Recommend me an HSH pickup set and critique my wiring diagram

[Liko]

Hey guys, longtime guitar player, new here.

I've had this idea for a long time, to build a "Swiss Army Strat". An HSH, with coil splitters and a "neck-on" switch, and the most recent addition, now that I've got the wiring figured out, is a bridge coil selector. The wiring would not be dissimilar from an HSH Superstrat, but I've never liked the looks of the standard examples of that label; the overall idea here is an axe that looks and feels more or less like a stock Fat Strat (I'd like to camoflauge the screw coil of the neck pickup, either with a white bobbin or a piece of pickguard glued on), but that can emulate the basic tone of just about anything from a vintage Strat to a Tele to a Les Paul. Obviously it's not going to nail any of those dead on, but I should get close.

Since there's nothing really new about the wiring scheme, it's attached for public comment (EDIT: Updates made, check further down in the thread).

The various basic combinations are as follows:

Strat - Tap both HBs, slug bridge coil selected, 5-way as desired.
Fat Strat - Tap neck, bridge in HB mode, 5-way as desired.
Tele - Tap neck and bridge, screw bridge coil selected, pos 5 for neck, pos 1 for bridge, pos 1 + neck on for both
LP/SG - Neck and bridge in HB mode, pos 5 for neck, pos 1 for bridge, pos 1 + neck on for both

I've thought about using the Greasebucket circuit, but I'm not sold on it especially since I'm not sure whether the 4.7k resistor and .1uF bleed cap from the "stock" version will work well with the beefier tone caps and pots needed for the humbucker.

Anyway, the big question is, what pickups to load into this pickguard? I want a vintage-ish tone and output, but therein lies my first problem; to get vintage Strat output of roundabout 5-6K when tapped, the HBs are going to need to be overwound, between 10 and 12K, and possibly up to 14K on the bridge if I want a good Tele bridge tone (and/or a "Texas Strat" sound with the slightly hotter bridge). That puts the HBs well into "high output" territory, while the middle pickup would be something like a Vintage Flat at 6.6K. Looking at the tone chart, I'm thinking maybe a Duncan Custom in the bridge, but I'm not sure what to use in the neck. Just going by DC resistance and HB EQ ratings, the 59/Custom might be a contender, but splitting it would give me the 7K Custom coil which is a bit hot in this position. I'm not finding a neck humbucker in the SD lineup with a DC resistance of about 11K; closest I can get is the Duncan Distortion at 12.7 which would be pretty much right on the money when tapped, but would be a very hot humbucker (nice warm clean tone, though).

I've seen the P-Rails, and they are a very intriguing idea, but I'm not quite sold on it just yet. Not sure what it'd take to sell me.

 

[AlexR]

Re: Recommend me an HSH pickup set and critique my wiring diagram

Mixing H and S, especially with splits is a hard choice. The only way to get good splits but low series output is to have one hot coil, like the hybrid. The main question is whether you place more emphasis on the humbucker being the most accurate tone to your tastes or the singlecoil.....'cos you'll not get both. The other issue too is that there isn't a humbucker around that split sounds like a singlecoil.

I'd actually go with the hybrid for the bridge. A split to the custom coil will at least be a bit stronger.

The neck is even more troublesome, as a hot pickup here will sound dreadful. Perhaps a spin a split might be more appropriate, and choose a typical neck PAF style humbucker. If you want a great match for the c/59, then a 59/jazz hybrid is perfect - except for the fact that it would have to be custom ordered or self made.

 

[Liko]

Re: Recommend me an HSH pickup set and critique my wiring diagram

Thanks for the suggestions, Alex. I'm thinking if I went with the 59/Custom in the bridge I'd just use a straight-up '59 in the neck; I like PAF-y neck tones for clean work. Maybe a Pearly Gates. I do want to keep the quack in position 4; that's probably my single most-used pickup combination overall. Hence the quandary; you say HBs just don't sound like SCs when they're split.

I was mulling the P-rails over in my head last night, as they're a pickup designed to be split, and on top of everything else they bring a good P-90 tone to the party, though some have said that's their best trick. Using them would call for a second coil selector for the neck (there are existing designs for using one switch to control coil selection for both pickups, but with a middle pickup in the mix I think it's worth having individual coil selection), and if I have to go totally switch-freak I may as well move to three-position switches to do the coil splitting and selection with one switch, and then I can use the push-push pots for a series/parallel selector (won't that be an interesting wiring diagram).

 

[AlexR]

Re: Recommend me an HSH pickup set and critique my wiring diagram

The series combo in p-rails is really hot. The parallel selection is more like a typical humbucker. I would say that a HSS is more like it, as there is no way you'll get ANY legitimate quack with with a humbucker split ( the position 4 is typically n & m together). The p-rails could be your bridge, vintage PAF tones being parallel, plus the split to either rail or p-90. The two singles could be ssl 1's for example which I find to be actually a bit hotter than 'typical' singles. (about 10% overwound compared to 6k vintage strats).

