How should the middle position be wired on an HH guitar?

[TimmyPage]

I know I'm making a tonne of threads, but this should be the last one to settle things. I think. Maybe.

So as some of you may know, I'm changing my strat to an HH strat, and I've never in my life attempted to wire an HH guitar before. My plan is to have a coil split on a push pull pot, 1 Vol, 2 Tone pots. The only question I really have remaining is.. how exactly do I wire the middle position?

That being, is it normally wired in series or parallel? And forgive me if this is a dumb question, but wouldn't the middle position be really weak in coil split mode if I had it in parallel + the coil split?

[ErikH]

Re: How should the middle position be wired on an HH guitar?

In normal HH wiring with a 3-way, they are in parallel in the middle position. In full output mode, the two humbuckers actually have a cool sound in parallel, just go play a Les Paul. Split, they'll sound good too. In fact, the Les Paul Trad Pro is wired that way. My buddy has one and the tone is usable.

[TimmyPage]

Re: How should the middle position be wired on an HH guitar?

Awesome, thanks for the help and the quick reply. Now all that's left is to wait for my pickups to come in and find a soldering iron in this country.

[Benjy_26]

Re: How should the middle position be wired on an HH guitar?

If I may make a suggestion: I'd wire up both tone pots as push pulls for splitting the pickups individually. I have independant splits on my Carvin and it's quite usable. I especially like to split the bridge and keep the neck on full sometimes.

[TimmyPage]

Re: How should the middle position be wired on an HH guitar?

That's actually a fantastic idea, though I wouldn't really know where to start with wiring that sort of thing. I'm actually strugglings as is, just trying to wire up 2 tone pots. (Every pickup replacement I've done before has just been pull the old ones out, put the new ones in the same place). Any idea where I could get a wiring diagram for that sort of thing?

[Benjy_26]

Re: How should the middle position be wired on an HH guitar?

http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/wiring-diagrams/schematics.php?schematic=2h_1v_2t_3w_1pp

That"s the closest diagram to what you have. Now, what you want to do, is imagine having another push/pull on your second tone control and wire up each pickup's white/red wires to each push pull.

[Benjy_26]

Re: How should the middle position be wired on an HH guitar?

Oh, and I would use the tone pots for the splits, that way you can assign the neck's tone control to split the neck, and the bridge's tone control to split the bridge.

[TimmyPage]

Re: How should the middle position be wired on an HH guitar?

Thats not as hard as I would have thought. Thanks for your help!

[ItsaBass]

Re: How should the middle position be wired on an HH guitar?

Two pickups are almost always wired in parallel when they are both on. Yes, the middle position would be very weak (relatively) in coil split mode. You could use it, of course. But it would be tough switching to it to and back from the series humbuckers during the course of a song, as there would be so many switches to flip, and the volume and tone difference would be so great. However, running both humbuckers split, switching to the middle pickup wouldn't be any different than switching to the notch positions on a Strat.

[Benjy_26]

Re: How should the middle position be wired on an HH guitar?

No prob.

[namklak]

Re: How should the middle position be wired on an HH guitar?

So there is yet another option - when using both coils split, do you use the outside coils (screw coils) or inside (slug coils)?

[namklak]

Re: How should the middle position be wired on an HH guitar?

So there is yet another option - when using both coils split, do you use the outside coils (screw coils) or inside (slug coils)?

I just realized that since I want noise-cancelling, I need to account for which coil is North and which is South. And I don't know for bridge and neck pickups if the screw or slugs are N or S?

[namklak]

Re: How should the middle position be wired on an HH guitar?

So according to this, the screws are always South and the slugs are always North

http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/faq/frequently-asked/installation-an/what_are_your_h/

So since I want noise cancelling when splitting, it's a matter of choosing the coils closest to the bridge or closest to the neck. I'll assume choosing the bridge side would be a brighter choice, neck side would be warmer...