Stratocaster wiring proposal - Push/Pull pots

[rdm_chem]

Dear forum colleagues,

I hope you are all doing well!

I'm about to mod my Squier Affinity Strat to add some new features. I would like to present the idea for you, and hopefully you would be able to give inputs, identify weaknesses and add new points! Thank you in advance for sharing your knowledge!

After checking several sites and blogs on how to wire a Strat, I put together the following idea:

• (Volume pot) I would like to have the option to activate all pickups at the same time, so I created a way to add the bridge pickup irrespective of the 5-way switch selection.
• (Neck tone pot) It will be possible work with the more modern 0.047 uF cap, or the "vintage" 0.10 uF.
• (Middle tone pot, now Middle/Bridge pot) It will be possible work like a regular Strat where the tone pot affects only the Middle pickup, or to include the Bridge pickup in the same control together.

The only point that I was in doubt about adding or not was a "treble bleed" circuit. At this moment, I'm not adding, but your advices on that will be very welcome.

Please share your thoughts!

Thank you for your help.

[Clint 55]

Cool idea. I've found treble bleeds to be very helpful. The kind that works the best for single coils is the Kinman, which is a 1000pf cap in series with a 130k resistor. Lower value caps work also and bleed less treble. I believe the Fender tone saver is a 680pf cap in series with a 150k resistor.

[rdm_chem]

Dear Clint, thank you for your reply and comments on the treble bleed. I will think more about it!

[PFDarkside]

The components are pennies, buy a few values and try them out to see what you prefer.

Are these the Duncan Designed pickups?

[rdm_chem]

Dear PFDarkside, thank you for your feedback. Yes, I think I have a couple of other components that can be tested to find the sound that best pleases my ears!

The pickups are a set of Lindy Fralin Vintage Hot.

[vinnie1971]

Really good mods.

I would change the bride on to a bridge and neck together switch - attach one wire from the fiddle terminal to the bridge hit terminal on the selector and another wire from the down terminal to the hot terminal for the neck on the selector.

When down behaves as normal, but pull it up, if neck is selected bridge comes in, if bridge is selected, neck comes on. It's better than just bridge on or neck in as you don't have to select neck to turn the bridge , it makes no odds which you have selected, the other one comes on.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[rdm_chem]

Dear vinnie1971, thank you a lot for your inputs! It really made me think the whole wiring rationale in a better way. I must confess I probably did not catch/understand all the details you described on how to perform the modifications in the wiring, so I had spent some time thinking on how to apply the general concept.

From your comments, I understood you mentioned that it would make more sense having a "Neck + Bridge" tone control rather than "Middle + Bridge", because in real life, based on the options out of the 5-way switch, Neck and Bridge pickups will never work together, so having individual tone controls for Neck and Middle and Middle and Bridge would be more appropriate (no function overlapping). Please let me know if that was the idea you were trying to pass (Hopefully I could describe it clearly ... I'm not a native English speaker! ).

So, please have below the "version 02" of the wiring diagram proposal:



The modifications are:

• The previously "Neck tone" pot became "Neck/Bridge tone" pot.
• The previously "Middle/Bridge tone" pot became "Middle tone" pot.
• I moved the tone capacitors from one tone potentiometer to another to make room for the bridge wiring together the neck wiring.
• Now, when the new "Neck/Bridge tone" pot is in "down" position, it will be controlling both Neck and Bridge tones at the same time. Taking into account that Neck and Bridge pickups will not be working at the same time in any possible switch position, it should be fine.
• When the new "Neck/Bridge tone" pot is in "up" position, it will be controlling only Bridge tone (Neck tone will be off). As I'm using a push/pull pot, I had to decide if I wanted to control one or another tone. My intuition tells me that Bridge would be a better option. Would you agree?
• Finally, based on a comment of another colleague in this forum (Clint 55 - Post #2) and further research at internet, I decided to add a treble bleed circuit ("Kinman").

Please let me know if I could correctly capture your idea.

Thank you again.

rdm_chem

Squier Affinity.pdf

[Clint 55]

Cool ideas. Vinnie was suggesting an improvement to your bridge pickup on volume pot. Instead, he suggested, for the volume pot to turn on both neck and bridge so you can get neck/bridge combo in position 1 or 5.

[ArtieToo]

Hey rdm . . . you're idea is good, but you're implementation is a bit, well, whacked.

Look at the green wire going from the bottom "1" terminal to the middle push-pull. You have it going to both the top and bottom lugs of the switch. So it does nothing. You'd have the same functionality by just taking the green wire direct to lug 2 of the pot. But even that gives weird results.

Let me chew on this for a moment and see if I can "neaten" this up for you.

Artie

P.S. Do you have a version of that diagram that doesn't include any wiring? That way, I could draw right on what you already have.

[rdm_chem]

Thank you for clarifying Clint 55! Now I understood! .
I'm thinking about it!

[rdm_chem]

Dear ArtieToo, thank you a lot for your comments and considerations.

I'm probably not the best person to design wirings!