The rail in the bridge might give you a more strat-like tone, and the p-90 will give you tele-ish tone (not really but the closest you'll get from this setup).

In this case you'd need to get 1 tripleshot, or have a mini switch with more than just the two rows of poles.

 

[Liko]

Re: Recommend me an HSH pickup set and critique my wiring diagram

... I would say that a HSS is more like it, as there is no way you'll get ANY legitimate quack with with a humbucker split.

I dunno; saw this video, where a guy went HSH with P-Rails and a few other mods, and he was getting pretty decent quack out of what would be 2 and 4 (he wired it with a Tele 3-way controlling the buckers, then a "middle on" push-pull). His trick was to reverse both pickups so the rails are closer to the bridge and neck; doesn't bother the 90s much either way, but you get a truer separation of the rails from the middle pickup (a little farther apart than stock singles, but better than right next to each other).

In this case you'd need to get 1 tripleshot, or have a mini switch with more than just the two rows of poles.

I was planning on using two on-off-on slide switch, 8 terminals each with the switch connecting an adjacent pair. The switch would send one coil to ground thus soloing the other, then the S/P is handled by the pot's DPDT in a relatively standard way. Here's the wiring:



Currently there's a flaw; the S/P switch has to be in Series to solo a pickup. In Parallel, soloing a pickup by shorting the other to ground ends up taking out the entire pickup. Not sure I can fix it, and it's not a huge concern. The big question will be whether I can cram all this in a Strat control cavity; it'll be a tight fit, and I'll have to manage wires very carefully.

 

[Artie]

Re: Recommend me an HSH pickup set and critique my wiring diagram

You're making the series/split - stud/screw wiring way too complicated. Unless, of course, you're trying to accomplish something that I'm not seeing.
This will do the series/split - stud/screw much easier:



Also, I personally, don't see the benefit of doing stud and/or screw. The difference isn't that great. But, to each his own.

Artie

I've got another idea for this that you might like, but I don't have time right now to draw it up. This weekend, for sure.

 

[Liko]

Re: Recommend me an HSH pickup set and critique my wiring diagram

You're making the series/split - stud/screw wiring way too complicated. Unless, of course, you're trying to accomplish something that I'm not seeing.
This will do the series/split - stud/screw much easier:

View attachment 48085

Also, I personally, don't see the benefit of doing stud and/or screw. The difference isn't that great. But, to each his own.

Artie

I've got another idea for this that you might like, but I don't have time right now to draw it up. This weekend, for sure.

Thanks for this. That would work perfectly in my original wiring; unfortunately, the idea has changed, and I'm now looking to incorporate series-parallel switching. That makes the whole thing significantly more complex.

My original reason for being able to select either coil is to ensure that I can get a hum-cancelling combination of the bridge coil with either the neck's slug coil or the middle single coil. The fact that there wouldn't be much difference in tone was fine and dandy for that.

Now, I'm leaning toward P-Rails for this project. That gives a whole bunch of new reasons to want to select one coil or the other, and also to put them in series or parallel. I'm told that the series humbucking mode is very hot, and the DC resistances of around 12K and 18K (!!!) back that up. Parallel is supposed to be more PAF-y, though the neck pickup would be only 3.1K in parallel, and the bridge 4.7K, in the realm of lipstick tubes. But, this feature set means the coil selector now has to be a three-position switch, for SC/HB/90, and the pot switch is now the series-parallel. In my first attempt, seen above your post, the coil selector only works properly when the S/P switch is in series mode. I have since resolved that problem, but it is still a bit of a rat's nest:



With the coil selector in the center, the signal path, from ground to hot, first goes into the slug coil via the black lead, then out the white lead and into the reddish wire to its left on the coil selector, leading to the right-center terminal on the pot switch. From there, depending on the S/P setting, the path either goes straight down to the bottom right terminal and from there to the main pickup selector (parallel), or up, across and down to the lead back to the red wire (series). The red wire is connected to the reddish wire one terminal to the right, which gets either the white lead's signal or a parallel path from ground, and from there the signal is through the coil, out the green lead and up to the pickup selector from there. With the switch to the left (screw position), the white lead is disconnected, and the red lead gets a direct feed from the ground wire to its left, so regardless of the S/P position only the screw coil is continuous. With the switch to the right (slug position), the white lead gets a route to the pickup selector through the far right red wire, and the red lead is disconnected, so again regardless of S/P setting only the slug coil is continuous. No ground loops, though there are some pretty convoluted dead ends in a few configurations.