Heres what i think is a great nighthawk mod

[hawkfanatic]

While installing a new CTS pot, which by the way has a much better taper IMO than the cheezy stock pot, i came up with an idea. Actually i had been thinking about this for a HSS strat but it struck me it might work great for the hawk. If like me you find the middle p/u and the # 2 and 4 positions a bit thin and bright, this will fix it. As you likely already know, single coils work best with a 250k pot and humbuckers a 500k. Well, i tried a 250k in my hawk but the HB's got rather muddy. But with a 500k the middle and the 2 combined positions, M/B and M/N were too thin and bright. So i got to thinking that with a 470k resistor (closest available to a 500k)soldered to the 2 outside lugs of the volume pot, the 500k pot would now effectively act like a 250k. But how do you make it so the resistor is NOT connected when the bridge or neck only are selected? One way is to use one side of the switch if it's not being used, but a much simpler way hit me....simply solder a resistor from the hot wire of the middle pickup where it attaches to the switch and the other end to ground. When the middle pickup is selected, or the # 2 or 4 positions, the resistor is effectively strapped across the 2 outer lugs of the pot and it is effectively now a 250k. Now thats with a 470k resistor. However, i found the effect of that wasn't that noticeable. So i tried a 220k. Now it sounds much better. This makes the pot effectively a 150k, but it sounds great. But you can try any value. There are calculators like "electronics assistant" ( free app download) that calculated many things including resistance in series or parallel)to help figure it out.

 

Anyways, this really balances the tone of all 2 positions so none are a lot brighter than the others. I also have a 500pf cap on the pot as a treble bleed, and with this mod that works even better because it doesn't get painfully bright when on 4 or 5.