H/S/S wiring question.

Aaron Cheney

Aaron Cheney

New member
Hey guys,
I just rewired a strat with a 59 in the bridge and two SSL-1's in the mid and neck. My dilemna is the 59, which I have wired to a push/pull tone pot to split. I have the green and bare to ground, the black as hot on 5 way switch, and the red and white together on the push pull. When I pull up the tone pot, it splits just fine, but it doesn't cancel the hum with the middle pickup in position 4.
The mid pickup is RWRP and cancels out with neck just fine. What am I doing wrong here?

Thanks,
Aaron
www.aaroncheney.com
 
Re: H/S/S wiring question.

You aren't doing anything wrong. You're just expecting the wrong thing to happen. ;)

When you split a SD pickup like that, you get a single coil that SD considers to be RW/RP. If you just bought two neck pickups for the SSL-1's and have no problem swapping their positions an easy solution would be to swap positions of the mid and neck pickup.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but you can also wire up how the bridge pickup is split differently to use the other coil. Instead of grounding the red and white wires when the tone pot is pulled up you can connect them to hot. That, I think, will turn off the other coil in the '59 and get you hum canceling in position 4 when the '59 is split.

Oh, and welcome to the forums!
 
Re: H/S/S wiring question.

Thanks garublador! I wasn't aware that SD considered the tapped coil from a humbucker to be RWRP.
You're right... seems the easiest thing to do would be just to switch the mid and neck pups. I didn't buy them as a calibrated set, so I don't think there should be any problems with mismatched output or anything...

The only X factor is that one of the SSL's is brand new (Got it from Lew) and the other is NOS from the mid '80's. I don't think that should make any difference....

A
www.aaroncheney.com
 
Re: H/S/S wiring question.

Hi Aaron -

Garublador is right - splitting an SD humbucker the normal way leaves the slug coil hot, and it's effectively RW/RP compared to SD single coils. Swapping the neck & middle pickups is the easiest solution.

He's also correct about splitting to the screw coil by connecting the red/white to hot instead of connecting to ground. However, when I tried that approach the slug coil was not completely dead. The following is an alternative way to split to the screw coil:

white & bare to ground
black & green connected and on your coil split switch
red used as hot

When you ground the black/green connection, the screw coil will stay hot. Personally I prefer this in a strat because position 2 (bridge & middle) sounds more like an all single coil strat to my ears, but YMMV.

Chip
 
Re: H/S/S wiring question.

Fresh_Start said:
Hi Aaron -

Garublador is right - splitting an SD humbucker the normal way leaves the slug coil hot, and it's effectively RW/RP compared to SD single coils. Swapping the neck & middle pickups is the easiest solution.

He's also correct about splitting to the screw coil by connecting the red/white to hot instead of connecting to ground. However, when I tried that approach the slug coil was not completely dead. The following is an alternative way to split to the screw coil:

white & bare to ground
black & green connected and on your coil split switch
red used as hot

When you ground the black/green connection, the screw coil will stay hot. Personally I prefer this in a strat because position 2 (bridge & middle) sounds more like an all single coil strat to my ears, but YMMV.

Chip
Click to expand...

Somebody buy that man a beer ... :) Chip dead on with this, it keeps the phase relation of both coils the same, but taps from the other side of the pup. It still uses the ground tap (good for all safety purposes, but really not crucial in this stuff) ...
The other way is to use a *Hot tap* is as a differential ground, what you do is that you tap the (using the original wiring as a reference) white & red with the hot (well you're making that your signal line, i.e. taking your output from that point), but you leave the black connected to the hot as well ... so the black,white, and red all get connected, and used as the signal output (hot). That keeps the unused coil quiet. Of course many companies do leave the other end of the unused coil open ... so not that many people complain about it, i just don't like the idea from the standpoint of proper design, and application. JSYK :cool3:
 
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