Yet another HSH Super Strat wiring question (with diagram)

[UncleJ]

I'm a new poster but I've really enjoyed learning from this incredible forum over the last few weeks!

I'm scheming up an HSH Super Strat to use mostly for home recording. My goal is to build a versatile guitar that still has the ability to sound like a Strat, no matter how many switches you have to flip. I'm particularly interested in experimenting with out of phase configurations.

I have ordered a new Player Strat Floyd Rose HSS to use as the base. I'll replace the pickguard and everything on/in it with:

• SD P-Rails set with Triple Shots in bridge and neck
• SD Duckbucker (wired in parallel) in mid
• A no-load blend pot with push-pull neck phase reverse
• A push-push blower/passing lane control on the tone pot
• A kill switch on the volume pot
• A standard Fender 5-way switch:

1. bridge TS + neck blend
2. bridge TS + mid + neck blend
3. mid
4. neck TS + mid + bridge blend
5. neck TS + bridge blend

• How does this diagram look, particularly with regard to the Duckbucker wiring?
• Should I get a RWRP Duckbucker? Does that even make sense for a single coil sized humbucker wired in parallel?
• I'm interested in how the Duckbucker will interact with the rail and/or P-90 in the neck (position 4). Do I have the polarity wired up in the best way possible for this combo?
• Would a different middle pickup sound better with the P-Rails?
• Is it worth adding a resistor to the middle pickup circuit to better balance with the P-Rails?
• Any other ideas? I'm open to anything.

Thanks!

[Jack_TriPpEr]

Welcome to the forum.

Regarding your plan for how to wire the Killswitch, you'll end up with audible noise if you simply disconnect the hot signal coming from the jack like that, leaving it live and open. Instead, you need to route it to ground. See the pic below which is a seymour duncan diagram for how to wire a killswitch.

Also, I see that the Common lug on the side of your five way pickup selector switch that has the hot wires from the 3 pickups, is not wired to anything. You need to route that common lug to something that leads to the Hot signal from the jack. Otherwise you will have silence since the pickups are not connected to the rest of the circuit. A common example is to wire that lug to the other common lug on the other side of the switch - where that other common lug is connected to the volume pot and then utlimately the Hot signal from the jack. See 2nd pic below of a seymour duncan diagram for 3 singlecoil pups that has a 5 way switch wired like i described. It may be hard to pick out because the color chosen is a dull gray, but there is a gray wire in that diagram that connects the two commons.

I'm not familiar with how blender pots are wired so i cannot comment on that.

You also asked about how the duckbucker wired in parallel would interact with the two P-Rails. Well, if being free of 60 cycle hum is something you want to try and achieve wherever possible, you want ro avoid scenarios where an uneven number of coils are active, since that results in 60 cycle hum. Particularly, you might want to consider auto-splitting the Duckbucker in Positions 2 and 4 so there are only 2 coils active (ignoring for now the optional Neck and Bridge blends) when the duckbucker is connected to the Prail (assuming the main goal is to have the Rail coil active here) and therefore the potential for hum-canceling is on the table. However, you would need to upgrade to a 5 way superswitch in order to auto-split the duckbucker in those 2 positions and have the duckbucker connected in parallel in position 3.

[UncleJ]

Thank you! Your review of my scheme is very much appreciated. Back to the drawing board!

[Jack_TriPpEr]

Thank you! Your review of my scheme is very much appreciated. Back to the drawing board!

UncleJ,

You're welcome. It's a very complicated scheme you are attempring, and you actually did a very good job, from the perspective of how many connections you got right. The number that need tweaking is just a minority in comparison.

Let me know if I can be of further help.

[UncleJ]

Making progress. I have received everything but the guitar. Went with a Shadow Kill Pot for the volume, a KAISH push-push for the tone control and blower switch; and a CTS push-pull zero load pot for the blend and neck phase reverse.

Got a Floyd Rose HSH pickguard from Dragonfire Guitar Parts. Had to enlarge the volume knob hole to move it away from the bridge pickup Triple Shot ring.

Now for some soldering!

[Mincer]

Thanks for the update!

[Jack_TriPpEr]

Making progress. I have received everything but the guitar. Went with a Shadow Kill Pot for the volume, a KAISH push-push for the tone control and blower switch; and a CTS push-pull zero load pot for the blend and neck phase reverse.

Got a Floyd Rose HSH pickguard from Dragonfire Guitar Parts. Had to enlarge the volume knob hole to move it away from the bridge pickup Triple Shot ring.

Now for some soldering!

