Unique Strat Wiring driving me nuts

[boyersdad]

Hey all, long time no post!

I'm just about at my wits end trying to work out a wiring for a friends strat.

He's looking to have a single coil neck and middle with a humbucker bridge. It has a 5 Way fender switch.

He wants the switch to be:
1. Neck
2. Neck/ mid
3. Mid
4. Mid/bridge
5. Bridge

He wants a vol for neck/mid, vol for bridge, and a master tone.

I'm not sure this can even be done, but its twisting my brain up thinking about it.

If anyone has any advice or better yet a drawing of this particular configuration, it would be much appreciated.

[toneman]

found this while googling:

http://www.dimarzio.com/support/wiring-diagrams

treat the humbucker as one pickup for starters.
the individual pickups can be wired in series or parallel.
(assuming there are 4 wires from the humbucker)

heres another link:

http://www.geocities.jp/dgb_studio/sshvari_e.htm

heres a wiring diagram:

http://www.synapticsystems.com/studios/evans/images/stand1hb2sc.gif

understanding how the 5pos sw is wired with 3 singles will help U figure out how to add a humbucker.

hope this helps U along....
T

[ashcat_lt]

Start with standard strat wiring:

Remove the Bridge + wire from where it is now, connect it through the Bridge Volume pot to the other unused lug on the switch.
Snip the jumper connecting the two common lugs.
Run from the common lug on the Neck/Middle side of the switch to the Neck/Middle Volume.
Remove the connections from the switch to the tone pots and replace BOTH of these with the output from the Neck/Middle V.
Connect the wire from the Tone pot and the Jack Tip to the remaining common lug.
You're done.

If you wire the Vs the way that one is shown (which is standard procedure most of the time we wire a V) then turning down either of the volumes will kill the entire guitar when the corresponding pickup(s) are selected on the switch.  So, if you turn down the Bridge all the way and flip to the M+B setting, you'll get silence no matter where the N/M V is set.  Course, you've got a switch for that.  If you really want just M, flip the 5-way there.  You can wire the Vs "backwards" like in a Les Paul, but then if you turn the V down all the way to silence it (on a set break or whatever), the cable will basically be an unterminated antenna and may buzz more than the other way.  You get to decide which of these issues will annoy you more, or more often, and wire accordingly.

[boyersdad]

Thanks a ton for the advice and diagrams guys! I can build a PTP tube amp in my sleep, but guitar wiring (and especially those 5-way switches) just make my brain turn off... It refuses to make sense of it. Recoils in horror.

I just noticed that I made an error in my original post as to the order of the switching, which is really the bane of my issue. The proper switching order should ideally be:

1. Neck
2. Neck/Mid
3. Mid
4. Neck/Bridge
5. Bridge

Again, the Neck/Mid would share a volume pot (though I don't see how that will work without problems), or, the mid can go w/o a volume control, which would simplify things, so that the Neck has it's own vol, and the bridge has it's own vol. Master tone.

Thanks again for any/all advice.

[boyersdad]

A little more googling has turned this link up: http://www.guitarnuts.com/wiring/twovol.php. As I figured, there is going to be some crazy flaky stuff going on with the tied vol for the neck/mid.

I think at this point I'd rather abandon that idea all together, and go with a separate vol for the neck and bridge, and leave the mid pup going straight through (I can play with a fixed attenuation, or maybe an internal trimmer later).

[ashcat_lt]

The very first stratocasters used the same old telephone operator's switch that was used in the telecasters.  This is a true DP3T switch with two poles comprised of a common and three descreet throws.  In those original strats you could only have one pickup on at a time.  Apparently, though, these were "make before break" switches - when switching from one position to the next it connects to the next before it disconnects from the last and there's a spot in the middle where the common is connected to both adjacent throws.  

Some guitarists noticed this and found that they could get some interesting tones in those "in-between" settings.  So they started wedging things into the switch to make it stay there.  Somebody eventually figured out a way to modify the switch itself so the lever would stay in those in-between spots.  The mod became so popular that old Leo caught on and started to include the "mod" as a standard feature on the Strats.

It all adds up to the fact that you really can't get the selections you've chosen in the order you've listed them.  With Bridge at 5 and Middle at 3 the shorting action of the switches forces you to have (at least) Bridge + Mid in position 4.  If you could live with a slightly less intuitive order for the switching then you could sap the Neck and Middle connections to the switch and get everything you've listed:  M, M+N, N, N+B, B.

Or you could get a switch with at least 2 poles and 5 actual discrete throws.  They're out there.

Here's another thought, though:  Howsabout swapping one of the pots for a push-pull, or adding a toggle to act as a Neck (or Bridge) On?  This would allow you to add the Neck (or Bridge) to whatever is selected on the 5-way.  Then you don't have to give up the B+M, but can still get B+N as well as all three pickups.  You'll have access to all seven possible parallel in-phase combinations of the three coils.

[GGBB]

It all adds up to the fact that you really can't get the selections you've chosen in the order you've listed them.  With Bridge at 5 and Middle at 3 the shorting action of the switches forces you to have (at least) Bridge + Mid in position 4.  If you could live with a slightly less intuitive order for the switching then you could sap the Neck and Middle connections to the switch and get everything you've listed:  M, M+N, N, N+B, B.

+1

If you want to go that way, you can get the volume setup like you want by swapping the neck and middle pickup positions in the diagram below. This setup uses "backwards" pot wiring so you won't have the volumes walking over each other when in bridge+middleneck position.  You might also want to go with 500K pots since the coupling of the two pots effectively halves their values.