Which way round would you wire these for classic Strat bounce on cleans?

[burgundy]

Hey.

I'm swapping out some Tex Mex pickups on an HSS ash Strat - they're not bad, but I know I can do better. They have some nice gritty sounds when you dig in, but lack that certain luscious, shimmering, pingy, ultra-clean tone I love best from Strats. Think Mark Knopfler, clean SRV (Lenny, Riviera Paradise), or Joe Satriani's cover of Sleepwalk (not his own stuff). I mostly play in the 2- and 4-notch positions, and use an S-1 switch to either add a coil from the humbucker to position 4 or to add the whole thing to position 2 - I like the warmth and richness this adds to the tone.

So I'm going to replace them with, I think, a Fender Fat 50s in one position, and a Seymour Duncan Antiquity Surfer in the other. As close as I can get from behind a screen, I've identified those as two pickups that sound like they have complimentary tones for my purpose. The Fat 50s for roundness and body, and the Surfer for sparkle, spank and finesse. Without the former I'd worry it'd sound too thin (I really don't like cold, clicky Strats), and without the latter I'd worry that the brilliance and shine wouldn't be there and things would get plain middy.

What I can't decide without some first-hand experience is where to put each. My thought at first was to put the Fat 50s in the middle, to make each notch-tone as full as possible, and figured the Surfer wouldn't stand up as well to a humbucker. But then I wondered if maybe the Fat 50s would sound harsh in the middle rather than the neck, and maybe the Surfer would be the 'Strattier' of the two, and it'd be better to have that dominating the tone in the middle, with the Fat 50s in the neck (where it seems a lot of people think it belongs).

The reason I'm asking all this and not just buying and trying them out is that I need to figure out where each is going to go before buying them, so I can select polarities on that basis. This is the first time I've done this, so any help or experience would be very much appreciated.

Thanks for reading.

[Dennis Hrapeck]

Re: Which way round would you wire these for classic Strat bounce on cleans?

I've had great success with the Fender Vintage noiseless in the neck and middle with SSH guitars. You might need to wire the noiseless pickups with a 1 meg pot on the tone control though to get the highs out of them although a 500 meg pot usually works for me.

[burgundy]

Re: Which way round would you wire these for classic Strat bounce on cleans?

I've had great success with the Fender Vintage noiseless in the neck and middle with SSH guitars. You might need to wire the noiseless pickups with a 1 meg pot on the tone control though to get the highs out of them although a 500 meg pot usually works for me.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I know the Noiseless and am not that keen on them. They seem to have a sort of flattened or muted character that doesn't really do it for me, kind of the opposite of what I'm looking for in some respects. The reason I chose a Fat 50s/Surfer pairing was to combine extremes for tonal range - chunky and assertive + clear and jangly. I figured that setup with the S-1 switch and splittable moderate-output humbucker would give me as versatile a Strat as I'm likely to get in one guitar.

[Chickenwings]

Re: Which way round would you wire these for classic Strat bounce on cleans?

Have you ever tried not using RWRP in the middle? The tones in position 2 and 4 are cool when you do that. All the classic strattiness but without the "sucked out" tone. You don't get noise cancelling obviously but its definitely worth experimenting with. I like the fact that it sounds more like an organic combination of two pickups rather than a third, separate kind of tone which you get with rwrp.
Whats the humbucker you are using?

[burgundy]

Re: Which way round would you wire these for classic Strat bounce on cleans?

Have you ever tried not using RWRP in the middle? The tones in position 2 and 4 are cool when you do that. All the classic strattiness but without the "sucked out" tone. You don't get noise cancelling obviously but its definitely worth experimenting with. I like the fact that it sounds more like an organic combination of two pickups rather than a third, separate kind of tone which you get with rwrp.
Whats the humbucker you are using?

I haven't, no. I've never modded my pickups at all. I know there are a fair few people who are opposed to RWRP, but was never completely clear why as they often say different things. The notched positions are the ones I use by far the most of the nine settings available, and I never felt like they lacked character compared to the others. Noise-cancellation is a big attraction to me, as I often play quite softly/delicately, but with the amp turned up loud where the tone is better - so having loads of hum filling all the quieter parts would be a real mood-killer.

