Losing My Mind Trying To Wire P/p On A Strat!

[the Flea]

I have lost all patience in trying to find a diagram or someone who knows what they're doing in wiring up a H/B p/u to a vol. p/p pot. Most diagrams dont have what i need and whenever i ask someone, they talk nonsense!

If you know what your doing, help me before i lose my mind. It's a 5 way selector switch with the tabs on 2 sides (not all in a row) and a dimarzo humbucker p/u in the bridge position. i want to wire it so that whether pushed up or down, the p/p pot will select it as a bucker or as a single coil.

Can you give me a hand before i go postal on people?

thanks.

[GregP]

Seymour Duncan, Dimarzio, and Guitarelectronics.com (find their Universal diagrams) have several diagrams with Push-Pulls. Or, if you see one with a mini DPDT switch, it's the same thing. The P/p knob is literally just a switch and a pot discretely separate from one another as if they're two totally different things... but smooshed together into one unit.

To really find the right diagram or make a recommendation, it'd be handy to confirm the whole set of electronics. You mention a HB, a 5-way, and a P/p. Surely with a 5-way, you have other pickups you haven't mentioned. Is there also a tone knob you haven't mentioned? Not asking to be snotty, just to get a picture of what we're dealing with here.

Greg

[the Flea]

yeah i actually went on that website not long after posting this. The problem is that they have Every diagram available, accept the one i need.

They have a Strat Almost for what i need, but not quite.

It's 2 SC & 1 HB p/u, volume, 2 tones & 5--way selector. You know, a strat setup. I'm actually building it from scratch so nothing has been previously connected.

The other thing is that the HB has 4 wires to it. And since im looking to wire it up Series/Parallel, i would need to use all 4 rather then connecting the white/black wires together.

This complete setup i can't find anywhere and it's beginning to bug me

Thanks for the feedback tho.

[Pacifica 112M]

yeah i actually went on that website not long after posting this. The problem is that they have Every diagram available, accept the one i need.

They have a Strat Almost for what i need, but not quite.

It's 2 SC & 1 HB p/u, volume, 2 tones & 5--way selector. You know, a strat setup. I'm actually building it from scratch so nothing has been previously connected.

The other thing is that the HB has 4 wires to it. And since im looking to wire it up Series/Parallel, i would need to use all 4 rather then connecting the white/black wires together.

This complete setup i can't find anywhere and it's beginning to bug me

Thanks for the feedback tho.

Try deaf-eddie.net. He's the one who helped my son with a h/s/s setup the includes a superswithc 5-way 4-pole and two push pulls.

[GregP]

yeah i actually went on that website not long after posting this. The problem is that they have Every diagram available, accept the one i need.

They have a Strat Almost for what i need, but not quite.

It's 2 SC & 1 HB p/u, volume, 2 tones & 5--way selector. You know, a strat setup. I'm actually building it from scratch so nothing has been previously connected.

The other thing is that the HB has 4 wires to it. And since im looking to wire it up Series/Parallel, i would need to use all 4 rather then connecting the white/black wires together.

This complete setup i can't find anywhere and it's beginning to bug me

Thanks for the feedback tho.

Yeah, if you want to do some series/parallel trickery AND a split, you'll either need to make some sacrifices (and get a custom wiring scheme put together by someone more knowledgable than I) or add a SECOND push/pull (or mini-switch) for the series/parallel stuff.

Sorry I can't be much more help now that I know all your criteria. ;-) That level of switching trickery has always ended up coming down to hoping that someone would have pity on me and come up with a diagram.

[Melvyn Hiscock]

It is not clear exactly what you are trying to do. If you want to have the humbucker in series/parallel or splittable as a single coil you may be disappointed with the result as the single coil is not going to sound that much different to the humbucker in paralell.

You can have the humbucker either series/parallel or coil tapped on a push pull and then have the output of that wired into a standard five-way strat switch. Which contacts are which on your five way depends on the make as they are not always the same. You say it is not five in a line but two-sided so I presume it is open and you can see the contacts. If so then you will see that one is connected to the sweeper and the other three are connected in turn. Each side is separate from the other, it is effectively two switches on te same lever. One side of the switch, on a Strat, selects the pickups, the 'sweeper' is connected ot the output, ie the volume pot, and the pickup hot wires are connected to the tabs so that the sweeper is connected to the pickup for that position. The other side of the switch, on a strat, connects the pickups to the tone pots. A bridging wire is added from the sweeper on one side to the sweeper on the other and then the tone controls are connected to the tags. You will see on a standard Strat wiring diagram that the bridge pickup is not connected to a tone control.

So,

Wire your humbucker, according to the maker's instructions, to the push/pull to give series/parallel. Take one output and attach this to the tag on the five way that is connected to the sweeper when the swich is in the position for that pickup. Take the other wire from the switch to the back of a pot with the screen wire from the humbucker. Wire the other pickups to the five way and take their black wires to the back of a pot. Take the connection from the five way that is the 'feed' for the humbucker to one tone pot and bridge the two contacts for the single coils and take them to the other tone pot.

