Help wiring Invader, SSL-5 rwrp, Hot Stack Plus STK-S9b 3 tones, 1 vol, and 5 way

[oshiwei]

you could but what would end up happening is position 4 would hum.

treat the red wire as if it's red and white. Ibanez did this on the RG7321 bridge pickup doing this really ambitious wiring I'm helping someone else with on another forum thread. Luckily I type like a secretary haha.

The best approach is
black / bare - ground to the back of the pot
red - to the usual red/white spot on the wiring
white - to the switch where it's the usual black wire for the neck position as there is a difference in the color code is why

The autosplit mod makes sure there is no hum in positions 2 and 4 because it turns having an odd amount of coils as there is 2 in a humbucker (or your stacked single coil) and 1 from the middle pickup. Take your bridge pickup for example in position 1 it's your usual hot output. Position 2 makes it into a single coil to cancel out the hum as it turns half the humbucker off, similar to position 2 on a strat. Same goes for position 4 , hum cancelling similar to position 4 on a strat but position 5 is your hot stacks highest output.

The reason why is the right end of the switch you noticed how it's just coilsplit wires (Red/white). The black wire in between makes sure the pickups go from high output to coilsplit.

Don does a great idea explaining it visually. He seems like a busy guy so he doesn't get back to every reply on youtube

Okay. So, bottom line is that you recommend your original schematic. But what do we do with the info I have learned about the Hot Stack with the multi-meter? How do I wire that pick-up?

[shadowfire90]

In a guitar pickup with more than 2 wires if I passed someone a pickup they never usually see in their shop such as an iron gear or rockfield pickup and the person didn't know the color code. What the tech will do is use a multimeter and use the resistance as their guide. The higher the resistance in a pickup the louder it is. Louder is what we want in positions 1 and 5.

so the white is our higher reading
red is lower
this is how I'd do it just focusing on the neck pickup. I love how i can do this.

oh and it took me forever to see this reply so feel free to message me privately on my profile if i forget to reply. I just noticed the page 2 button on this thread

[oshiwei]

In a guitar pickup with more than 2 wires if I passed someone a pickup they never usually see in their shop such as an iron gear or rockfield pickup and the person didn't know the color code. What the tech will do is use a multimeter and use the resistance as their guide. The higher the resistance in a pickup the louder it is. Louder is what we want in positions 1 and 5.

so the white is our higher reading
red is lower
this is how I'd do it just focusing on the neck pickup. I love how i can do this.

oh and it took me forever to see this reply so feel free to message me privately on my profile if i forget to reply. I just noticed the page 2 button on this thread

So, white to the bridge tone pot middle prong, red to the switch, and black and bare to the back of the tone pot? How do you get the solder to stick to the back of the tone pot? Mine won't stick for anything.

[shadowfire90]

exactly, use the first wiring as reference and this just highlights what the neck pickup does and you'll do fine.Just make sure all three pickups have two wires in the center prong of the tone controls. That would be the only way to create tone controls in this wiring.

Anyways let me know how it goes. This is an easy wiring to try

[oshiwei]

exactly, use the first wiring as reference and this just highlights what the neck pickup does and you'll do fine.Just make sure all three pickups have two wires in the center prong of the tone controls. That would be the only way to create tone controls in this wiring.

Anyways let me know how it goes. This is an easy wiring to try

So, I wired everything according to what you said, except the bridge humbucker. I really wanted at least that to be series. Can you tell me how to wire it series based upon the rest of the diagram you provided? Because, i already wired everything else.

[shadowfire90]

with the bridge pickup, it's the same approach. Just like position 5 it'll be series as in the highest output your pickup can get, position 2 will cancel the hum

here's what it'll look like

[oshiwei]

with the bridge pickup, it's the same approach. Just like position 5 it'll be series as in the highest output your pickup can get, position 2 will cancel the hum

here's what it'll look like

Okay, so I got the whole thing wired. After I test it, I’ll let you know how it went.

