Wiring Help - using a S1 switch with only 2 wire pickups

[SeanB]

Hi Everyone,
First time posting, but yeah i've done alot of reading on this. Appreciate all the time you experts give to help out newbies!

So I picked up a Fender S1 wiring harness cheap from seller who had it in a HSS 2010 deluxe strat (still all wired up), and I was super keen to replace the electronics on my own strat with this upgrade.

I finally found the wiring diagram on the net, and started figuring out where my pickup wires should go, and quickly realised i have a problem as the wiring diagram requires 3 wires for each single coil pickup, and my pickups only have 2 (for the single coils, humbucker was ok as it has 4 wires).

I thought i could get away with using 2 wires for the single coils, as it seemed only the middle pickup actually used the 3rd wire (black wire) which went to the S1 switch (think its the common lug), so i wired it up and tried it out. Everything worked fine without engaging the S1 switch, but then when i pressed down the S1 switch the only pickup that works is the middle one (no matter what pickup i select with the 5 way switch blade).

So i'll cut to the chase with what i'm asking.... is there anything i can do with my current setup to make this work? I've attached the S1 wiring diagram that has come from Fender, plus a picture of the s1 harness i bought and with some text markings of where i put my wires from my pickups. Is there anywhere else i could connect the hot wires from the pickups?

Appreciate any help with this... i know its a long shot with trying to find a solution but thought i may as well try... Cheers

[Jacew]

Re: Wiring Help - using a S1 switch with only 2 wire pickups

What do you want to do with it?

S1 basically allows any wiring method you might want to. But the wiring entirely depends on what combinations and sounds you want to have.

When you have 2 pickups instead of 3, wiring needs to be done differently, so you need to first outline the set of tones you're looking for, and how you want to layout them in controls.

[SeanB]

Re: Wiring Help - using a S1 switch with only 2 wire pickups

Sorry realise my post is quite confusing.
I have 3 pickups, so 2 x single coil and a humbucker. So ideally I would like to keep the pickups in my current hss strat and pull out the wiring and replace with this s1 harness in the picture.

My problem is that the two single coil pickups in my current strat only have 2 wires, and the diagram from fender show that 3 wires are required from each single coil.
So is there anything I can do to make it work with only using the 2 wires from my pickups?

Also the humbucker I have does have 4 wires, so have no problem with that part, it's just the single coil wiring that is causing me grief. Cheers

[DavidRavenMoon]

Re: Wiring Help - using a S1 switch with only 2 wire pickups

The third wire (green) is ground. I’m assuming those are the noise canceling pickups.

You can wire two regular (2 wire) single coils in series with no problems.


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[SeanB]

Re: Wiring Help - using a S1 switch with only 2 wire pickups

The third wire (green) is ground. I’m assuming those are the noise canceling pickups.

You can wire two regular (2 wire) single coils in series with no problems.


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Thanks David,
So if its still possible with only using 2 wires, then i guess my question is whether i need to do something with the wiring where that black wire from the middle pickup would go (so the wire i'm missing from my middle pickup)?
Referring to the s1 switch diagram it looks like its connecting to the common connection on the switch.

I originally did just ignore that when i tried wiring it up, but it didn't work when the S1 switch was engaged.

[PFDarkside]

Re: Wiring Help - using a S1 switch with only 2 wire pickups

I believe you would ignore the green wire on the noiseless pickups.

[SeanB]

Re: Wiring Help - using a S1 switch with only 2 wire pickups

I believe you would ignore the green wire on the noiseless pickups.

Looks like it worked! Appreciate all the advice. Thanks so much..

[mathieu41]

Re: Wiring Help - using a S1 switch with only 2 wire pickups

Looks like it worked! Appreciate all the advice. Thanks so much..

hello sean, I just buying an Elite strato and like you I want to replace the noiseless pickups by my prefered texas special. But like you I am not an expert, and no suport from Fender....
so if you wiring is working could you share your diagram or anything else which can help me?
I am supposing that I have just to connect the wires from my texas special instead of the black and the white from the noiseless neck, and the black and blue from the middle. But I'm not sure!
thanks for your help
mathieu