Chris of Arabia
Desert RATT
For a while now, I've been planning to replace the PG+ in my 1999/2000 US Fender Lonestar Stratocaster with a Screamin' Demon - easy enough on the face of it. So I got MJ to do me a Demon on white bobbins to keep the look of the original setup, and decided to replace the Kinman AVn69's I put in the neck and middle years ago with a pair of SSL Five-Two's, the middle one being RW/RP. OK, so I've got the pickups sorted, but what about the switching....
I'd always had it in my head that the PG+ was just acting as the full humbucker regardless of the position of the five-way; after all there are no other switches on the guitar, so "why", the thinking ran, "would the PG+ be split at all". So, to get what I was looking for, which was basically being able to run the guitar in position two as if it were a SSS Strat, I've been looking at all sort of options to split the bucker when required and get the quick, or as near as I'm likely to get to it. So ideas of S-1 switches, mini toggles a la Dave Gilmour, or something else were going through my head, or at least they were until this morning.
A it just so happened, I'd cleared another guitar off the bench last night and had put the Lonestar on there anyway, as I'd wanted to check which pots it had on it (250k as suspected it turned out), as I was looking under the scratchplate, I noticed that the red & white wires were connected to a single lug of the 5-way. "That's odd" I thought, but didn't pay any more attention to it until this morning when I saw lex666's thread in the Trading Post where he's selling his Fender American Deluxe Stratocaster. Part way down, I saw a diagram which just so happened to be explaining the switch positions on that axe, which does have an S-1 fitted as standard. And then the penny dropped...
Whilst looking at, I saw that the position 2 selection gave me exactly what I wanted, BUT WITHOUT NEEDING THE S-1 TO BE DEPRESSED. 10 minutes later, I'd located the switch position description for the Lonestar, and low and behold, it does exactly what I want as standard in position 2. All I need do now is wire in my new pickups, the the exact same solder lugs and I should be good as gold. True enough, I can't get the bridge into a single coil only on position one, but I'm not sure I want/need that anyway, and I could always drop in an S-1 later.
The only remaining question is whether the Demon and the RW/RP middle will hum-cancel, as desired, in position two. Time will tell on that one, but that should only be a matter of finding a way to split to the other Demon coil rather than the one that it uses with the default wiring.
With that, I think I'm good.
I'd always had it in my head that the PG+ was just acting as the full humbucker regardless of the position of the five-way; after all there are no other switches on the guitar, so "why", the thinking ran, "would the PG+ be split at all". So, to get what I was looking for, which was basically being able to run the guitar in position two as if it were a SSS Strat, I've been looking at all sort of options to split the bucker when required and get the quick, or as near as I'm likely to get to it. So ideas of S-1 switches, mini toggles a la Dave Gilmour, or something else were going through my head, or at least they were until this morning.
A it just so happened, I'd cleared another guitar off the bench last night and had put the Lonestar on there anyway, as I'd wanted to check which pots it had on it (250k as suspected it turned out), as I was looking under the scratchplate, I noticed that the red & white wires were connected to a single lug of the 5-way. "That's odd" I thought, but didn't pay any more attention to it until this morning when I saw lex666's thread in the Trading Post where he's selling his Fender American Deluxe Stratocaster. Part way down, I saw a diagram which just so happened to be explaining the switch positions on that axe, which does have an S-1 fitted as standard. And then the penny dropped...
Whilst looking at, I saw that the position 2 selection gave me exactly what I wanted, BUT WITHOUT NEEDING THE S-1 TO BE DEPRESSED. 10 minutes later, I'd located the switch position description for the Lonestar, and low and behold, it does exactly what I want as standard in position 2. All I need do now is wire in my new pickups, the the exact same solder lugs and I should be good as gold. True enough, I can't get the bridge into a single coil only on position one, but I'm not sure I want/need that anyway, and I could always drop in an S-1 later.
The only remaining question is whether the Demon and the RW/RP middle will hum-cancel, as desired, in position two. Time will tell on that one, but that should only be a matter of finding a way to split to the other Demon coil rather than the one that it uses with the default wiring.
With that, I think I'm good.
). That's when I re-discovered it had SDs from the factory. It's a sweet guitar and really too good for my wife 