The humbucker is a Fender Diamondback, low-medium output, which splits well with the singles but sounds quite brittle and harsh on its own. I'd probably eventually swap that out for a Duncan as well, maybe a Pearly Gates (assuming it's a simple matter of rewiring to correct for a different polarity). Fender don't make it as easy as SD to establish polarities and wind directions for their pickups though - the internet is full of discussions over whether the Fat 50s are this polarity or that wind without any definitive links to a source like SD provides.

[Chickenwings]

Re: Which way round would you wire these for classic Strat bounce on cleans?

Fender pickups are normally wound the opposite to SD pickups.

3 duncan strat pups in a set are like this: positive, negative, positive
3 fender strat pups in a set are like this: negative, positive, negative


Now your mexi strat has stock fender pickups, so right now your neck pickup is Reverse to whatever SD pickup you put in that spot. As a result, you would not get hum cancelling in the second position because the fender middle pickup is the same polarity as SD pup.
like this: positive, positive, negative
To get that humcancelling effect, you would need to order the surfer as the RWRP model (or order the fender as the neck model).
so you get this: negative positive negative

Now the bridge...humbuckers already have two coils with opposing winds so they are already humcancelling. When you split it, it becomes a single coil pickup, but i cant say for certain which way the fender screw coil is oriented. An educated guess would be that its wound the same way as a normal fender single coil bridge pickup. Perhaps someone with more knowledge might be able to chime in on this.


NOw on to pickups: the sounds you described come in spades in the form of the normal duncan ssl-1. They are chimey delicate and articulate, but they have as much bottom end as the fender fat 50s.
If i were in your shoes, i'd start with just a single ssl-1. Stick it in the neck. It will sound killer on its own i guarantee. See if you like the non-cancelling notch position sound. If you prefer to go back to hum-cancelling, just order another ssl-1 in RWRP and put it in the middle to give you the humcancelling operation and upgrade the middle position from the tex mex. If you find that you like the non-cancelling sound but want something nicer than the tex mex, just order another regular ssl-1. Personally, i like the non-cancelling sound - especially for clean because its ounds fatter and warmer than the cancelling sound. When playing clean, hum is not really much of an issue.

This now leads us to the sound you get when you switch to middle and split bridge with your diamondback. That will (probably) not be hum cancelling due to the fender/duncan thing. If you want humcancelling for that, then simply switch the two ssl-1s so you have the RWRP in the neck. This way you can experiment with all of the options available with minimum outlay or risk.

Here are some ssl-1s i recorded a couple years back. Loud and clean thru a fender twin reverb. I don't think the amount of hum is much of a mood killer in this context:

[Chickenwings]

Re: Which way round would you wire these for classic Strat bounce on cleans?

Choosing humbuckers is a whole other topic. Getting ones that play nice with singles is no easy task, and requires careful pot selection and wiring. Might be worth sorting that out in a different thread once you have the neck and middle sorted out.

[burgundy]

Re: Which way round would you wire these for classic Strat bounce on cleans?

Fender pickups are normally wound the opposite to SD pickups.

3 duncan strat pups in a set are like this: positive, negative, positive
3 fender strat pups in a set are like this: negative, positive, negative


Now your mexi strat has stock fender pickups, so right now your neck pickup is Reverse to whatever SD pickup you put in that spot. As a result, you would not get hum cancelling in the second position because the fender middle pickup is the same polarity as SD pup.
like this: positive, positive, negative
To get that humcancelling effect, you would need to order the surfer as the RWRP model (or order the fender as the neck model).
so you get this: negative positive negative

Now the bridge...humbuckers already have two coils with opposing winds so they are already humcancelling. When you split it, it becomes a single coil pickup, but i cant say for certain which way the fender screw coil is oriented. An educated guess would be that its wound the same way as a normal fender single coil bridge pickup. Perhaps someone with more knowledge might be able to chime in on this.


