Vintage Rails HSS Thought it would be easy

dogman

dogman

New member
Hi guys, I have a HSS mexi strat, I wired a full size JB in series for the bridge and two Vintage Rails for middle and neck in parallal. with the orig. 250K pot. I was very disapointed in the output of the rails and when I rolled the volume down all pickups died at about 7. So I checked wiring everything was ok so I put a 500K pot in. The output improved and I can roll the volume all the way down. However I'm still disapointed in the vintage rails, they sound straty on clean but have no sustain or life they die out fast, and dirty they sound terrible.
The JB has sounded good all along so I am going to wire the rails in series and see if that helps but I'm afraid they won't get the strat single coil sound that way. any thoughts. If this doesn't work I might have to try a cool rail in the neck. Thanks for any suggestions, by the time I'm done I could have bought an American strat HA HA
 
Re: Vintage Rails HSS Thought it would be easy

the vr are really low output pups and the jb is pretty high output. wiring the vr in series will give you more output and a thicker sound. should match up with the jb better that way.

if the volume died out at 7 then you either have a taper on that pot you dont want or it was wired incorrectly.
 
Re: Vintage Rails HSS Thought it would be easy

Thanks Jeremy, I wasn't even sure I could wire the VR's in series since the Duncan diagram says to wire them in parallel. I'll give it a try. If it doesn't give me the single coil sound, would a cool rail in series at the neck be a better solution? Thanks again
 
Re: Vintage Rails HSS Thought it would be easy

if you have the new style im pretty sure you can wire them in series. if there are four colored wires you are fine.

the old ones were hard wired in parallel. id try the vr in series first before i spend any more money.
 
Re: Vintage Rails HSS Thought it would be easy

dogman said:
Thanks Jeremy, I wasn't even sure I could wire the VR's in series since the Duncan diagram says to wire them in parallel. I'll give it a try. If it doesn't give me the single coil sound, would a cool rail in series at the neck be a better solution? Thanks again
Click to expand...

Sounds like they are giving you a single coil sound. You just don't like that sound. Wiring them in series will give you a thicker sound but that's not really a single coil sound at that point.

As for the cool rails, if you want a hotter, punchier sound they will do that but they are not going to sound like a traditional SC. I like them a lot in the bridge and neck slots as an alternative to SC and humbuckers
 
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