What's going on here?

[Professor Woozle]

For longer than I care to think about, I've had a Shadow S100 HSS superstrat in bits while I worked on inlaying the body. I'm getting close to done with the inlaying, so I thought I'd turn my attention back to the electronics and get them working again. When I first got it (admittedly in bits) I cut a number of wires, marking them up so that I could solder them back together at a later date. Having put the pots and switch back together on a bit of card, I'm left scratching my head about what's going on. The orange and black wires on the push-pull pot are one of the humbucker pairs, the other two don't seem to have been attached, and I'm not sure where the red wire  coming off the tone pot was attached. It also looks like there's been a capacitor soldered to the middle lug of the pot, and something should have been attached to the middle lug of the switch, not to mention a capacitor on the tone pot?

I'm guessing that a previous owner has tried to permanently tap the humbucker so the guitar was behaving as SSS, or perhaps doing some weird phase reversal on the HB but thought I'd ask here and get more thoughts/opinions. I want to put it back to being HSS with a coil tap, so I was going to follow this diagram:

[curtisa]

You're probably better off just ignoring/removing the previous wiring on the existing components and starting with a blank canvas - there's less effort in trying to unravel a bunch of cut wires than there is to follow a fresh wiring diagram. The Irongear wiring diagram you've posted will do exactly what you're wanting to do, assuming the pickup wiring colours you have with your existing pickups match Irongear's colour codes.

Judging by the photos I could probably guess about half the wires with 90% certainty if you're really curious, but I suspect it'll be more beneficial to getting the guitar working again by starting afresh.

[Professor Woozle]

Thanks, I was intending to follow the Irongear diagram if possible, though I'll need to  confirm which wire is which on the Shadow humbucker - I know the orange and black are one of the coil pairs, but can't remember which way round, I don't want to try and fix what's there now as I suspect it may not have worked in the first place; the guy I bought it off had got it himself  for the Schaller hardware to reuse on another guitar, and the owner before him had done an awful respray on the body which was why I stripped it back. I do wonder whether the electrics had been bodged by that previous owner and didn't work!

[curtisa]

Maybe doing a Google search for something like 'Shadow humbucker colour code' will get you most of the way there?  The quick one I did suggests that the colours should be green-white-brown-yellow; green being equivalent to Irongear's red (hot), white/brown being the same as IG's green/white (coil tap), leaving yellow as IG's black (ground). But your example with a black conductor might be a bit of a curveball?

Nevertheless, it is possible to decode an unknown humbucker's wiring code from scratch if you have a multimeter. The ohms setting will tell you which pair of wires are associated with each coil. Switching to the DC volts setting and tapping the pole pieces with something metallic will identify which way around those wire pairs need to be connected in order for the pickup to function so that it can reject hum. An interweb search will provide more practical help and examples on the process.

[Professor Woozle]

I used the guide on here a while ago to work out the pairs on the Shadow humbucker (while I was rebuilding a 2-humbucker Jackson Dinky and sorting its pickups out for splits and phasing on push-pull pots) but carelessly, I didn't note down which way round they were at the time. I'll dig out my multimeter and work it out.
I think Shadow must have changed their colour coding at some point, I've got an EQ5 pickup in my parts box that does have green-white-brown-yellow wiring but the passive HB that came with the guitar is orange-black-red-brown.
Another bit of weirdness I've noted is how the jack has been wired, the screen of the thick black wire has been used for the earth connection but the tip connection has been made to the middle lug of the tone pot rather than the volume pot.

[henrim]

1 hour ago, Professor Woozle said:

Another bit of weirdness I've noted is how the jack has been wired, the screen of the thick black wire has been used for the earth connection but the tip connection has been made to the middle lug of the tone pot rather than the volume pot.

Hard to tell much from the pictures but to me it looks like the regular potentiometer is configured as volume and that push pull pot is tone.