Troubleshooting SD wiring diagram for three strat humbuckers

FierceFish

New member
I am converting a late 90's Lonestar Strat wiring to a triple humbucker setup, with middle and neck being single-coil sized Lil' Screamin Demon (neck) and Hot Rails (middle) with the stock pearly Gates in the bridge. Strat has a superswitch already.

I am trying to use this diagram from the SD site: https://www.seymourduncan.com/images/wiring-diagrams/SCHSCHSCH_S5W_1V_2T.jpg

The neck and bridge seem fine, but the middle position produces no sound. I have spent two days checking and rechecking the diagram, and rewiring and soldering anything that seems suspect. But still, I cannot make this work.

Doesa anyone see anything faulty in the diagram itself?

Thank you!
 
Should work but looks like the middle is reverse phase on the coils (presumably to make the split 2-4 humbucking? somebody else check me, if I'm not seeing it right.). It could be rails can't be wired that way. Need to check the wire colors and specs on how rails can be wired.
 
Should work but looks like the middle is reverse phase on the coils (presumably to make the split 2-4 humbucking? somebody else check me, if I'm not seeing it right.). It could be rails can't be wired that way. Need to check the wire colors and specs on how rails can be wired.

The middle pickup's wiring in that diagram isn't reverse phase... if it was, Green would be the Hot wire and Black would be the Ground wire.

Instead, that wiring is making the middle pickup's South coil the first of the pair of coils to get Hot input from the Jack (where normally North coil is the first in the pair), so that when the series link pair of wires for the 2 middle pup coils get grounded, it's the middle pup's North coil that gets cut instead of the South coil. So that in Positions 2 and 4, the Middle Pup's active coil is opposite magnetic polarity of the coil its being combined with from the Neck and Bridge pups, for hum-canceling purposes.
 
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Fierce Fish,

get ahold of multimeter, study this How-To video, and use the multimeter to verify that there aren't any issues with your middle pickup.
 
Thanks Jack - PUP checked out fine on the multimeter. I made yet another pass at it this morning and got it working. Your confirmation that the schematic should work as I thought it was intended really helped me to narrow down where to focus my attention. Still not certain what was wrong - most likely a bad solder joint I guess. They all tested ok, but anyway. Back to making music instead of a big soldering mess!
 
Thanks Jack - PUP checked out fine on the multimeter. I made yet another pass at it this morning and got it working. Your confirmation that the schematic should work as I thought it was intended really helped me to narrow down where to focus my attention. Still not certain what was wrong - most likely a bad solder joint I guess. They all tested ok, but anyway. Back to making music instead of a big soldering mess!

Cool beans. Glad to hear your guitar is back up and running.
 
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