How to wire an HSS strat - blender gradual tap & 500k resistors for the single coils?

[bobby-bro]

How to wire an HSS strat - blender gradual tap & 500k resistors for the single coils?

I spent my whole day trying to wire my new Seymour Duncan '59 with two Van Zandt blues single coils. I did the pickup installation 101 tutorials and have also been wiring pickups occasionally since the late '90's. I'm not that good at it, but not bad either. I can wire single coils with the standard 5-way. But today was an epic fail. I have never fallen from grace when wiring like I did today. I bought all kinds of tools, the 60/40 solder, some helping hands (alligator clips on a weight with a magnifying glass to hold the wires when it gets complicated). Usually when I wire and things go bad, I can hear all the pickups. There might be a phase problem, or some static from somewhere, a grounding issue. I pop it back open and fix it. This time, no sound from any pickup.

Here's what I have bought to get the job done:

1. A blender pot.
2. A 500k tone pot.
3. A 500k volume pot.
4. 2 500k resistors, so that the single coils see the tone and volume pots as 250k.
5. A 22mf (I think) capacitor, to not lose the treble while decreasing volume.

I used the Lindy Fralin diagrams to try to:

1. Use the blender to gradual tap the '59, using the 4 way wiring. https://www.fralinpickups.com/wiring-diagrams/hss-stratocaster-wiring-diagram-with-gradual-tap/
2. Use the resistors to coax the single coils into seeing the volume and tone pots as 250k. https://www.fralinpickups.com/wiring-diagrams/modified-hss-stratocaster-wiring-diagram/

As you can see by the diagrams, the single coils are ran to 2 different places. I chose the resisters diagram for how to run the singles. And the gradual tap is kind of confusing because the Seymour Duncans have a green wire and a ground wire. I did what the Fralin blender diagram shows, but ran the ground wire to the volume pot. I also ran the black wire there and the green wire. I ran the white one like it shows in the gradual tap diagram, and the red one too. That's after reviewing some info about Seymour Duncan's 4 wires and what they are for.

Does anyone have experience running both these together?

If so, do you have a digram that shows how to wire the Seymour Duncan 4 wire humbucker doing these two things?

This is by far the hardest pickup wiring I've ever attempted.

Thanks,

Bobby

 

[beaubrummels]

Welcome to the forum.

The singles should work but the way you did the Duncan will never work. Duncan black should be where the Fralin white is. Duncan red+white should go to the blend pot like the Fralin red does. Duncan green and bare should go to the back of the volume pot. Also, the Fralin diagrams omit the ground wires, so you need to make sure the pot casings and string bridge are grounded also.

 

[bobby-bro]

Welcome to the forum.

The singles should work but the way you did the Duncan will never work. Duncan black should be where the Fralin white is. Duncan red+white should go to the blend pot like the Fralin red does. Duncan green and bare should go to the back of the volume pot. Also, the Fralin diagrams omit the ground wires, so you need to make sure the pot casings and string bridge are grounded also.

Oh man... Thanks so much!

I have charted out how I'm going to do this since I wrote this, and to see your answer is a life-savor. I'm going to first wire the humbucker like you described, then make sure it works, and then go from there and get the single coils working, only after the humbucker works as expected. Thanks so much!