Ben G

[Ben G]

Hi,

Just wanted to know if anyone could help me out with a question on wiring? Is it possible to wire a hot rail pickup with 2 single coil pickups in a strat-like homemade guitar? I am a complete newbie to all this so any help would be greatly appreciated.

a hot rail pickup like this: http://www.irongear.co.uk/irongear_pickups_038.htm#

Thanks, 

[ADFinlayson]

is this what you're looking for? 

https://docs.google.com/gview?embedded=true&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.seymourduncan.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F05%2F1SCH_2S_5W_1V_1T.pdf

Check out the Seymour duncan wiring configurator, it's a fantastic tool for wiring noobs (like me)

https://www.seymourduncan.com/wiring-diagrams?meta_params=guitar-options,3-pickups,neck-s,middle-s,bridge-sch,1-volume,1-tone

[Bizman62]

IronGear have quite a many diagrams by themselves as well: http://www.irongear.co.uk/irongear_pickups_027.htm

I suppose the two HSS versions in the Hybrid and Misc. section are closest to your needs since the HotRail one is a humbucker. It's pretty similar to the Seymour Duncan version.

Funny that neither of those provide a schema with the humbucker being at the neck and the singles towards the bridge...

Anyhow, re pickups if you can fit it into the place it can be wired.

Edited July 11, 2019 by Bizman62
Additions

[mistermikev]

A) yes this can certainly be done and is quite simple. 

B ) my advice would be - just think of it like any other strat.  if you aren't going to wire in any switching on the pickup... you could use any strat diagram you are comfy with.  you just need to wire the humbucker in series (for seymour I believe this will be black is live wire, red and white get wired together and taped off, green and bare to ground). 

Now... your humbucker is just like any other single coil... black is your live - put it where a std strat wiring bridge live is(red in diagram below), and green/bare is your ground - put it where the std single coil ground is(black in diagram below). 

note, that as a humbucker, this will not cancel hum in pos 2 like a normal strat.  you could do that by wiring in an auto split on the second half of the 5 way switch but to keep things simple for now lets just assume you don't want that. 

 

 

reference wire colors:

https://www.seymourduncan.com/blog/the-tone-garage/humbucker-wire-color-translation

std strat wires:

https://diagramart.com/products/electric-guitar-wiring-standard-strat-fender-switch-electric-circuit

[curtisa]

13 hours ago, mistermikev said:

Now... your humbucker is just like any other single coil... black is your live - put it where a std strat wiring bridge live is(red in diagram below), and green/bare is your ground - put it where the std single coil ground is(black in diagram below). 

I think the OP is specifically talking about an Irongear rail style pickup, in which case Seymour Duncan colour coding is not equivalent.

Irongear have wiring diagrams on their website that get you close, but not exactly what you want. The nearest I could find was 3x Jailhouse Rails in a standard 5-way Strat configuration:

 

The easiest way to transplant a solitary Jailhouse Rail into a Strat-type guitar would be to swap by substitution and disregard anything else in the wiring. Any regular single coil will only have two connections to worry about - the hot (aka 'signal', 'output', 'live' etc) and ground wires. Just make a note of where the two connections from the existing bridge pickup goes to, disconnect them and substitute the equivalent two connections from the Jailhouse Rail.

The Irongear diagram above indicates that the equivalent subsitution would be to use red as hot, and black+screen as ground. The two 'extra' wires on the Jailhouse Rail (green and white) as shown just get joined together, taped up and tucked out of the way.

[mistermikev]

oops, missed the link.  nice call curtisa.