hardware device has powerful built-in audio processing features.
There are other useful tutorial links on their website.
How soon can I get one?
A limited number of Tiny White Box kits are available now. As soon as a shopping cart is added to the website, we can start shipping. After that, we'll make production adjustments to meet demand.
Conclusion:
Dumping your heavy, bulky, power-hungry, inflexible and spaghetti-wired pedal board for a smarter whizbang solution is the discriminating value proposition here!
TinyWhiteBox_TWB-12345678: $375.00 USD/ea., Qty on hand: 25, Qty ordered: 0
FENDER®, STRATOCASTER®, STRAT® and SQUIER® are registered trademarks of Fender Corporation.
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