Rails / JB Jr wiring advice

[TJStrat]

Just reaching out for some advice. I'm replacing my three SD APS-2 Flat single coils in my '62 Reissue Strat (Alder body, rosewood/maple neck). It's a bit too warm/muddy at times. Having looked around I decided to go for the following:

Neck pickup - Cool Rails
Middle pickup - Vintage Rails
Bridge pickup - JB Jr

I'm going to refresh the wiring system too as it's a bit noisy. I had a few questions about that, and I know it comes down to personal musical preference, but I'm not familiar with rails pickups:

-Is it worth coil splitting the JB Jr (with the Vintage Rails in position 2 of the selector switch)?

-What wiring system would get the most out of this setup (or what would NOT work well)?

-Is having separate tone controls for Bridge and Neck/Middle actually pretty useful, do you find? (On my current guitar I have a "FAT-O-CASTER" switch, which gives various parallel/series options, so I'm used to have just one master tone.)

-The pot suggestion from SD is 250K, but another luthier online said customers preferred 500K for rails pickups. Again, personal preference but what would you start with?

-Finally, is my proposed setup "HSS" or "HHH" or something else?

Thanks all, have a good day.

 

[Artie]

Welcome to the forum.

With that particular combo, I think I'd do straight Strat wiring, with the exception of doing one tone for N/M and one for bridge. I'd also use 250k's all around. And technically, it is HHH.

Others may have other ideas. It's a nice combo.

 

[GuitarDoc]

I agree with Artie. Here is the diagram:

https://www.seymourduncan.com/images/wiring-diagrams/SCHSCHSCH_5W_1V_2T.jpg

That diagram shows the normal tone wiring, but if you do what Artie suggests (which I also believe is much more useful), then move the middle pup's tone connection up to the open lug on the switch.

 

[Mincer]

You can't split the Vintage Rails, as only one pair of strings will work. And it is not really worth splitting the JB Jr, as the sound isn't great. It does work well in parallel, though.

 

[GuitarDoc]

I agree...I wouldn't consider splitting the JB, it doesn't sound very good. Very blah...anemic. Parallel sounds much better than split, but you lose a bit of output with parallel.

 

[Artie]

You can't split the Vintage Rails . . .

Also, if you look at the specs, you'd think a VR in series would be like a Cool Rails. But it isn't. A Vintage Rails only seems to sound good when wired as it was intended . . . parallel.

The good news is, it's a good sound. Nice, noiseless, "warm & smooth" single-coil sound.

 

[TJStrat]

Thanks all, much appreciated. I look forward to getting to all set up in the next few weeks.

 

[Mincer]

Let us know how this project turns out!