NOw on to pickups: the sounds you described come in spades in the form of the normal duncan ssl-1. They are chimey delicate and articulate, but they have as much bottom end as the fender fat 50s.
If i were in your shoes, i'd start with just a single ssl-1. Stick it in the neck. It will sound killer on its own i guarantee. See if you like the non-cancelling notch position sound. If you prefer to go back to hum-cancelling, just order another ssl-1 in RWRP and put it in the middle to give you the humcancelling operation and upgrade the middle position from the tex mex. If you find that you like the non-cancelling sound but want something nicer than the tex mex, just order another regular ssl-1. Personally, i like the non-cancelling sound - especially for clean because its ounds fatter and warmer than the cancelling sound. When playing clean, hum is not really much of an issue.

This now leads us to the sound you get when you switch to middle and split bridge with your diamondback. That will (probably) not be hum cancelling due to the fender/duncan thing. If you want humcancelling for that, then simply switch the two ssl-1s so you have the RWRP in the neck. This way you can experiment with all of the options available with minimum outlay or risk.

Here are some ssl-1s i recorded a couple years back. Loud and clean thru a fender twin reverb. I don't think the amount of hum is much of a mood killer in this context:

Wow thanks for such a detailed response.

That's really lovely playing. Very pretty sound. And yeah it's not far from the tone I have in my head. I had looked into the SSL-1s and ended up moving onto the Surfers because people seemed to think the Surfers were just a somewhat mellower and more sonically detailed version of the SSL-1s. So because I'm willing to pay the extra bit of money to get my #1 guitar as close to perfect as possible, I figured the Surfers were the way to go, if indeed they are basically a deluxe version of the SSL-1s. Some of the clips I've heard of the SSL-1s have sounded great, but others have been a little on the harsh/clicky side, albeit with the lousy YouTube sound quality. So a softer version, if that's what the 'aging' process does, seemed perfect.

I think you make an excellent point about just buying one first to try out non-RWRP, if that sounds fatter and warmer than hum-cancelling - I was under the impression that people didn't like RWRP because it took away the highest trebles, so I thought it was the other way round. The tone I want sounds self-contradictory when you put it into words, but basically fat and warm while at the same time bright and sparkly - with just the shrillest, most piercing treble removed - is what I love best. The bright/warm dichotomy doesn't make complete sense to me, Strats can and for me should sound both lusciously soft and shimmeringly brilliant.

I was hoping the humbucker-splitting thing, should I stick with the desire for hum-cancelling, would be a straightforward process of rewiring to the other slug and swapping the leads, if I did end up with an out-of-phase combination (new middle and/or new humbucker).

Edit: btw, so does that mean you think the leaner Duncan, whether it was an SSL-1 or Surfer, would be better in the neck than something like a Fat 50s? Not having done any switching around in the past, I don't really know quite how to pick positions for different pickups

[Chickenwings]

Re: Which way round would you wire these for classic Strat bounce on cleans?

fat and warm while at the same time bright and sparkly - with just the shrillest, most piercing treble removed - is what I love best.

ssl-1


btw..whats your amp rig?

[burgundy]

Re: Which way round would you wire these for classic Strat bounce on cleans?

ssl-1


btw..whats your amp rig?

Haha well I actually use a fairly low-rent Marshall solid-state atm after my previous amp got stolen, but will probably but a Fender Super Champ X2 very soon.

[Chickenwings]

Re: Which way round would you wire these for classic Strat bounce on cleans?

Haha well I actually use a fairly low-rent Marshall solid-state atm after my previous amp got stolen, but will probably but a Fender Super Champ X2 very soon.

o.0

don't spend a cent on pickups until you have a nice amp. That's the biggest determinant of good tone by a country mile.

[burgundy]

Re: Which way round would you wire these for classic Strat bounce on cleans?

o.0

don't spend a cent on pickups until you have a nice amp. That's the biggest determinant of good tone by a country mile.

Oh yeah, absolutely, that's the plan. The Marshall is decent for a solid state in that it can pull off reasonable cleans, albeit without the punchy texture of valves, but as soon as any gain at all goes on there it makes me cringe.

I was thinking the SCX2 just because that seems to be the most affordable valve amp Fender does, and what I want most of all is that beautiful spanky Fender clean tone.. any experience with that one? Affordable is important because I'm trying to make a few changes in quick succession. I'm also getting a new neck from Musikraft, the truss rod on mine's sunk into the wood and is buggered, and a little wide for me anyway.