Duncan's wire colors VS. Schaller's weird terminology?

[samhc]

I've gotten myself into a bit of a wiring pickle. Here's the project: wiring up an HSH Strat with a Schaller Megaswitch E+.

If you're unfamiliar with the Megaswitch E+, it replaces the 3rd position (middle pickup alone) with neck and bridge combined. Positions 2 and 4 split the humbuckers and use the outer coils with the middle pickup in parallel.

Matching the Duncan wire colors with Schaller's wiring diagram is throwing me off. Duncan's terminology is North, South, Start, and Finish... Schaller's is Hot and Cold. Fiddling around with a multimeter lead me to think green is the outer coil hot wire.

See the below pic. I've annotated it with my best guesses. Am I even in the in the ball park here?

HELP! And thanks.

 

[Blille]

Have you checked this one? https://forum.seymourduncan.com/for...help-determining-hot-inner-and-cold-outer-etc


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[Adieu]

Hot = start, cold = finish afaik

 

[ThreeChordWonder]

First of all the North coil is the humbucker coil with the plain, or not slotted, pole pieces. Whether it's the "inner" or "outer" depends on whether it's at the neck or bridge. In the photo below you can see my S-D Trembucker at the bridge, where the North coil is the "inner" in both cases. If you fitted the same pickups in the two locations, however, the North would be the "inner" at one and the "outer" at the other.

In conventional humbucker wiring the black goes to the switch hot side, the green to either the switch cold ir ground side or straight to ground. Red and white get soldered to each other and taped / heat shrinked off.

FWIW I bought the Trembucker used, and the previous, or previous to previous, owner had it rewired completely differently. It took me a good hour to figure out what was going on, only helped by the way the old ends were wired to each other.

 

[ThreeChordWonder]

I tried to figure out which wires go where to use the "outer" coils on the humbuckers, but failed.

It depends on whether you've got a matched pair with the Norths on the insides, for example, or if you're using the same pickup twice, in which case the North will be the "outside" on one and the "inside" on the other.

Also, how important is it to use the "outer" coils on each pickup? Could you live with using the "inner" on both? Could you live with using the "inner" on one and the "outer" on the other?

 

[DPDT]

In a two humbucker guitar, we always mount the pickups so that the screw coil faces outward. So what Schaller calls the "outer coil" is the screw coil. It then becomes an exercise in translation and the OP has it exactly right.

Hot = Start = Positive
Cold = Finish = Negative
Outer coil = South = Screws
Inner Coil = North = Slugs

"Hot wire inner coil"
Hot = start
Inner = north
Seymour Duncan start north = black

"Cold wire outer coil"
Cold = finish
Outer = south
Seymour Duncan finish south = red

"Hot wire outer coil"
Hot = start
Outer = south
Seymour Duncan start south = green