Re: Gaps in the Wiring Diagrams?
Thanks, but I meant only the switch itself from that diagram, not any of the wiring displayed there (didn't even look what it's about). So I'll use a similar one for my diagram.
But:
Pickup ground wires should go to the system ground (pot casing, jack ground, bridge ground) instead of switch poles. From there, you jump grounding wires to the switch tabs where you want the pickup coil connected to that tab and in that switch position to be grounded. For example, to get the slug coil active, ground the red + white with either green or black to hot and the other to ground. To get parallel operation, ground the white + green and send the red + black to hot.
While it's theoretically possible to wire the pickup bare wire to those places on the switch directly, you'll still need jumpers from the switch to the system ground.
Well if I want to put two pickups in series, one of the ground wires has to go to the switch, no? And the switch then connects it either to ground or to the other pickup's hot wire. That's what I did with my Phat Cat SG and it works fine.
Or so I thought. While thinking about this, I checked again what the bare wire in humbuckers is for (as in, why two ground wires?). SD says it's for shielding and grounding. So if I understood that correctly, bare goes to pickup shielding (always grounded) and green is just south start. Which aside from the rare occasion that you want two pickups in series, is usually grounded too.
So, two HB's in parallel:
HB1 green -> ground
HB1 bare -> ground
HB2 green -> ground
HB2 bare -> ground
In series:
HB1 green -> ground
HB1 bare -> ground
HB2 green -> HB1 black
HB2 bare -> ground
However, the Phat Cat I already put in series has no separate bare wire. It just has a hot output and a ground+shield braid. My switching:
Parallel:
PC1 braid -> ground
PC2 braid -> ground
Series:
PC1 braid -> ground
PC2 braid -> PC1 hot
The problem with this is that PC2's shielding now isn't connected to ground anymore. Instead it's in the signal chain between the two pickups. It does work somehow, but now I don't know if and how different it would be if PC2's shielding was correctly grounded instead?
I wanted to make a wiring diagram of this, but now I suspect it's faulty.