Wiring question - HSH Ibanez with Vintage Rails in the middle

F

fortytwoeyes

New member
I want to replace the pickups in my Ibanez RG1451 (1 Vol 1 Tone, regular 5-way switch) with a Nazgul/Sentient set and a Vintage Rails for the middle position. The plan is to split the humbuckers in position 2 and 4, but keep the Vintage Rails always in parallel the way it's suggested. So the idea is from neck to bridge:
1. Full Sentient
2. Sentient split + parallel Vintage Rails
3. Parallel Vintage Rails
4. Nazgul split + parallel Vintage Rails
5. Full Nazgul

The diagrams I've found usually have either a regular 2 conductor single coil in the middle, or a single sized humbucker and split that in the in-between positions, so I'm a little confused on how I need to wire this up. Can anybody give me some advice?
 
Is your 5-way Fender-style, or the terminals all-in-line style?

And welcome to the forum.
 
Welcome to the forum!

It has been awhile since I'd had a Vintage Rails in my hand, so I will let someone who absolutely knows the wiring give that advice. I will say that it is a really lower output pickup, so there will be a drop in volume when you switch out of the full humbuckers. It is a great sounding pickup, it is just quieter (if you hadn't tried them before).
 
VR's are simply wired black/red to out, and green/white/bare to ground. I can do the whole diagram once I know which style 5-way it is.
 
Thanks for the warm welcome.

ArtieToo said:
Is your 5-way Fender-style, or the terminals all-in-line style?

And welcome to the forum.
Click to expand...

It's a switch with in-line terminals, I've uploaded a picture here: https://1drv.ms/i/s!AjHHSBhYPsp0hs96...vV0zg?e=MXJCBm

Mincer said:
Welcome to the forum!

It has been awhile since I'd had a Vintage Rails in my hand, so I will let someone who absolutely knows the wiring give that advice. I will say that it is a really lower output pickup, so there will be a drop in volume when you switch out of the full humbuckers. It is a great sounding pickup, it is just quieter (if you hadn't tried them before).
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice. I'm not too worried about that, in reality the humbuckers will probably be used with heavy distortion most of the time and the middle with clean tones. I just really liked the tone on the demos I heard, so I figured I'd give it a go.
 
I've had a go at making a diagram with a template I found, bit messy but I hope it gets the gist across. Does that look right to you guys?

(the lime green is supposed to represent white)

HSH VR.png
 
Last edited:
That does look good except for maybe one small issue. Normally, a diagram like this shows the 5-way with the neck side shown to the left. In other words, with the handle all the way to the right, you'd have the bridge selected. If that's so, then simply reverse the wires on terminals #1 and #3.

Hot and ground on the volume pot are reversed, and the tone control is ALL wrong. I gotta look at it a minute to sort it out. You have both cap wires going to the same terminal and if you turn the tone pot all the way "up", you'll kill the output of the guitar.

In the diagram below, I forgot to reverse the outside lugs of the volume pot. That still needs to be done.
 
Last edited:
Thanks, that helps a lot.

ArtieToo said:
That does look good except for maybe one small issue. Normally, a diagram like this shows the 5-way with the neck side shown to the left. In other words, with the handle all the way to the right, you'd have the bridge selected. If that's so, then simply reverse the wires on terminals #1 and #3.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I just realized I mixed those up when copying them from this one: https://www.jemsite.com/threads/a-nearly-universal-ibanez-wiring-diagram.167243/

Hot and ground on the volume pot are reversed, and the tone control is ALL wrong. I gotta look at it a minute to sort it out. You have both cap wires going to the same terminal and if you turn the tone pot all the way "up", you'll kill the output of the guitar.

In the diagram below, I forgot to reverse the outside lugs of the volume pot. That still needs to be done.
Click to expand...

I added the tone control cap at the last minute for completeness (I mean, it's already there and I'll keep it as is) and probably got a little confused by the way it's shown in the link above. On the actual guitar the cap is soldered to the outside terminal on the tone pot and the back of the tone pot, with a wire going to ground from there.
 
fortytwoeyes said:
I added the tone control cap at the last minute for completeness (I mean, it's already there and I'll keep it as is) and probably got a little confused by the way it's shown in the link above. On the actual guitar the cap is soldered to the outside terminal on the tone pot and the back of the tone pot, with a wire going to ground from there.
Click to expand...

Cool. Sounds like you got it sorted out. Let us know how it turns out.
 
Sorry for the late reply, haven't had a lot of time to give the guitar the attention it deserves. While I still need to play with pickup heights a bit, I'd say that the volume drop-off is noticeable, but usable for me. At this point the humbuckers are on the verge of overpowering my clean tones when using the same patches as I use with my other guitars, so it's actually nice to have the VR as an option (the in-between positions work well too), plus I find myself using it much more than expected on distorted tones that I want to clean up a bit. But I definitely appreciate the warning, I can absolutely see how someone might be unhappy with the same setup.
 
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