Three wire Squier humbucker with Triple shots

[joeychickenskin]

Hi

I'm looking to install a triple shot into an old Squier Showmaster Superstrat HSS.

There are three wires on the humbucker: Red, White and Black which are connected to the 5 way switch as below.

The selector already allows me to have full humbucker and front coil of humbucker and middle single-coil together.

Can I assume that the red and white wires are for each individual coil in the humbucker and that all I'm missing from a 4-wire is the unshielded ground (the black wire is soldered to the back of a pot at the moment.

Will I be able to use this pickup with split rails and use all of the options with the missing unshielded wire (there is a terminal for the black and for the unshielded wires on the pcb?

Thank you

 

[AlexR]

Re: Three wire Squier humbucker with Triple shots

If its 3 wires, you most likely have one wire which is hot, one ground and one which is the series connection. Each coil has 2 wires.....the start and finish. For tripleshots you need all 4 wires, plus the chassis/baseplate ground separated out. Unless you can go in and add another wire to split the one series wire into the two individual coil wires then a TS will be a useless addition.

 

[joeychickenskin]

Re: Three wire Squier humbucker with Triple shots

Thank you , I suspected as much. My guess is that buying a four wire humbucker will be easier than trying to modify what is not likely to be an amazing squier pickup.

I was curious that in the second switch position, that I was getting one coil from the the humbucker and the middle single, that there was already a split available and can't reason that that through if the common wire is the series connection (?coming off the connection between the two coils) which I'm sure it is.

Thank you.

 

[Funkfingers]

Re: Three wire Squier humbucker with Triple shots

In the photograph, white = hot, black = ground (x2), red = coil split.

Examining the selector switch, from left to right, contacts 1 to 3 are the bridge, middle and neck pickups. Contact 4 is the output to the volume control. Contacts 5 and 8 are not used. Contact 6 is the series/coil split from the humbucker. Contact 7 runs to ground, automatically engaging the coil split on the humbucker.

The fact that the output cable insulation from the neck postion single coil pickup is a different colour to that of the middle position pickup suggests that one of them is reverse wound / reverse polarity with respect to the other. This should render the neck/middle selection hum-cancelling.