Talman_Hawk

I recently opened up my Squire Stratocaster thinking that I understood all this but I was completely thrown by the scary-ness of the 5 way pickup selector. I have no idea what the each of the 7 pins are for.

I can't read schematics all that well myself, but the info here might help you, since it mentions "electrical positions" and "mechanical positions" of the switch: GuitarNuts™ Stock Stratocaster Wiring.

Question 1. On a Stratocaster, there are 5 pickup selector positions. 2 and 4 are the supposed "in-between" positions as they were the result of the old system with 3 positions, one for each pickup. They were bake before break and so it was posible to balence the selector in an in-between position where two pickups were on at the same time. Later Fender made these positions clickable. Now it would be to my understanding that positions 2 and 4 would be two of the single coil pickups in parrallel. Now a humbucker, to my understanding, is two single coil pickups in series, RWRP. My question is, is it possible to wire my squire stratocaster in such a way that positions 2 and 4 are humbucking?

AFAIK, a Squier Strat should be the same as a "real Fender" Strat, so if your middle pup was/is RWRP, the Squier should be humbucking in positions 2 and 4.

Many sources say that the "traditional" way a humbucker is wired is with the coils in series, but they can also be wired with the coils in parallel, or switchable between the two. You can also wire a 3-singlecoil guitar so its pups can be combined in series or parallel. Another good page for wiring/rewiring info: (Wolf's) Guitar Wiring Site.

And more info about pickups at Stewart-MacDonald: Understanding Guitar Wiring: How a magnetic pickup works.

Hope this helps.

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Doug C.

would it be better with some tape on the bottom of the plates before I put them on with wax or should I just use the bare metal and no tape, I bought some and they have tape on the bottom and I was wondering if it made a diffrence.

You should attach the pickup(s) to the plate(s) with some silicone or something similar. I think the potting wax would probably have the same effect. (To keep the pickup from squealing.)

There's more about the science of it here, Singlecoil.com. Go to the "Guitar" page (menu on the left side of the main page) and check out the PDF (Adobe Acrobat) documents "How to get a Tele style tone out of any Strat" and/or "How to get a a better bass response from a Strat." It's pretty much the same info, written a little differently.

I bought a base/bass plate from him, to use under the bridge pup on my Johnson JS-050-¾, but that project's on hold for awhile so I can't report on any change in tone. There's a vendor who has tons of sound clips of various pickups that they sell, and some of the files are of the same pups with and without a base plate. I think it's Acme Guitar Works.

I got a Squier Bullet for Christmas just to practice my painting before I dpainted my Tom Delonge. Problem is, I made the mistake of not remembering how it was taken apart (electrically). I know that Fender has a site with all the wiring diagrams but they don't have one for Squier

I'm pretty sure the wiring is the same, whether it's a Fender Strat or a Squier Strat. Most other Strat copies are probably pretty much the same, too. So this page was created for anyone who finds they need to "retrace their steps" back to before the wiring job went askew: Stock Stratocaster Wiring.

The schematic diagram and the other pic (at the bottom of the page) should get you back on track.

and there's also to Squier Bullets. One that has only one pickup (the one I wanted) and one with three pickups (the one I got).

The one with a single humbucker (and no tone control) is a "Bullet Special." I've got one, which right now is in Double Drop-D tuning. Eventually I'm going to put a new pickup and other mods into it.

Hope this helps.

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Doug C.

Glad to hear that you're another happy user of the "Quieting the Beast" mod.

[quote name='BeAR' post='5059' date='Mar 13 2003, 07:18 PM']
On a side note, I deleted the .33uf 400V cap and used a straight wire instead. Works just fine.[/quote]While it may "work" without the 0.33 µF cap on the string ground, remember, that cap is suggested to help protect you from a shock. Getting zapped by our equipment is one of those low incidence/high consequence events. In other words, it may not happen often, but it can be pretty nasty when it does happen.

Okay, that's some very good info.

Thanks, guys!

You can tweak the values of your pots all you want with resistors. Sure... it might change the perceived "taper" of the pot. But that only comes into play if you actually turn the pot down from 10. If you don't... then you won't notice or care.

Um, yeah; strange as it may seem, I actually use the volume comtrol to, well, control the volume of the guitar. Besides, I'm planning to put some of those DiMarzio knobs that "go to 11" on it, so that changes the whole equation.

What are you trying to achieve?

