Will this work? HSH Auto Coil Split with Regular 5-way Blade Switch

[ThreeChordWonder]

My idea, not claiming to be the first to think of it by any means, on how to do an auto coil split with a regular 5-way.

It means you'll probably have to sacrifice having a tone control on one pickup, or use a master tone Tele style, and use the spare knob for something else or just leave it as a dummy.

Wire the three hot "ins" and the "out" to the master volume to one side of the switch, normal Strat style. Now wire the two tones to two of the "ins". You can't wire one tone control to two "ins" because you'll create a jumper making both pickups active whether you like it or not. Alternatively wire it Tele style with a master volume and a master tone. The second tone could become a blender, for example, or just left as a dummy.

On the other side of the switch, connect the "middle" humbucker wires (red and white in SD pickups) to their respective "ins" at P1 and P5. Now ground the "in" P3 for the middle pickup on that side of the switch, not the hot "ins" side.

In P1 the red and whites don't connect to the middle lug. Same in P5. In P2 and P4, however, they do,, as appropriate for bridge or neck pickup.. So the red and white get grounded, so you get coil splits. In P3 theyre not grounded either, but that doesn't matter because the hot "ins" on the other side aren't connected anyway.

 

[IMENATOR]

Try this, I have used it and works just fine. I just dont use a stacked noiseless pickup in the middle. I dont need to becasue I use it either for clean or low gain. Also the notch positions are noiseless if using a regular SSL-1 in the middle. I have used it for HSH and HSS with noiseless in the neck.

https://www.seymourduncan.com/images...W_1V_1T_AS.jpg

 

[beaubrummels]

I'm kind of not seeing why you can't just tap the two standard Strat tones (middle/neck) off the same lugs as those respective pickups use going into the switch. Electronically, it should be the same - the same components are active in the same way for all the switch positions.

 

[ThreeChordWonder]

@bb

Yes, but if you try to link one tone pot to two pickups you need to create a jumper on the selector side of the switch. Conventional 3-way wiring uses the second bank of lugs, not for coil splitting as proposed here, but to determine which tone controls are active, and the signal is actually fed from the "out" lug on the first bank of lugs.

Using a jumper on the input side means, for example, if you hooked up one tone to the bridge, and tried to hook up the other to neck and middle, the neck pickup would remain active in P3 and the middle in P5. Wiring the tones to neck only and bridge only would mean you get tone control in all positions except P3. Similarly, wring them to middle only and neck only means no tone control in P1, and so on.

 

[beaubrummels]

@bb

Yes, but if you try to link one tone pot to two pickups you need to create a jumper on the selector side of the switch. Conventional 3-way wiring uses the second bank of lugs, not for coil splitting as proposed here, but to determine which tone controls are active, and the signal is actually fed from the "out" lug on the first bank of lugs.

Using a jumper on the input side means, for example, if you hooked up one tone to the bridge, and tried to hook up the other to neck and middle, the neck pickup would remain active in P3 and the middle in P5. Wiring the tones to neck only and bridge only would mean you get tone control in all positions except P3. Similarly, wring them to middle only and neck only means no tone control in P1, and so on.

Why do you think you need to link one tone pot to two pickups? That only ever happens in the 4 position of a strat as is today, and that is exactly what would happen if you tapped the tones off the selector side lugs here. It would behave just like a strat does now.

 

[ThreeChordWonder]

^ The modern convention is to have tone controls for all three pickups. It's a convention, not a requirement. IIRC early, very early, Strats had no tone control on the bridge pickup.

If you connect a tone pot across two lugs on the input side then of course you've "shorted" those two inputs to each other. So of course and in turn those two inputs remain active. So of course and in turn, if, say, the bridge and middle inputs are connected by a shared tone pot, then both bridge and middle pickups are active in P1, P2, and P3, and, actually, in P4 as well, so in P4 you get all three pickups active.

The normal way of wiring two tones is to cross-feed the signal from the OUT-put lug one the input side of the switch to the common IN-put lug on the other side of the switch, then to use the switchable lugs to determine which tone pot is active. Jumping two lugs on this second side does not "short" the inputs as it would on the first side because the inputs have already been selected.

The idea with this wiring, however, is to use the second bank of contacts for auto coil splitting, not tone pot selection.

As I said at the start, you can connect one tone directly to one input on the input selection side, leaving one pickup withput a full time tone control, or you can wire in a master tone and use the "spare" pot for something else.

 

[ThreeChordWonder]

Back from my vacation and now have a computer to draw with, here's the switch wiring diagram for my idea. As I said in my first post, I'm almost certainly not the first person to have this idea and I don't claim any credit for it.

As I also said in my first post on the subject, I can't see a way of wiring in two tone controls to work on all three pickups at all switch positions.