That'd work.

[SwedishLuthier]

As Melvyn said. What do you need?

If you want the HB to only switch between series/prallell and the rest to be like an ordinary strat do this: Start with the HB and wire it like the push-pull part of this diagram:

http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/schem...s/1h_1v_sp.html

Now take the output wire from the push pull switch (connected to the same lug as the black wire from the pickup) and connect it to the five way as done in this diagram:

http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/schem...v_2t_5w_pp.html

You will connect wire from the same lug as the green pickup wire to ground just as in the first diagram. There you are.

Now to the problem I have with you, or more specific your attitude in this post. You are talking about going postal on people because they don’t hand you a solution/diagram on a silver platter just because you ask for it! In my book that is ûber-un-polite. Surely the diagram that you ask for isn’t to find on SD or other web resources. But you can combine the info and get what you want. The info is out there if you bother to gather it and read up at last a little about the basics. And if you ask polite you will get better help. Another thing. You will need to be very clear with what you need. You DIDN’T state that you needed to get the HB in series/parallel mode. That is a tiny little information that might be needed to help you. So next time you need help it might be a good thing to

1 do a complete research before you ask for help, and

2 ask polite

I’m sure there’s no need to go postal on people if you follow these simple guidelines.

If you need more help with this diagram I will do my best to help you

Edited May 12, 2007 by SwedishLuthier

[the Flea]

I thank all of you for helping me. I have great amout of graditude for that.

Now Swedish, im sure you can understand my frustration considering i had been working very hard all day at my job and spent all night trying to wire up this thing. And yes, i did PLENTY of studying up on what i should do. Unfortunately, i don't have 12 hrs in the day to keep looking up online every little tiny piece of information and try to merge it all together into one simple diagram for me to follow. And even while i do try to put all pieces together, there are never explanations as to why the wires go where they are and which ones i should move around to tie in all the pieces of that puzzle. Know what i mean? You're chatting with some one who doesn't know much about wiring but needs to get things done quickly. From what i've seen is that people DO understand my frustration and know that i'm Really not going to go postal on anyone , its just a way of expressing my aggrivation. I Have to thank you for your help in all of this- its certainly stretching my mind quite a bit.

What i would like from the HB is to have it in standard form hooked up to the p/p pot. With the pot pulled up, switching the HB to single coil. Now what i'm figuring is that since i only want that p/u to have that option- is to have the pot in a tone position. Am I right to assume this?

Again, i have NO idea how all the wiring works in a guitar. I've been playing for about 15 years now but never completely understood the details of a pot, switch, p/u- why grounds are connected in one place and hot wires are connected to other spots. If theres any website that can explain all of this, i would love to study up on it; then i wouldn't have to continually ask for assistance in it.

You guys ARE awesome! That's why i decided to come on this post and get help.

[SwedishLuthier]

OK if you have no idea of how things work I’ll try to get some things sorted out for you. A HB have two coils in series, a SC have one singe coil (duh…). You can never get a HB to sound exactly like a SC. You can get a sound closer to a SC by doing two things

1 cutting out one of the coils of the HB (coil cutting or tapping)

2 switching from series to parallel.

Coil cutting means lower output (even compared to an ordinary SC) and no hum cancelling but a better approximation of the SC sounds. Switching to parallel means higher output (similar to a SC but lower then a standard HB) and a sound “in between” a SC and a HB. Remember that all those opinions on sound are my *personal* opinions. What to do is up to you to decide. Both methods have their pros and cons. It is to some extent described here:

http://www.guitarnuts.com/wiring/howitallworks.php and click Series vs parallel pickup wiring. There is a lot of more info on that page.

If you decide to switch from series to parallel (my personal preference) you can do exactly as I described above. If you go for the coil split (tapping) version all you need to do is to follow the second diagram I posted a link to.

You can actually have the Push Pull pot in what ever position you like it to be. The diagrams I linked to all had the pp in vol position. The only benefit to that is that the wiring is easier. But you can mover the pp pot to what ever position that works better for you and run the wires to the vol pot. If you still needs a diagram that combines the two first into one single let me know and I will see if I can do it quick and dirty

[SwedishLuthier]

viva la Photoshop:

www.peternaglitschluthier.com/1h_2s_1v_2t_5w_pp.jpg

[the Flea]

viva la Photoshop:

www.peternaglitschluthier.com/1h_2s_1v_2t_5w_pp.jpg

Alright wonderful! Thanks Swede-man!

Yeah, as i had mentioned previously, i wanted to set it up series/parallel.

I understand all about the wiring of the p/u's and the differences of SC and HB, since i work on electrical motors, i get all of that. The issue i DO have is in the scheme of things regarding how and why the wires are connected to certain tabs on the pots and switch. As the field i work in, i have to understand every little bit of knowledge there is to know in how each piece works internally, rather then just saying "...that's just the way it is" in explaining why it's wired up that way.

I am continually trying to study and research it until i'm able to be in the other side of a discussion like this.

I'll be trying that set up you diagrammed.

Thanks again