Wiring/sound issue after installing Red Devil between single coils on my Strat

[Tim R]

Here's the problem. Maybe someone here is able to help. (I'm not a pro, but I've read many wiring diagrams and watched several YouTube wiring tutorials and have had no luck).

I have a Fender Strat with a custom pickguard wiring harness. I've been running an SSL6 bridge and SSL2 middle (rwrp) and neck for a while now, to great effect. But I never use the 2&4 quack positions, and use the middle less than the 1&5. So I threw an SD Red Devil NECK pickup into the middle position. Now these pickups are wired to a push pull tone pot that switches the pickups in and out of phase. No coil splitting.

The single coils just have the two leads. For the Red Devil ("neck" pickup in middle position), I soldered and taped off the red and white and initially wired the remaining two leads to the two terminals where the middle SSL black and white were connected. Strung it up, and plugged it in...

Problem: tone in the middle position (Red Devil) is thin (which should definitely not be the case swapping a humbucker in for a low output single coil). 1,2,4,&5 positions work fine. Pull the out of phase switch, and the middle position goes SILENT. So I opened it up, and switched the green and black wires, thinking maybe I had them backwards. Put it all back together, and same problem. Thin middle sound with volume drop, and silence when knob is pulled. So I took it out and put the SSL2 back in the middle, and we're back to where we started, works great.

Pickup heights are correct. Previous owner of the Red Devil said it worked great on his guitar (although in neck position, with a Red Devil middle, without a phase switch). Connections are soldered well.

So where did I go wrong? Can I not put a "neck" Red Devil in between two SSLs? Can I not wire it to the phase switch? (And if not, is that why this pickup sounds thin and quiet too?). Something else?

Thank you!
Tim

 

[jeremy]

you should be able to put a red devil neck in the middle without issue. do you have a multi meter? sounds like you are only using one coil of the red devil and grounding that out when you flip the phase switch.

 

[Tim R]

you should be able to put a red devil neck in the middle without issue. do you have a multi meter? sounds like you are only using one coil of the red devil and grounding that out when you flip the phase switch.

That's a helpful start. How would I need to correct my wiring to engage both sides of the humbucker? If green is ground, black is hot, and the red and white get soldered together and taped, I don't know what I could be doing wrong. I soldered the green to the terminal I'd previously soldered the single coil black wire to, and the black RD wire to where the single coil white was. After hearing that wasn't right, I even switched those two and still had the same problem. Not sure how to fix the wiring...

 

[jeremy]

what you say sounds right which is why i ask about a meter

 

[Tim R]

what you say sounds right which is why i ask about a meter

I do have one but have only used it to check my car battery voltage.

Is there any reason the issue could be related to the fact that it's a SD "neck" pickup installed in the middle position? I assumed the three Red Devil pickups were the exact same except for their output levels...

 

[jeremy]

nope, you can use any pup in any position. i have a red devil set and for a while i used the middle pup as the bridge pup with two single coils and it was fine. the neck/middle/bridge identifier just signifies that model is optimized for that position according to the company. people use bridge model pups in the neck all the time, and vise versa.

 

[Teleplayer]

First thing I’d suggest is to measure the resistance of the red devil pickup. You should set your multi-meter to the resistance scale. It’s ok to measure the pickup wired to the pickguard if the blade switch is in pos 1 or pos 5. It should measure around 10k to 12k ohms between black to green. If it’s far from that range, you should remove it from the guitar to test each coil of the pickup separately.

If the pickup is working ok, I suspect there could be a grounding issue that is causing a problem with your phase switching scheme. This may occur if the bare ground wire from the red devil is wired to any other connection (Green, red, white, black) . For your scheme, the bare wire should be only grounded at the single ground point such as the back of the volume pot, and nowhere else.