Hey UncleJ,

Glad to see you're making progress.

I reviewed the updated diagram. The wiring for how the blender pot is connected to the 5 way switch needs update. Per the Lindy Fralin webpage regarding blender pots, the two wires from the blender pot should connect to the A side of the 5 way switch (i.e. to the same lugs that the hot wires from the Bridge and Neck pickups do). Whereas you currently have your Blender Pot wires connected to the B side of the 5 way switch.

*and* since you have a Master Tone pot (fed by your Master Volume pot) vs 2 Tone pots that would normally require use of the B side of the 5 way switch, you really don't need to wire anything to the B side of your 5 way switch. The common lug of A side can run directly to the Master Volume pot, i.e. doesn't need to run thru B side common lug first.

See attached pics from the Lindy Fralin site and URL to that Fralin webpage below.

https://www.fralinpickups.com/product/blender-pot/

[ArtieToo]

Cool project. Right up my alley. I'll be watching this.

[UncleJ]

Jack: I actually got it all wired up right after I posted those pictures and immediately realized exactly what you said about the blender wiring. Got it straightened out and everything appears to work perfectly. As you say, I probably should remove that common A-B lug jumper now for simplicity. Thank you again!!

The blend pot works opposite of how I expected: 10 (all the way clockwise) is no blend and 0 (counterclockwise) is full blend. Is there an easy way to reverse that? Not a big deal, as I can just think of that knob as turning down the normality.

With the 5-way in position 2 (neck/middle) I was able to reverse the neck phase and dial in cancellation from the bridge. This is going to sound so cool!

I used the vintage style fabric coated wire and I'm not a fan. My soldering experience is from building (and crashing and rebuilding and crashing....) racing quadcopters. The silicone coated wire I use there is much easier and cleaner to strip. Any reason not to just use that? And any tips for making solder stick to the pot cases for ground?

My friend, a buyer for an online retailer, is getting me an absurdly good deal on a new Player Strat (MIM) with a Floyd and HSS but I have to wait for stock. I'm hoping it comes this month. For now I'm holding it up to my FMT HH Telecaster to test. (I blame the coil tap on that guitar for giving me the idea for this project). I'm assuming I'll have to rout the body cavity as I've heard MIM strats all have HSS routs.

The next update should be a video of this thing in action. MIght have to find an actual guitar player for that!

[Jack_TriPpEr]

Jack: I actually got it all wired up right after I posted those pictures and immediately realized exactly what you said about the blender wiring. Got it straightened out and everything appears to work perfectly. As you say, I probably should remove that common A-B lug jumper now for simplicity. Thank you again!!

The blend pot works opposite of how I expected: 10 (all the way clockwise) is no blend and 0 (counterclockwise) is full blend. Is there an easy way to reverse that? Not a big deal, as I can just think of that knob as turning down the normality.

With the 5-way in position 2 (neck/middle) I was able to reverse the neck phase and dial in cancellation from the bridge. This is going to sound so cool!

I used the vintage style fabric coated wire and I'm not a fan. My soldering experience is from building (and crashing and rebuilding and crashing....) racing quadcopters. The silicone coated wire I use there is much easier and cleaner to strip. Any reason not to just use that? And any tips for making solder stick to the pot cases for ground?

My friend, a buyer for an online retailer, is getting me an absurdly good deal on a new Player Strat (MIM) with a Floyd and HSS but I have to wait for stock. I'm hoping it comes this month. For now I'm holding it up to my FMT HH Telecaster to test. (I blame the coil tap on that guitar for giving me the idea for this project). I'm assuming I'll have to rout the body cavity as I've heard MIM strats all have HSS routs.

The next update should be a video of this thing in action. MIght have to find an actual guitar player for that!

Uncle J,

Congrats on getting it up and running successfully.

I don't know too much about Blender Pots, so hopefully another member can chime in on that.

I'm not a fan of cloth wire myself. While everyone has a different opinion about it, I think its safe to say that one advantage it does NOT have over silicone wire, is how easy it is to work with.

Some suggestions for how to get solder to flow more easily onto the back of a pot: first, use some sandpaper to sand the area of the pot that you want to solder to (this goes for lugs to). The goal is to rough up that surface area, and then, flow some solder onto the surface area and let it sit/establish as a small pool of solder that you can then solder your wire connections to. Also ensure you're using 60/40 rosin core solder that has flux built into it.

And, finally, consider buying and using the tabs below as a replacement for having to pile-on a bunch of wires to the back of a pot in the first place.

https://guitarelectronics.com/solder...ts-switches-4/