[oshiwei]

with the bridge pickup, it's the same approach. Just like position 5 it'll be series as in the highest output your pickup can get, position 2 will cancel the hum

here's what it'll look like

Okay, so, positions 1 and 5 work. But 2-4 don't. I followed what you said for the main wiring diagram and for the two subsequent diagrams for the middle and neck pickups. What do you think went wrong?

[shadowfire90]

3 as in the single coil works fine too right? we're very close to finishing this. My first assumption is the black wire from the autosplit mod wasn't grounded. This is both pickups illustrated. It's a lot of wires in the original diagram I drew

Hows the invader sound so far? If you're new to modding guitars a big tip I wish people told me when I was 16 was the closer to the strings the pickup gets the louder it'll become. You can also make it a bit brighter on certain strings if you raise the pole pieces with the same type of allen key a floyd rose uses.

remember with the right end of the switch. These are the actual names of the switch contacts. 0 is the top , 5 is the bottom.
0 - don't do anything
1 - bridge pickup coilsplit wires (red/white invader)
3 - black thicker wire in diagram - solder to the back of any pot
5 - neck pickup coilsplit wire (red wire hot stack single coil)

as always no wires are soldered together in my diagrams unless black squares are present

compare your wiring to this diagram and see if you can spot any differences

[oshiwei]

3 as in the single coil works fine too right? we're very close to finishing this. My first assumption is the black wire from the autosplit mod wasn't grounded. This is both pickups illustrated. It's a lot of wires in the original diagram I drew

Hows the invader sound so far? If you're new to modding guitars a big tip I wish people told me when I was 16 was the closer to the strings the pickup gets the louder it'll become. You can also make it a bit brighter on certain strings if you raise the pole pieces with the same type of allen key a floyd rose uses.

remember with the right end of the switch. These are the actual names of the switch contacts. 0 is the top , 5 is the bottom.
0 - don't do anything
1 - bridge pickup coilsplit wires (red/white invader)
3 - black thicker wire in diagram - solder to the back of any pot
5 - neck pickup coilsplit wire (red wire hot stack single coil)

as always no wires are soldered together in my diagrams unless black squares are present

compare your wiring to this diagram and see if you can spot any differences

The single coil doesn’t work at all, which is why I thought the SSL-5 would have something to do with it. But the single could wiring is the simplest. I checked and as far as I can tell the single coil is wired correctly. It just doesn’t work. Do you think the fact that I am using a 500k pot and a 47 cap could have anything to do with it? Also, it's an RWRP (i.e. reverse wound) pick-up. Will that matter?

[oshiwei]

The single coil doesn’t work at all, which is why I thought the SSL-5 would have something to do with it. But the single could wiring is the simplest. I checked and as far as I can tell the single coil is wired correctly. It just doesn’t work. Do you think the fact that I am using a 500k pot and a 47 cap could have anything to do with it? Also, it's an RWRP (i.e. reverse wound) pick-up. Will that matter?

It works! I checked the soldering and it looked like the white wire for the middle single coil was actually touching the pot. I checked the rest of the points and cut that end off. Now it works. But it sounded like there was a little buzz, but it isn't completely together yet. So, I'll let you know once I get it together. If there is a buzz, what would you suggest?

[shadowfire90]

with hum there is a few places I'd check

firstly if you touch the strings and a serious amount of hum goes away it's a string grounding issue. This is easy to fix
the connection between pot to pot , i've got something illustrated
the input jack make sure both wires are in the right places

if position 2 and position 4 hum than your best bet is to wire the single coil backwards. White goes to black , black goes to white if that makes sense

[oshiwei]

with hum there is a few places I'd check

firstly if you touch the strings and a serious amount of hum goes away it's a string grounding issue. This is easy to fix
the connection between pot to pot , i've got something illustrated
the input jack make sure both wires are in the right places

if position 2 and position 4 hum than your best bet is to wire the single coil backwards. White goes to black , black goes to white if that makes sense

Good news. The hum appears to be the output jack. Not any of my wiring. When I jiggle the cable in the jack, it goes away. I'm going to mess with it more. But for now, I'm waiting for a couple more pieces of hardware. Once I get them and finish the guitar, I'll put up a picture and will share how it sounds, if you care to see/hear. Thanks again for your help. I couldn't have figured this out without you.