Let me try to answer to your comment:

"Look at the green wire going from the bottom "1" terminal to the middle push-pull. You have it going to both the top and bottom lugs of the switch. So it does nothing"

• The other top lug (left) in the pot has the blue wire from switch "5", so when the pot is in "down" position, it should activate both (Neck and Bridge) tone controls.
• The bottom lug (left) in the pot has only the green wire from switch "1", so when the pot is in "up" position, it should activate only Bridge tone controls (Neck will be off).
• Do you see another way to achieve this functionality? It it wrong? Thank you for your help!

You'd have the same functionality by just taking the green wire direct to lug 2 of the pot.

• I agree, but if we connect the wire directly to lug 2 in the pot, we would not have the opportunity to turn controls on and off, correct?
• Actually, another idea would be to use a regular (not push/pull) pot in this position, and connect both wires from switch (lugs 1 and 5) to lug 2 in the pot. The only difference would be that we would not have the ability of controlling the Bridge tone in separate (push/pull in "up" position). What do you think?

Finally, please have attached the "clean" version of the scheme without wiring, so you can draw!

Squier Affinity_blank.pdf

Thank you and have a nice day!

[vinnie1971]

Dear vinnie1971, thank you a lot for your inputs! It really made me think the whole wiring rationale in a better way. I must confess I probably did not catch/understand all the details you described on how to perform the modifications in the wiring, so I had spent some time thinking on how to apply the general concept.

From your comments, I understood you mentioned that it would make more sense having a "Neck + Bridge" tone control rather than "Middle + Bridge", because in real life, based on the options out of the 5-way switch, Neck and Bridge pickups will never work together, so having individual tone controls for Neck and Middle and Middle and Bridge would be more appropriate (no function overlapping). Please let me know if that was the idea you were trying to pass (Hopefully I could describe it clearly ... I'm not a native English speaker! ).

So, please have below the "version 02" of the wiring diagram proposal:



The modifications are:

• The previously "Neck tone" pot became "Neck/Bridge tone" pot.
• The previously "Middle/Bridge tone" pot became "Middle tone" pot.
• I moved the tone capacitors from one tone potentiometer to another to make room for the bridge wiring together the neck wiring.
• Now, when the new "Neck/Bridge tone" pot is in "down" position, it will be controlling both Neck and Bridge tones at the same time. Taking into account that Neck and Bridge pickups will not be working at the same time in any possible switch position, it should be fine.
• When the new "Neck/Bridge tone" pot is in "up" position, it will be controlling only Bridge tone (Neck tone will be off). As I'm using a push/pull pot, I had to decide if I wanted to control one or another tone. My intuition tells me that Bridge would be a better option. Would you agree?
• Finally, based on a comment of another colleague in this forum (Clint 55 - Post #2) and further research at internet, I decided to add a treble bleed circuit ("Kinman").

Please let me know if I could correctly capture your idea.

Thank you again.

rdm_chem

Squier Affinity.pdf

Hi

I meant use the tone controls push pull to turn the neck and middle pickups on together.

When it's down, you 5 way switch behaves as normal , but when up, as long as not just middle pickup on its own is selected them both neck and bridge are on together. It's basically a jumper between both pickups so when up, if neck is selected, bridge is also on,or when bridge is selected , neck is also on. The neck on or bridge on modification is actually quite poorly conceived when you are using s 5 way switch. With my modification you you don't have to swap from neck to bridge to then turn neck on if you were in the neck position to start, you just pull the control up and the other one comes on.
If you are in position 2 or 4 then you also get all 3 pickups.
--------------
Edited :
--------------

But your suggestion for switching control is the pickups for the tone controls is excellent

On my HSH I did have just master tone but the middle is too bright with the tone in the same setting compared to the humbuckers so I have swapped my dial a split and now have 2 tones - one controls neck and bridge as they are humbucker and in normal 5 way operation never used together and tone 2 is middle pickup tone.

Incidentally on this guitar I have volume push pull as coil split for neck, tone 1 push pull as coil split for bridge and tone 2 push pull when up is the neck and bridge on together jumper.

See how this goes. I am using 10k resistor on my coil splits to keep some fatness to the tone. I think I will prefer this to master tone and dial a split.

On SSS strats I prefer master tone and blend pot

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[rdm_chem]

Hi everybody!

Thank you a lot for all your inputs. I really helped me to improve the original project to a much better result in the end!

I wired the guitar as showed above (scheme v.02) and everything seems to be working fine so far. I did not test the guitar with strings, because the new bridge/tremolo system was not delivered yet.

I tested the pickups and switch touching the pickups poles with a coin, and I noticed they are working OK.

Something that surprised me is that the output of the pickups is a lot lower than the output of other guitars I own. The resistance of the Lindy Fralin Vintage Hot pickups are approx 6-7 k.

I'm not sure if that is related to my lack of experience with single coils (most of my other guitars have humbuckers, hershey bars or golden foils) but I was surprised that I had to really crack the volume knob up in my amp to get an audible response (5W tube amp).

I checked the wiring again for short circuits and unwanted leakage of signal though ground, shielding, etc., but I found nothing wrong.

Tonight or tomorrow I may have time to install the bridge (should be delivered today!) and so I will have a more realistic opinion.

Thank you for your help!

[vinnie1971]

That's a hot vintage DCR for single coils, same ball park as fender tex mex, which sound awesome

If you get a reading off the pickup they are working, try getting a reading off the jack for each pickup on its own, I am guessing you failed to ground properly.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk