Wiring discussion

[misterwhizzy]

About a year or so ago, I removed one of the tone knobs from my HSS Stratocaster because I just can't play with the second one under my hand. If you had an HSS guitar with only two knobs, how would you wire it? I'm happy with the pickups--stock neck and middle single coils, PATB-1 bridge--and not particularly unhappy with the options. I'm unhappy with my ability to find single-coil tones useful in a rock context. I just want to hear how anyone else has approached this problem or situation. Include pot values if that plays into your decision.

 

[Mincer]

As far as finding tones that work...I would just look at how other players approach it. Lots of great players play rockin' guitar on Strats, so follow how they do it first.

 

[Sam SG]

Id wire the tone as a master tone for all pickups

 

[Chistopher]

I wire mine so the tone controls the neck and middle.

With a standard strat wiring, I usually have both tone controls at the same number anyway. I used a master tone control for a while, but I noticed I always wound up having to crank the tone back up whenever I used the bridge pickup.

 

[beaubrummels]

Master volume, master tone, normal 5-way with vol/tone push-pull Triple-shot wiring on the humbucker. I have noiseless singles, so 500k works for me all around. I can always roll back the tone if it's too bright, but you can't roll it back in if it's not there to start with.

 

[Teleplayer]

Normally I would put 500k master volume, 500k Master tone. I would typically use the opposite side of the blade switch to wire fixed load resistors so the single coil sees a lower resistance, and sometimes wire auto-split for pos 2 Bridge/middle. However the wiring depends on the pickups. For example, a bright sounding bridge humbucker may work better with lower pot values. Also stacked single coils may work fine with 500k pots, so there is no need for additional load resistors in that case.