After a bit of help wiring my p-rails

[MrBitey]

Hi all,

I have a Fender Modern Player Marauder into which I have installed a p-rails in the bridge.


At the moment, it is simply wired up via a Strat 5-way switch, as if it was the bridge and middle pickups of a Strat.

So it works like this:
Position 1) rail
Position 2) rail P90 in parallel
Position 3) P90 alone
Position 4) P90 and neck
Position 5) neck alone

I did it like this as it was pretty easy to do and didn't tax my brain too much. I am getting better at wiring but I still find it hard to completely understand!

Anyway, I find that the parallel config, whilst it cuts hum, is not really that different in sound to the p90
I'd like to run the p-rails in full humbucker mode - series instead of parallel.

Thing is, I can't quite figure out how to do that with the wires available and the five-way switch.

I'd rather not fit a push-pull pot, one f the special SD selector rings or a toggle switch.
I feel like there must be some way to wire the five-way switch to make this happen.

Can anyone help or point me towards a suitable wiring diagram?

cheers

MrB

 

[Liko]

Re: After a bit of help wiring my p-rails

Unfortunately, the standard Strat 5-way's 2 and 4 positions place adjacent terminals (1 and 2 or 2 and 3) in parallel to the common terminal. So, it won't be possible to set up the wiring you want with the stock 5-way.

You could upgrade to a "superswitch", such as is found on the Lonestar Strat. This switch has a discrete terminal for each switch position (plus the "common" terminal), and it also has four sets of ganged terminals instead of just two. Using this switch, it becomes relatively straightforward; one set of terminals would select which wire was the "hot" output from the pickups, going to the tone and volume, and a second set would select the wire to which the ground lead is connected. One position's hot wire is another's ground in this scheme, and the wiring will more than likely involve soldering one pickup's hot and another pickup's ground to the same terminal, so this switching will have to be carefully planned out to make sure you don't end up shorting the two out. A third set of terminals (you typically get four with this type of switch) determines tone control routing, with the individual terminals meaning that you can always have exactly one tone control in each position; the biggest decision is whether the middle pickup should be controlled by the neck or bridge tone control. The fourth one should go unused, provided you can figure out a routing scheme for hots and grounds that doesn't end up shorting the whole thing out; if not, the fourth set gives you an extra way to make a routing decision for the signal chain.

 

[namklak]

Re: After a bit of help wiring my p-rails

I put the p-rail in the bridge of a strat, with a 5way 4pole superswitch. I have a push-pull pot to use just the p-90 of the p-rail, and the p-90 doesn't seem to be a great pickup in a strat imho.
1) p-rail in series hb - sounds great. I little fuller than a stacked rail (which I have in another strat), but not ripping like a true hb. A great bridge strat tone.
2) rail of p-rail with neck hb - Jimmy Vaughn-ish and also useful for modern pop.
3) middle and neck hb - a damn great tone. the middle and neck are DiMarzio True Velvets, which are nice - great for blues and slide and smooth tones.
4) middle and rail of p-rail - not noise cancelling, my tele-ish tone.
5) all off.
I used this while with a modern singer/songwriter - it allowed me to cover a butt load of tones. The schematic is hand drawn, not sure I know where it is...