Question / Need help on a Series/Split/Parallel wiring diagram

[blackw1re]

Hello and happy new year to you all,

I recently bought a SD Hot Rodded Humbucker Set with an SH2 as neck and a SH4 JB as bridge Humbucker. I am planning to put them in a currently unused Yamaha PAC body I have lying around. As I am a huge fan of versatile wirings, I also ordered a pair of On-On-On Switches to be able to independently put the pickups in Series/Split/Parallel mode. I do have some experience in soldering more complex wirings as I successfully hooked up a pair of P-Rails with two Push/Pulls recently, based on a wiring diagram from the SD website.

When doing some research about these 3-state On-On-On switches, I stumbled across the following wiring diagram from https://guitarelectronics.com/2-humbuckers-3-way-lever-switch-1-volume-1-tone-series-split-parallel/



I do understand the way each pickup is wired to the On-On-On switch, but I am unsure about the coil-split mode in middle position.

So my two questions are:

1. Is this wiring diagram generally correct? Can I just copy this scheme to my SD humbuckers or do I need to swap some cables? (North-Start = black / North Finish = white / South-Start = green / South-Finish = red all the way?)
2. When both pickups are in split mode (single coil) and I put the selector in the middle position, will this behave similiar to two single coils as in a Telecaster? Is it correct that the diagram uses the north coil of the neck together with the south coil of the bridge (outer coils)? I am not quite sure of the polarities SD uses in their Set of Neck/Bridge PUs, that's why I ask.

I am really looking forward to revive my Yamaha with these new Pickups but I dont want to make mistakes here and have some phase/polarity issues later.


Have a good day y'all

 

[blackw1re]

As I somehow can not edit the above post, I want to add that I someow can not wrap my head around how the bridge Pickup can be in single coil-mode the way it is wired in the above diagram. Can someone clarify?

 

[Artie]

I wish they wouldn't use "Start/Finish" labels, but then again, they're trying to make the diagram generic. Here it is with Duncan colors. Note that the top and bottom are wired the same. The way they drew the diagram makes it look like the red and white are reversed on the bridge pup. They aren't.

This will give you inside coils on both pups. This WON'T be humcancelling. You need to do a mag flip on one pickup, or select the "screw" coil on the neck, for it to be noiseless.
I can redraw it that way if you need.

The bridge will be in split-mode by virtue of red/white being grounded when the switch is in the middle position.

 

[Artie]

Do the neck like this for the neck screw coil, and hum-cancelling. (This is how I'd do it.)

 

[blackw1re]

I wish they wouldn't use "Start/Finish" labels, but then again, they're trying to make the diagram generic. Here it is with Duncan colors. Note that the top and bottom are wired the same. The way they drew the diagram makes it look like the red and white are reversed on the bridge pup. They aren't.

This will give you inside coils on both pups. This WON'T be humcancelling. You need to do a mag flip on one pickup, or select the "screw" coil on the neck, for it to be noiseless.
I can redraw it that way if you need.

The bridge will be in split-mode by virtue of red/white being grounded when the switch is in the middle position.

Thank you for your response, ArtieToo! I really feel I need to do some homework on how Humbuckers actually work...

And yeah, I am indeed a little bit confused about these North/South Finish/Start descriptions of this diagram I had found previously.

So do I understand you correctly that if I wire it for both screw coils (so both outer coils), it won't be hum-cancelling? I was thinking that both outside coils would give me more of a "Strat like" tone when the respective PU is selected.

But as you said, you would wire it as you've shown in your second post, so Series and Parallel will just stay as-is for each pickup, but you would get the inside coil on the bridge and the outside coil on the neck? And this would even be hum-cancelling? I wouldn't mind to use the inside coil on the bridge, but prefer to have the neck single coil as close to the neck as possible.

Thank you again for your efforts!

 

[blackw1re]

I can again not edit my previous post, so I would like to add the question if sticking to both outside coils without the hum cancelling would give any "advantage" in tone wen only the neck or bridge is selected

 

[ThreeChordWonder]

It's not the physical position of the coils, it's their opposed winding direction that gives hum canceling. Actually it's the reverse wiring, as I expect the coils are wound in the same direction. They just solder on the hot wire where they normally solder the ground wire, and vice versa.

SD pickups, at least, are arranged so that the screw coils are on the "outsides", nearest the bridge or nearest the neck, for what I believe are purely aesthetic reasons.

In a regular SD pickup the north start is the "hot" and the south start is the "ground". The two finish wires (white north, red south) get joined together. This makes a lot of sense from a manufacturing perspective.

If you flip the magnet in, say, the bridge, you'll have reversed the polarity of that pickup, so you'll have to transpose the wiring to bring it back into phase. The finish wires will become your hot and ground wires and your starts will need to be joined together for humbucking.

I can make up a table later today, but mincer has already covered this in detail.

 

[Artie]

So do I understand you correctly that if I wire it for both screw coils (so both outer coils), it won't be hum-cancelling? I was thinking that both outside coils would give me more of a "Strat like" tone when the respective PU is selected.

Yes, it won't be hum-cancelling. However, doing a mag-flip on one pickup, and changing how it's wired, will allow both inners, or both outers, to be hum-cancelling. It really isn't difficult.

But as you said, you would wire it as you've shown in your second post, so Series and Parallel will just stay as-is for each pickup, but you would get the inside coil on the bridge and the outside coil on the neck? And this would even be hum-cancelling? I wouldn't mind to use the inside coil on the bridge, but prefer to have the neck single coil as close to the neck as possible.

Exactly. If you do it the 2nd way, (bridge slug with neck screw), you'll get hum-cancelling and what you want with neck coil closest to the neck. Diagram in just a sec.

 

[Artie]

Like this:

 

[blackw1re]

So yesterday evening I finally had the time to assemble the electronics and solder the Pickups into my Yamaha body and should I say... I am freaking impressed!!! These Pickups are damn fine! They sound soooo freakin amazing to me, I am in love


Safe to say, my soldering work will not win a price for beauty, but it works so well. No issues with grounding or soldering joints whatsoever. Wiring up those switches was way easier for me than two Push-Pulls. Although I think I fried the tone pot a bit, and I will measure everything later. But for now, I am so satisfied with the outcome. The Pickups in Series sound so great and warm and punchy and just delicious to my ears. Coil split positions even sound better to me than my true singlecoils I've had in another stock Ibanez guitar. And thanks to the wiring diagram ArtieToo provided me, I have the hum-cancelling sweetness in the middle position. Parallel mode retains the sweetness with hum-cancelling for clean sound wit higher gain, just awesome!


Thanks to ArtieToo and all of you again! I will definitively look further into electronics as I really found out that there's a lot more to learn for me. But for now I am just happy and noodling around with my "old new" Yamaha

Have a great day y'all!

 

[Artie]

Cool. Glad you got it working for you.