Single coil strat - What would YOU do?

Single coil strat - What would YOU do?

beaubrummels said:
This put me off ever doing my own Brian May wiring. Not impossible, but not very appetizing.

View attachment 55953
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If you could see the cavity of my LP you'd think this looks like a walk in the park. I've got 4 push/pulls (2 splitters and 2 series/parallel between coils) and 2 on/on toggle switches for series/parallel and phase switching between neck & bridge sticking out from the middle "vacant" area in the centre of the knob cluster.

Probably about the same amount of wiring, give or take, but in a very tight spot.

Oh wait, I got the diagram from you, Beaubrummels
 
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Re: Single coil strat - What would YOU do?

All pickups in series isn't too useful if you don't brighten it back up somehow.

What I do is that I have a switch that puts the bridge pickup in series with the 5-way switch, and then you can have neck, middle or (neck+middle in parallel) in series with the bridge pickup. The only disadvantage is that unless you use a superswitch and some fancy wireeitis this guitar will be mute when the switch is in-series and the 5-way switch is bridge only.

Then you do out of phase. There are few things better for a roaring sound than bridge and neck in series but out of phase, and ideally only half a neck pickup (split or tap).
 
Single coil strat - What would YOU do?

uOpt said:
All pickups in series isn't too useful if you don't brighten it back up somehow.

What I do is that I have a switch that puts the bridge pickup in series with the 5-way switch, and then you can have neck, middle or (neck+middle in parallel) in series with the bridge pickup. The only disadvantage is that unless you use a superswitch and some fancy wireeitis this guitar will be mute when the switch is in-series and the 5-way switch is bridge only.

Then you do out of phase. There are few things better for a roaring sound than bridge and neck in series but out of phase, and ideally only half a neck pickup (split or tap).
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You wouldn't have a diagram of this you would like to share, would you?

I hear what you're saying with neck and bridge out of phase with half a pup. My favourite position for soloing now is neck split & out of phase in series with the bridge on my LP, played through 160w of Fender amplification goodness.

It f**king screams.


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Re: Single coil strat - What would YOU do?

PizzaMaker said:
You wouldn't have a diagram of this you would like to share, would you?
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I don't do complete wiring diagrams for fancy schematics like that. They would break my head, never be correct anyway and even if they were you couldn't wire them up correctly. Your best bet is schematics errors and reading errors canceling each other out.

There is one "module" which is the 5-way switch which is wired up the obvious way. Things like out-of-phase and split are just additions that require no change to the base. So I wire up the standard thing. Then I add the additions.

In-series is not an addition, but I still keep the whole 5-way block as a black box (dislodged from the pots now) and wire the whole thing into the series/parallel switch as if it was just a single coil, along with the bridge pickup.

The most important thing in this work here is that you keep everything inside a module off ground, otherwise you can not put one such module into series/parallel or OOP switches. You bunch up all the shields in a separate step. If there is a 2-conductor (just shield and hot) pickup in there you auto-trip across it and can deal with it if possible.
 
Re: Single coil strat - What would YOU do?

I think I've got it. Similar to how I was planning to wire the "neck on" switch to the bridge position in parallel, but... different. Maybe not.

I'm trying to run these wires in my head - it's 7am here & I'm lying in bed trying to etch a diagram into my brain.

I reckon I'll have more luck when I'm awake and have a guitar in front of me.


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Re: Single coil strat - What would YOU do?

All the wires for OOP and in-series with a 5-way will find no room in my head.

Just wire up the 5-way first. When it works, detach it just enough to put it on the series/parallel switch, ignoring all the inside of the 5-way and what is behind it.

When that works, add splits and OOPs as needed.
 
Re: Single coil strat - What would YOU do?

Sometime down the road I want to but a MIM Fender Strat, tub route it, and stick five single coil pickups in it. Then on the pick guard I want to set up some sort of patch panel that allows for any kind of wiring scheme. I'd like to hear the sound of some pickups in series with each other, some parallel, and some in and out of phase, to see what the end results sound like. Of course it would look ugly, and pickup switching would be an ordeal every time, but it would satisfy a big curiosity.
 
