Need help wiring humbucker/stack to middle pickup in a strat

[Zanzibar]

Re: Need help wiring humbucker/stack to middle pickup in a strat

Hey, thanks a lot. Sounds like great advice. I'll have to see about that. I really appreciate the help.

Z

[Robert S.]

Re: Need help wiring humbucker/stack to middle pickup in a strat

The Hot Stack should be though of as a humbucker. Humbuckers for the most part can be installed without too much concern for polarity especially if they are made by the same company.

I had a three Hot Stack Strat for quite awhile and it was a very nice sounding guitar.

If you wanted a Cool Rail in the neck, get a neck position model.

A Cool Rail in the bridge and neck would be a killer sounding guitar with the Hot Stack in the middle, just remember to wire the Hot Stack black to hot when you add the other Duncans.

My Strat currently has a JB in the bridge, a Hot Stack in the middle and a lil59 in the neck. The #2 positin is very warm and full sounding with plenty of the notched tone left intact. The CR/HS/CRn is what I would suggest to round out that guitar. You might even find you can use the bridge position and the #4 position that way.

[Zanzibar]

Re: Need help wiring humbucker/stack to middle pickup in a strat

Oh, I just thought of something. Would I need that neck pickup to be RW/RP or would a normal one work? Or would either work, as long as I have the leads reversed if necessary in relation to the middle pup?

Thanks,
Z

[Zanzibar]

Re: Need help wiring humbucker/stack to middle pickup in a strat

Hey, thanks!

Hm... so perhaps I need to find a good humbucking neck pickup then to compliment it. Perhaps another Stack or a Cool Rails or something like that. I'll have to think about what would be a good candidate. Of course, if you or anyone else has suggestions, I'm all ears. This is the first time I've modded the inside of a guitar in any way, so this is definately a learning experience for me.

Thanks,
Z

[jeremy]

Re: Need help wiring humbucker/stack to middle pickup in a strat

welcome to the forum!!

yes, if you put a stack in the neck youll have no noise in pos 1, 2 & 3.

two single coils will only be humcancelling if they are rw/rp

[Zanzibar]

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