Noisy Neck/Stack Plus/ObsidianWire Help?

[ForkingPaths]

I googled a lot of stuff surrounding Seymour Duncan Stack Plus and didn’t really get any good answers. I’m not sure if I did this right or am on the right track. Any help is appreciated.

I have a 2008 Fender Strat with

Neck: Custom Stack Plus Stk-6

Middle: Classic Stack Plus Stk-4 (RWRP)

Bridge: Pegasus Humbucker


I got an Obsidian Wire Solderless Harness (7-way “Gilmour mod” push-pull to turn on neck pup). It’s currently set up as HSH mode where

Position 1: Bridge

Position 2: Bridge Split + Middle

Position 3: Middle

Position 4: Middle + Neck Split

Position 5: Neck

Position 6: Bridge + Neck

Position 7: All 3

Individually the pups sound great. The bridge is aggressive without being too metal and the middle is nice and “Strat-y” but also dead quiet, even with gain. The neck sounds good too, but it’s not quiet. In fact, positions 5 and 4 are really noisy. I had the same problem with my last set up where I had Lace Sensor Noiseless pups. The HSS bridge was super hot but incredibly quiet, but the neck was really noisy. That one was installed by a tech.

I don’t know why this happens or if I’m missing something. The difference between noise floors on position 5 and 3 is night and day. I’m pretty sure everything is connected/grounded correctly but I’ll include a picture + a wiring diagram from Obsidian. Is there a reason why the neck is so noisy?

The Obsidian kit was pretty easy to install but there’s almost no resources for using it with Stack Plus pups.

I also wanted to have the middle pickup split to get a more traditional sound out of pos. 3 and 4, but when I used the red wire, my multimeter was giving me ~1.5k for positions 2-4 so I just went with the white lead. I know resistance isn’t the end all for measuring a pup but this seems wrong to me. I’m going to go back in today and switch the middle to split so it’s hum canceling in 2 and 4. I’m also gonna recheck the wiring.

I taped off the red wire for the mid and used the red wire for the neck as “North Finish”

I tried to include as much info. Thanks for any help.

[playas]

From the picture it looks like the red wire from the neck is loose and free to float around touching whatever in the cavity, which is bound to cause problems.

Normally on duncans where the pickup is not being split the red and white are soldered together and taped off / heat shrinked to make sure they can't make an electric contact with anything else.
(There are way more knowledgeable people on here who will correct me if anything I've said is off.)

[ForkingPaths]

The loose red wire in the photo is from the middle pickup. I taped it off before screwing everything down (similar to the Seymour Duncan wiring diagram).

The red wire from the neck pickup is in the 6th terminal labeled “Series N Finish”

[beaubrummels]

On stacks, white is hot, red is the series link, and black/bare is ground. I think you would have to connect red to both series N and S for it to work.

[ForkingPaths]

On Obsidian Wires website, the closest I could find to SD Stack wiring (3 wires + bare) were PRS, where the series lead is treated as “N. Finish.” I won’t be able to connect the neck to N and S because there’s only 1 series lead (which I currently have as N Finish)

I don’t want to keep opening up my guitar, so I will change the wiring harness to “HSS” and tape off series leads for the middle and neck. That should fix the neck, if not I’ll just return it.

[beaubrummels]

The way you connect a wire to two lugs is use a jumper wire. But maybe it could work with just the one. I don't know the innards of the Obsidian box, so can't tell.

[Mincer]

Have you tried neck + middle not split? How much of a difference is it? I can't imagine it would be much different.