Re: Single coil strat - What would YOU do?

PizzaMaker said:
Hey all - I've finished with my LP Jimmy Page wiring with 4 push/pulls & 2 toggle switches, now it's time to play with something else.

The next project involves a strat & 3 push/pulls with the standard 5 way switch.

I was thinking:
Volume knob pulls out to turn Neck pickup on when in the bridge or bridge/middle position (always on)
Tone knob 1 puts neck (or bridge) pickup out of phase
Tone knob 2 puts middle pickup out of phase

I'm also considering the following, but don't know if it's even possible:
Volume turns neck pickup on and out of phase when switch is in the bridge or bridge/middle position
Tone 1 puts bridge out of phase
Tone 2 puts all pickups in series

I can do the first option without the need for external help, but I have 2 questions:

1 - Is the second setup even possible?
2 - What would YOU do with 3 push/pulls and a standard 5-way switch?

Any feedback, thoughts and opinions would be appreciated...
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I think thats possible but I would have to go look at some of my old schematics. Have at it. If you can handle the Page mod this is very simple compared to that.

I remember these days.. I once took a single humbucker guitar and put in 5 switches.

1) Series / parallel
2) 1 coil or both
3) Selects which coil is active in 1 coil mode
4) in phase / out of phase
5) tone control in or out of circuit.

I did various other frankenstein jobs on guitars. It was great experience both in terms of learning what I liked and experience modifying guitars.

I have since come full circle and I make every circuit the simplest possible to get what I want. I found that I only used one or two of the sounds and 95% of the time left things set in the traditional config anyway.
 
Re: Single coil strat - What would YOU do?

DreX said:
Sometime down the road I want to but a MIM Fender Strat, tub route it, and stick five single coil pickups in it. Then on the pick guard I want to set up some sort of patch panel that allows for any kind of wiring scheme. I'd like to hear the sound of some pickups in series with each other, some parallel, and some in and out of phase, to see what the end results sound like. Of course it would look ugly, and pickup switching would be an ordeal every time, but it would satisfy a big curiosity.
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I build something like that a while ago. a guitar with a tub rout, a 250k volume, 250k tone, 500k volume, 500k tone, each tone was a push/pull with .02 and .01 caps for the tone circuit and spring loaded connections for everything. it also had two rails that you mount a pup in and could move them up and down the body to hear the difference between 1" from the bridge, 2" from the bridge etc... a cool tool for checking things out, but ugly and not practical for gigs. still gigged with it off and on to try things out in the real world but it was never really designed to be a stage guitar
 
Re: Single coil strat - What would YOU do?

jeremy said:
I build something like that a while ago. a guitar with a tub rout, a 250k volume, 250k tone, 500k volume, 500k tone, each tone was a push/pull with .02 and .01 caps for the tone circuit and spring loaded connections for everything. it also had two rails that you mount a pup in and could move them up and down the body to hear the difference between 1" from the bridge, 2" from the bridge etc... a cool tool for checking things out, but ugly and not practical for gigs. still gigged with it off and on to try things out in the real world but it was never really designed to be a stage guitar
Click to expand...

I think five single coils would look cool, some people have done that much already, but the patch panel would be pretty unsightly. I'm not sure I want to go to great lengths to hide it though, by having an external patch panel connected by a ribbon cable, for example.
 
Re: Single coil strat - What would YOU do?

So... In the end I did this:

3 Push/Pulls

Volume turns neck pup on
Tone 1 switches neck pup phase
Tone 2 runs middle & bridge in series as recommended by Jeremy.

This runs similar in a way to my favourite lead setting on my LP, where I have the neck pup split & out of phase with the bridge hummmmmbucker.

It took some mucking about but I got it in the end... Sounds amazing with series & phase selected.

Thanks all for your advice and opinions. Next up - Nighthawk. New thread to come.
 
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