Under The hood
a close-up of the Blade’s circuit and vsC …
The basic control circuit is straightforward with 500k pots and a 104J (0.1microfarad) Mylar tone cap. The clearly wax-potted and Korean-made pickups have no ID save for WHD-5B (bridge) and WVT-3B (middle and neck). The body itself is routed for an HSH configuration, should you ever want to add a full-size neck humbucker.
The small rear cavity houses the VSC circuit board and the nine-volt block battery to power it. If you tip the guitar over in seated position, the three trim-pots (left to right) control midrange, treble and bass. The centre frequencies and the amount of boost has changed over the years.
“On the VSC-3, we replaced the IC with a dual chip that gave us the ability to completely separate the midrange boost from the treble and bass boost,” explains Gary Levinson. “It’s like having two preamps in the guitar and gives you better control of the different tonalities.
“The bass boost is the same as it’s always been, centred at 160Hz, and is now a 0 to 10dB boost,” Gary continues. “The midrange boost is
still centred at 650Hz, with a 0 to 14dB boost, and we’ve changed the treble boost centre frequency from 7,500Hz down to 6,500Hz, and instead of being a -4 to +12dB cut/boost, it’s now a 0 to 10dB boost. One reason for that is that with the original VSC, the music world had a tendency to go for more ‘glassy’ highs with a little more bite – that late 80s/early 90s sound. Now the boost is a little more bell-like, and a little more reminiscent of a Telecaster or a Gretsch sound.”
For 2019, the VSC-3 has been upgraded to the VSC-4 with improved electronic spec and battery drain and surface-mount components.
For those interested in the DCRs, the humbucker measures 8.52kohms (4.36k when split) and the single coil-sized stacked ’buckers come in at just over 9kohms.