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Need help wiring humbucker/stack to middle pickup in a strat
Hello all,
This is my first post here. I've lurked for a few days and finally thought I'd sign up. I can see there's people with some serious skillz here. Perhaps one of you would be so kind as to help me out?
I have a cheap strat with rather noisy stock pickups. From all the reading and research I've done, I was hoping to replace one or more of the pickups with with pickups that are noiseless and possibly higher output (though that's not as important on my list). I don't use the bridge pickup much, since I'm mostly a rhythm player and use pedals if I need to do occassional lead stuff. My favorite position on it with the stock pickups was using the neck/middle combined, since it had a decent sound, not too trebley, not too noisy.
So, I got a Hot Stack to put in the middle position (it's actually made for the bridge, but I don't think that's relevant to my dilemma, since I've read elsewhere here that only makes it higher output - which is cool with me). I put it in the middle position, which worked fine. I switched the black and green, since it's different polarity than my Fender stock pickups. But I was hoping to have noise-canceling in the middle 3 out of the five positions, so I could mostly use the 2nd and 3rd positions (neck/mid, mid alone). And that didn't happen.
The middle position is noise-canceling (and sounds quite good, I might add!), but the rest are quite noisy.
So I did more reading and it looks like I may have to do a coil split to make it noise cancel in the combined positions (2 and/or 4). Is this hard to do? If you coil-split a humbucker in this kind of situation, could it hum-cancel in positions 2, 3, and 4? Apparently, I have to do something with the red and white wires to do a coil split like this, but I'm not clear on what.
Or is there another way? Could I simply get another humbucking pickup like another Hot Stack or a Classic Stack and put that in the neck? I've learned that...
single alone = noise
single + single = humbucker = no noise
single + humbucker = noise
...so, would humbucker + humbucker (in other words, a Stack in the neck + a Stack in the middle) not have noise - and keep me from having to do a lot of crazy mods (in my own, newbie mind, at least) to my guitar? Would that make positions 1, 2, and 3 usable and noiseless for me? Because that would be great.
Any help on this would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Z
This is my first post here. I've lurked for a few days and finally thought I'd sign up. I can see there's people with some serious skillz here. Perhaps one of you would be so kind as to help me out?
I have a cheap strat with rather noisy stock pickups. From all the reading and research I've done, I was hoping to replace one or more of the pickups with with pickups that are noiseless and possibly higher output (though that's not as important on my list). I don't use the bridge pickup much, since I'm mostly a rhythm player and use pedals if I need to do occassional lead stuff. My favorite position on it with the stock pickups was using the neck/middle combined, since it had a decent sound, not too trebley, not too noisy.
So, I got a Hot Stack to put in the middle position (it's actually made for the bridge, but I don't think that's relevant to my dilemma, since I've read elsewhere here that only makes it higher output - which is cool with me). I put it in the middle position, which worked fine. I switched the black and green, since it's different polarity than my Fender stock pickups. But I was hoping to have noise-canceling in the middle 3 out of the five positions, so I could mostly use the 2nd and 3rd positions (neck/mid, mid alone). And that didn't happen.
The middle position is noise-canceling (and sounds quite good, I might add!), but the rest are quite noisy.So I did more reading and it looks like I may have to do a coil split to make it noise cancel in the combined positions (2 and/or 4). Is this hard to do? If you coil-split a humbucker in this kind of situation, could it hum-cancel in positions 2, 3, and 4? Apparently, I have to do something with the red and white wires to do a coil split like this, but I'm not clear on what.
Or is there another way? Could I simply get another humbucking pickup like another Hot Stack or a Classic Stack and put that in the neck? I've learned that...
single alone = noise
single + single = humbucker = no noise
single + humbucker = noise
...so, would humbucker + humbucker (in other words, a Stack in the neck + a Stack in the middle) not have noise - and keep me from having to do a lot of crazy mods (in my own, newbie mind, at least) to my guitar? Would that make positions 1, 2, and 3 usable and noiseless for me? Because that would be great.
Any help on this would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Z
T4D got a new gig!
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