Oh, random question, do you think it's worth it to add the additional resistor to the caps as is often done in various Duncan wiring? I left it off every pot, as it is easy to add later and I wanted to see how it sounds, as is.

[shadowfire90]

I'm glad to hear everything went well. I'll break this down in point form a few ideas and such.

The resistor and capacitor you're talking about as in treble bleeds right? Where you've got a RC circuit (resistor / capacitor) across certain contacts on the volume control. If so I wouldn't bother honestly unless you want more control over the volume. But if your volume pot is already say a B500k I wouldn't worry too much. Stewmac has a good video on the subject "Good tone 10 to 0" or similarly titled. I'd say 90% of the builds I'd do for my online and local sales when I used to buy and sell gear I'd just use linear pots like Ibanez tended to and most guys looked at it as an improvement. This will give you an idea if it's something you'd like. Buy all these parts off of ebay. A seller like tayda2009. It'll be way cheaper. The amount of money you'd spend on a few bags of capacitors is cheaper than going here. But they did a great demo of it.



I've seen others using resistors to drop the resistance of the entire pickup selection to warm up guitars but it goes between over kill and subtle differences at least in my experience

capacitors can filter the output of pickups - you put a low valued one before it hits the switch, it can be useful. 0.01uf (10nf) to 0.047uf (47nf) i'd try. However by putting one in without say a super 5 way switch say your invader would never get as brutal or aggressive with it perminantly filtered. The lower the nano farad (NF) the less frequencies it cuts. I'd start off at 10nf and maybe 33nf maximum I'll have a few diagrams.


the best tone controls I tried that are passive as in no batteries and simple to try are
the fender greasebucket tone control - its a passive filter very similar to the standard tone control. To my understanding the left hand side of it where a resistor and capacitor are in series the resistor limits the tone from ever reaching 0. The bass cut happens with the much higher valued tone capacitor. It was a favorite of mine for years but in builds with both a standard and greasebucket tone it was too similar so I had to get more creative.

torres mid boost and scoop - there are two ways to do this
the basic way - just an audio transformer. 1H - 5H spectrum. The Xicon 42TL021 AND Xicon 42TL018 are the two I believe I used. The 42TL021 is used in a few mods. This cuts bass and treble in such a way that it sounds like you're turning your mid control down on an amp. The 42TL018 I never did figure out what to change as it's a stronger transformer and this guitar pedal forum all people wanted to do was "pick measure". I think 2 posts in I deleted my account.

the advanced way Dan Torres came up with. This one looks tricky to do but isn't. It uses an audio transformer and 4 components. Your tone control has to be at 5 otherwise you shift the sound one way or another. towards 10 it'll be similar to your standard tone control. However when you turn it down it thins out the sound. The only issue with it is

to make the invader brighter and less compression my personal favorite is to just add a switch to bypass all the controls called a blower switch I'd have to draw out and explain to you but these are some ideas

these are either really old images from when I was starting out about 10+ years ago or stuff I got off of other forums


torres mid scoop/boost

[oshiwei]

I'm glad to hear everything went well. I'll break this down in point form a few ideas and such.

The resistor and capacitor you're talking about as in treble bleeds right? Where you've got a RC circuit (resistor / capacitor) across certain contacts on the volume control. If so I wouldn't bother honestly unless you want more control over the volume. But if your volume pot is already say a B500k I wouldn't worry too much. Stewmac has a good video on the subject "Good tone 10 to 0" or similarly titled. I'd say 90% of the builds I'd do for my online and local sales when I used to buy and sell gear I'd just use linear pots like Ibanez tended to and most guys looked at it as an improvement. This will give you an idea if it's something you'd like. Buy all these parts off of ebay. A seller like tayda2009. It'll be way cheaper. The amount of money you'd spend on a few bags of capacitors is cheaper than going here. But they did a great demo of it.