Your options for tone controls with this switching arrangement are therefore, principally, to either wire in a "master tone" Telecaster style, or to wire the two tone pots to two pickups you choose, using the input lugs on the left side of the switch as I've drawn it. You can also do things like use the spare tone control as a blender, or try wiring the tones for treble and bass.

 

[ThreeChordWonder]

Why do you think you need to link one tone pot to two pickups? That only ever happens in the 4 position of a strat as is today, and that is exactly what would happen if you tapped the tones off the selector side lugs here. It would behave just like a strat does now.

Answer Part 1:

The original Strat wiring had the tone pots serving just the middle and neck, with no tone control for the bridge.

See below.

 

[ThreeChordWonder]

Answer Part 2:


Modern Strat wiring has one tone pot serving two pickups, the second the other. Which pot serves which pickup varies, but, for example, on my MIM HSS Strat bought last year, the first tone pot served the single coil middle and neck pickups, the second the bridge. That made it possible, for example but I don't think Fender bothered, to fit different value pots and / or caps to suit the humbucker.

To get one tone pot to serve two pickups, it has to be connected to both of those pickups. If you connect it to both pickups on the "in" side you create a "short" between the two connected "ins" meaning both pickups will be active in certain switch positions that you wouldn't want. For example, jump the "ins" from the middle and neck together, and the middle will be active in P4 and P5, and the neck will be active in P3.

So the solution is / was to add a second bank of contacts. The "hot out" from the input side of the switch is fed across to the "hot in" on the second side. The tone pots are connected to separate lugs on that side. They only come into play when the wiper contact on that side of the switch connects with them. Moreover, since the tones are working on the output from the switch, one doesn't create a short on the input side. But to get one tone pot to serve two pickups, one still needs a jumper.

 

[beaubrummels]

Answer Part 2:


Modern Strat wiring has one tone pot serving two pickups, the second the other. Which pot serves which pickup varies, but, for example, on my MIM HSS Strat bought last year, the first tone pot served the single coil middle and neck pickups, the second the bridge. That made it possible, for example but I don't think Fender bothered, to fit different value pots and / or caps to suit the humbucker.

To get one tone pot to serve two pickups, it has to be connected to both of those pickups. If you connect it to both pickups on the "in" side you create a "short" between the two connected "ins" meaning both pickups will be active in certain switch positions that you wouldn't want. For example, jump the "ins" from the middle and neck together, and the middle will be active in P4 and P5, and the neck will be active in P3.

So the solution is / was to add a second bank of contacts. The "hot out" from the input side of the switch is fed across to the "hot in" on the second side. The tone pots are connected to separate lugs on that side. They only come into play when the wiper contact on that side of the switch connects with them. Moreover, since the tones are working on the output from the switch, one doesn't create a short on the input side. But to get one tone pot to serve two pickups, one still needs a jumper.

Thanks, but I didn't really need a Strat wiring lesson, dude. Simply saying "I'm using modern noiseless wiring with a tone for the bridge and one for both the neck and middle" would have covered it.

Your 'in' and 'out' descriptions don't really make sense, BTW. Those lugs are referred to as 'common' on Fender / CRL type switches. There's no directionality to a switch, because how you wire it changes everything. And that second 'bank' of lugs wasn't added as a 'solution' for modern wiring. If you look at the drawings you posted, the two rows of lugs have always been there. They just make use of the empty lug now for the bridge.

But I think a better question is: do you really need and actually use a tone control on all three pickups on a Strat while playing music? (I would be very surprised if the answer is yes.)

 

[ThreeChordWonder]

^ I appreciate what you're saying,, but my posts were about why only two pickups could use tone controls on the wiring scheme I came up with, which,, and let's be clear about this, I strongly expect, nay, am certain, someone else has come up with before.

It depends on the user whether they want (or need) fully independent tone controls for two out if three pickups, quasi-independent tone controls for all three pickups and how two pots are shared between three pickups, whether a master tone is sufficient, what they do with the third pot if they do go for a single master tone,, or whether they do without entirely.

As for terminology, well, you can call them all Susan if it makes you happy. I use the "common" label too, but I use "in" and "out" so someone else might be able to follow the switching logic. This is a public forum after all, and not only you might read this thread. If you really want to get pedantic, we could start remembering electrons flow from negative to positive, and then...

 

[beaubrummels]

Yes, other people read the forum. All the more reason to get it right.

 

[ThreeChordWonder]

Would you care to enlighten us all with the correct, BB official, names for each lug or terminal or whatever you have decided they should be called?

 

[beaubrummels]

Would you care to enlighten us all with the correct, BB official, names for each lug or terminal or whatever you have decided they should be called?

Dude, it's not my opinion, it's called standards. Bridge is position 1, middle position 2, neck position 3, the common lug is called, get this, "common".