Need Help Wiring Strat w/ Humbuckers

[W201]

Greetings,

New user from Pompano Beach Florida here. Hope you all are staying safe and sane.

So I’m rewiring my strat and I need a little help. This is my first attempt at wiring. I have Humbuckers for neck and bridge, a 5-way switch, CTS 500K push/pull pots, one for tone and one for volume. I want to use the push/pull pots to coil split the neck pickup.

When I generate a diagram on the site, there is no option for push pull pots, any recommendations on how I would wire everything up?

 

[Mincer]

Re: Need Help Wiring Strat w/ Humbuckers

Welcome to the forum!

If you are using push pulls to split the pickups, what do you want the 5 way switch to do? A regular 5 way is fairly limited to what you can do with 2 humbuckers, and it might be easier (and make more sense) to just use a 3 way switch and use the push pulls to split the pickups.

 

[W201]

Re: Need Help Wiring Strat w/ Humbuckers

So I guess I have a decision to make, use the 5 way switch or the push pull pots, or buy a 3 way switch...I'd like to have it wired like this, and I guess I won't use the push pull pots.

 

[jeremy]

Re: Need Help Wiring Strat w/ Humbuckers

i think you need a super switch to do that, but its totally doable

 

[W201]

Re: Need Help Wiring Strat w/ Humbuckers

i think you need a super switch to do that, but its totally doable

What’s the closest I can get to that with what I’ve got on hand, can I at least split the neck pickup? What are my options with just a five way switch?

 

[guitaroholic]

Re: Need Help Wiring Strat w/ Humbuckers

I'm no whiz without diagrams myself, but a regular 5 way is not very flexible and wouldn't do what you have in the chart. If you have 3 hot wires (as in a strat), say A, B, C then your 5 way choices are always:
1: A
2: A+B
3: B
4: B+C
5: C

Better to either get a super-switch which has very flexible options of what to attach where or stick with a 3 way + pots.
A super switch has 4 banks to hook wires up to for separate switching.

 

[jeremy]

Re: Need Help Wiring Strat w/ Humbuckers

you could do something like

1-ab
2-b
3-bc
4-c
5-cd

by auto splitting in the notch positions using the other side of the switch

 

[W201]

Re: Need Help Wiring Strat w/ Humbuckers

Thanks for the info guitaroholic,

Jeremy- do you know what the result would be with this wiring?

 

[jeremy]

Re: Need Help Wiring Strat w/ Humbuckers

looks like the below, but i could totally be wrong. kinda a weird diagram but i can confirm when i get home if no one else does before that

full bridge
both full
full neck
both split
bridge split

 

[Mincer]

Re: Need Help Wiring Strat w/ Humbuckers

Things open up a bit if you get a super switch. I did a super switch wiring, which eliminates the need for push/pulls, but requires you to flip a magnet. It gets pretty close to what you want.

 

[W201]

Re: Need Help Wiring Strat w/ Humbuckers

Thanks for the link man. I am totally down with your wiring, I'm looking into some 5-way super switches, now my only concern is flipping a magnet. It seems that every time I'm close, some else pops up. I did a quick lookup of what that entails and it doesn't seem like something that I want to tackle. Is that absolutely necessary?

 

[jeremy]

Re: Need Help Wiring Strat w/ Humbuckers

are your buckers covered? if not, flipping the magnet is pretty simple

 

[W201]

Re: Need Help Wiring Strat w/ Humbuckers

Not sure, they're wrapped in some kind of electrical tape, does this help?

 

[Mincer]

Re: Need Help Wiring Strat w/ Humbuckers

They aren't covered. Basically, the process is:

Slowly un-tape (it doesn't all need to come off)
Loosen the screws on the bottom
Locate the magnet (it might have wax on it, so you might have to scrape that off)
Push out the magnet with a screwdriver from the short edge through the other short edge
Flip it like a pancake
Re-assemble

It has been awhile since I did mine, but I am sure someone will come in and correct me if I am wrong or left any steps out.

 

[W201]

Re: Need Help Wiring Strat w/ Humbuckers

Do I flip the magnets on both bridge and neck pickups?

 

[Mincer]

Re: Need Help Wiring Strat w/ Humbuckers

No, just the bridge.

 

[W201]

Re: Need Help Wiring Strat w/ Humbuckers

Thanks man, you and the other folks who chimed in have been a tremendous help. I ordered my guitar wire, super switch and pots from amazon. Pots won't be here for another few days, so I'll put this on hold for now and post back when I get everything hooked up.

 

[Jack_TriPpEr]

Re: Need Help Wiring Strat w/ Humbuckers

looks like the below, but i could totally be wrong. kinda a weird diagram but i can confirm when i get home if no one else does before that

full bridge
both full
full neck
both split
bridge split

Thanks for the info guitaroholic,

Jeremy- do you know what the result would be with this wiring?
View attachment 103934

Jeremy,

Just confirming that your assessment of the 5 combinations was correct.

 

[Jack_TriPpEr]

Re: Need Help Wiring Strat w/ Humbuckers

Thanks for the link man. I am totally down with your wiring, I'm looking into some 5-way super switches, now my only concern is flipping a magnet. It seems that every time I'm close, some else pops up. I did a quick lookup of what that entails and it doesn't seem like something that I want to tackle. Is that absolutely necessary?

W201,

Just throwing it out there for consideration in case you have not already flipped the msgnet: no, flipping the magnet is not the only option. There is an alternative way to wire the pickup. Particulary, so that the South coil receives the Hot input from the jack/switch first, as opposed to the North coil receiving the Hot input first by default. That way in coilsplit mode, the South coil remains the active coil instead of the North coil.

Below is a diagram from the SD website that depicts the two wiring methods. The method that is circled is the alternative method that i described above.



You may also need/want to physically rotate that pickup 180° in the pickup mounting ring in order to make that South coil the inner coil instead of the outer coil. Proximity of one pickup's active coil to another pickup's active coil when the two are combined in parallel, affects the sound, i.e. the closer the two coils are, the more Strat-like quack they have. So depends on whether you want some of that or not.

If you go this route instead of flipping the magnet, then you would also need a modified version of the diagram in Mincer's blog article. I could find one or draw one up for you, just let me know.

 

[W201]

Re: Need Help Wiring Strat w/ Humbuckers

Jack_TriPpEr,

That would be awesome If you can find a diagram, if it’s a matter of moving around a few wires I think I would rather go that route instead of flipping the magnet, but at least it would be nice to have more options. Btw I returned the push pull pots and ordered regular 500K pots.