Maybe I wasn't clear enough about what I had in mind. Based on the premise that singlecoils "like" 250K pots, and humbuckers are generally controlled with 500K pots, it seemed like a good idea to be able to change the value of a pot when the pickup it controls is "cut," i.e., acting as a singlecoil. Maybe it's just one of those ideas that only works in theory. Maybe "half" of a 13.8K humbucker will be alright when it's "looking at" a 1 Megohm pot.

If you like the sound with the additional resistor added in, then it will be worth it. No one can answer the question if you will like the difference or not.

Okay, but the question wasn't so much about liking the difference, it was about a practical way to get around screwing up the taper of the volume pot. (Y'kmow, all that "audio vs. linear" stuff?)

There really isn't that much difference between pot values in the guitar - although I'm sure that some will argue.

Yep, some will, myself included.

I was looking more for technical information than opinion, but thanks for "bumping" the topic up the list a little, anyway.

Maybe now Lovekraft or somebody can get a look at it, and tell me if this is another of those great ideas that just won't "fly," or if there's a practical way to do it

I was thinking of trying John Spina's idea for changing a volume pot to a lower value with a parallel fixed resistor (described at "Tweaking either a 1 meg pot to a 500k and a 500k to 250k"). But Lovekraft mentioned in the thread about cap values that doing so would "screw up the taper" of the pot.

Is there any reasonable way of "knocking down" a 1 Meg pot to 300K or so without it becoming a really dumb idea? I was hoping to get a little different tone out of a 13.8K bridge humbucker when it's being cut to a singlecoil, with a 453K resistor on a 1 Meg push/pull pot. I'll pass up that plan if there's no real return for the effort.

Thanks.

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Doug C.

I think guitar electronics.com has what you are looking for.

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No, theirs were among the ones I found on the 'Net, and they just have two versions of the "PRS-style," with the 5-way rotary and both inner coils or both outer coils among the choices. I doubt there'd be a big difference in sound with those two, so those aren't on my list.

DiMarzio, Duncan, and Deaf Eddie all have diagrams that are close, but not what I need to get through the project in a logical order that even I can't mess up.

I'm now giving some serious thought to just sticking with the plain old three-way pickup selector, and DPDT on/on/on mini-toggles for each pup.

I've got a Memphis LP copy that I'm hoping to modify big-time. I have two GFS "Crunchy PAF" humbuckers (4-wire) for it. Also just acquired a six-way rotary switch that I'd like to replace the stock three-way toggle with. (The pups will each have their own switches for series HB/parallel HB/shunt.)

I've seen a bunch of 5-way diagrams on the 'Net, but instead of the "PRS-type" possibilities, I'm looking for:

* Neck

* Neck + Bridge, series, in-phase

* Neck + Bridge, parallel, in-phase

* N+B, series, out-of-phase

* N+B, parallel, out-of-phase

* Bridge

I don't need anything to switch between north or south coil on a shunted pickup, or put an individual pup out-of-phase with itself, so I'll probably use DPDT on/on/on mini-toggles for the pups. (I have other plans for the DPDT push/pull pots that are going into it.)

I know this has been done at least once before. I've seen a schematic on the "old" GuitarNuts Forum (Google had it cached), but can't seem to find a wiring diagram anywhere. Schematics are okay, but I really like a good "road map" diagram when I can get one.

After seeing some of the images (cool diagrams) in other threads, I just had to ask if anyone here has something drawn up or would be wiling to make a GIF or two that would end my search.

BTW, I've been told that the GFS color scheme and north/south arrangement are the same as Seymour Duncans, and one table I found (at HAS Sound's site) bears this out. The Crunchy PAF Zebra neck and bridge pair are set up so their north ("slug") sides face each other when they're installed.

Thanks for any help.

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Doug C.

In the context of the article, he means microfarads (µF).

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Okay, thanks for confirming that.

Okay, in John Spina's article about (adjusting pot values with additional resistors and)

treble bleed mods, he says

In my Strat's I Like using either Kinman's mod of using a 130k resistor in series with a .0012 cap or Seymour Duncan's mod of using a 100k resistor in parallel with a .002 cap.

For those of us who are new to this and math-impaired, are the .0012 and .002 values micro, nano, or picofarads? (And here's the easy way of doing the conversions: OnlineConversion.com: Capacitance Conversion.)

Thanks.

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Doug C.