I've seen others using resistors to drop the resistance of the entire pickup selection to warm up guitars but it goes between over kill and subtle differences at least in my experience

capacitors can filter the output of pickups - you put a low valued one before it hits the switch, it can be useful. 0.01uf (10nf) to 0.047uf (47nf) i'd try. However by putting one in without say a super 5 way switch say your invader would never get as brutal or aggressive with it perminantly filtered. The lower the nano farad (NF) the less frequencies it cuts. I'd start off at 10nf and maybe 33nf maximum I'll have a few diagrams.


the best tone controls I tried that are passive as in no batteries and simple to try are
the fender greasebucket tone control - its a passive filter very similar to the standard tone control. To my understanding the left hand side of it where a resistor and capacitor are in series the resistor limits the tone from ever reaching 0. The bass cut happens with the much higher valued tone capacitor. It was a favorite of mine for years but in builds with both a standard and greasebucket tone it was too similar so I had to get more creative.

torres mid boost and scoop - there are two ways to do this
the basic way - just an audio transformer. 1H - 5H spectrum. The Xicon 42TL021 AND Xicon 42TL018 are the two I believe I used. The 42TL021 is used in a few mods. This cuts bass and treble in such a way that it sounds like you're turning your mid control down on an amp. The 42TL018 I never did figure out what to change as it's a stronger transformer and this guitar pedal forum all people wanted to do was "pick measure". I think 2 posts in I deleted my account.

the advanced way Dan Torres came up with. This one looks tricky to do but isn't. It uses an audio transformer and 4 components. Your tone control has to be at 5 otherwise you shift the sound one way or another. towards 10 it'll be similar to your standard tone control. However when you turn it down it thins out the sound. The only issue with it is

to make the invader brighter and less compression my personal favorite is to just add a switch to bypass all the controls called a blower switch I'd have to draw out and explain to you but these are some ideas

these are either really old images from when I was starting out about 10+ years ago or stuff I got off of other forums


torres mid scoop/boost

It sounds amazing! Absolutely no buzz. I adjusted the jack and finished everything up. This is literally the best sounding guitar I have ever owned/played. Thank you so much for your help. It has been a long and challenging journey, but I have finally built the guitar I always wanted from scratch. Thanks again. I'll upload a pic and vid once I get everything adjusted.

[shadowfire90]

I'm happy it turned out so great, yeah in the future if you've got any wiring questions feel free to message me privately as I'm always near a computer. Though there are a ton of us on here that are just as helpful.

Hope you enjoyed your weekend I'm still considering it monday

[oshiwei]

I fixed the jack issue. But the humbucker sounds weak. Not bad, just paper thin. Overall, though, it sounds amazing. Everything is together now. I'll PM you the pick of the strat I built and an audio clip to show you how it sounds. I really appreciate the help.

[oshiwei]

So, I've been adjusting the action, pickups, etc. and I now have good playability, but it has a weird fuzzy noise when I play hard chords. I've been googling and found info about the pickups not being at an even level with one another or the action being too low. But I have other guitars with the action this low and they're fine. I also have the pickups as close to one another as seems possible. But it still has a static. What do you think?

[shadowfire90]

usually i put the bridge pickup as close to the strings as possible as I'm not too worried about sustain when I plug my guitar in and it gives me all the extra power I want. I'm curious what others think on here as well. Record something and post it on youtube or similar sites to see if people can spot the problem.

The ways I think of this is
is the fizziness something you hear when the guitar is unplugged as well as in the amp if so i can imagine it's fret buzz. It happens when there is a change of seasons as the humidity can change dramatically throughout the year or the strings are off the guitar you have to adjust the trussrod. If so an adjustment of the trussrod will do the trick. Always use the right allen key and don't force the neck if it doesn't want to turn more than we feel it should. The worst we can do is use a screw driver. I've seen this on two guitars of the ones I flipped and would be furious and realize why I got such good deals. A low end LTD explorer (LTD EX50) with a working EMG 81/85 pickup set for under 75$ american I wouldn't get any other time that's for sure.

With hum assuming the guitar is properly shielded and single notes aren't the issue where you can put your hands away from the strings and get no fizziness or hum the guitar wiring is fine.

to know a guitar is properly shielded it depends on the factory
with Schecter, LTD , Squier , Jackson , Washburn and higher end BC Rich I've seen flat black paint being used, if that's the case don't worry about it, your guitar is shielded
alumium or copper tape can shield a guitar too - I suggest copper tape
if you see just the same color paint on the body as inside the control cavity or similar copper tape is your best bet. You need 6-10ft (2-3m) and you're set. It's dirt cheap on ebay if you don't mind waiting a few weeks from China as it's ridiculous what it goes for in America. 20$ I swear was what Dimarzio wanted a while ago versus 2-3$ in China.

With copper tape to install it properly just cover the whole entire guitar body in it on your strat now place a wire between the:
copper tape itself - solder sticks on very easily
to the back of any potentiometer
if you ever do a les paul remember to solder a wire to each pickup cavity. Neck humbucker to Bridge humbucker, bridge humbucker to the back of a volume or tone pot.

[oshiwei]

usually i put the bridge pickup as close to the strings as possible as I'm not too worried about sustain when I plug my guitar in and it gives me all the extra power I want. I'm curious what others think on here as well. Record something and post it on youtube or similar sites to see if people can spot the problem.

The ways I think of this is
is the fizziness something you hear when the guitar is unplugged as well as in the amp if so i can imagine it's fret buzz. It happens when there is a change of seasons as the humidity can change dramatically throughout the year or the strings are off the guitar you have to adjust the trussrod. If so an adjustment of the trussrod will do the trick. Always use the right allen key and don't force the neck if it doesn't want to turn more than we feel it should. The worst we can do is use a screw driver. I've seen this on two guitars of the ones I flipped and would be furious and realize why I got such good deals. A low end LTD explorer (LTD EX50) with a working EMG 81/85 pickup set for under 75$ american I wouldn't get any other time that's for sure.

With hum assuming the guitar is properly shielded and single notes aren't the issue where you can put your hands away from the strings and get no fizziness or hum the guitar wiring is fine.

to know a guitar is properly shielded it depends on the factory
with Schecter, LTD , Squier , Jackson , Washburn and higher end BC Rich I've seen flat black paint being used, if that's the case don't worry about it, your guitar is shielded
alumium or copper tape can shield a guitar too - I suggest copper tape
if you see just the same color paint on the body as inside the control cavity or similar copper tape is your best bet. You need 6-10ft (2-3m) and you're set. It's dirt cheap on ebay if you don't mind waiting a few weeks from China as it's ridiculous what it goes for in America. 20$ I swear was what Dimarzio wanted a while ago versus 2-3$ in China.

With copper tape to install it properly just cover the whole entire guitar body in it on your strat now place a wire between the:
copper tape itself - solder sticks on very easily
to the back of any potentiometer
if you ever do a les paul remember to solder a wire to each pickup cavity. Neck humbucker to Bridge humbucker, bridge humbucker to the back of a volume or tone pot.

Yeah, it isnÂ’t fret buzz. I already adjusted the truss rod and bridge to get the action I want. I adjusted the pickup height, too. The fuzz IÂ’m hearing is something that occurs only when I play strong chords. It isnÂ’t from the wiring or the strings hitting anything; there is no buzz when itÂ’s unplugged, when IÂ’m playing solos, or when itÂ’s just sitting there silent, plugged in. ItÂ’s an electronic noise that sounds kind of like a speaker that is being overloaded with a frequency range it canÂ’t handle. The thing is IÂ’m playing into my DAW, not an amp. So, I donÂ’t know what is causing it. IÂ’ll upload an audio clip when I get a chance to record one.