Zerobux series blend hss help

[xweto]

I love being able to blend some of the bridge pickup in series with the neck. I was hoping someone could help me adjust the lovely diagram made by reTrEaD for an HSS strat. Preferable so that it blends only one coil from the humbucker in series with the neck. And if possible, autosplit the bucker in position 2.

[JohnH]

reTrEaD can comment on the zerobux scheme, But I have something that's close to what you might seek:

guitarnuts2.proboards.com/thread/6873/strat-ssm2-hss-sounds-dpdt

Particularly, its HSS (my favorite Strat arrangement), and it blends a bridge coil in series with the neck (I agree, its the best!)

Im linking SSM2, which has one extra switch, but in the first line, is a link back to a simpler SSM which has the best of the sounds and might do you. It doesn't directly do auto spit at position 2, instead, the bender works there too, to go from B single + M, to B humbucker + M. So you get the options

These were about the last Strat scheme I worked out, there's nothing else I want in a Strat and I've had SSM2 as a daily player for about 10 years.

[xweto]

Thank you so much for the response! For now I would like to keep atleast one tone pot. Could the SSM be modified to only have the neck blend (preferably in position 5 only) with a master tone? I dont entirely understand the wiring that goes into this yet. I could probably do the master tone, but have no idea how to get the neck blend working. 

Would this work?:

[JohnH]

Id suggest to look at the SSM2 scheme linked above, and then if you don't want the extra switch (S2), just hard-wire it without that switch with wires connected in the 'S2 down' setting. It has a Master tone.

[reTrEaD]

Aug 19, 2023 17:34:56 GMT -5 xweto said:

Preferable so that it blends only one coil from the humbucker in series with the neck. And if possible, autosplit the bucker in position 2.

I made some changes to tailor this to an HSS. It will auto-split in position 2 to use just the north coil of the HB (which will hum-cancel with the middle (south). It will also use just the south coil of the HB in series with the Neck (north) in position 5.

You should wait until one of the other nuts verifies that this works as-advertised.

[xweto]

Thank you so much! I was just about to wire my strat so I'll give it a go to see if it works.

[JohnH]

reTrEaD's looks fine too, with a couple of comments:

Diagram shows the switch poles being those furthest apart, on the diagram the most left and the most right. Many other diagrams (such as mine) show the left bank of switch lugs shifted up half a space. Still the same order. Switches differ so beware of a mix up while wiring!

reTrEaD's cuts out blending in all settings except N x B, while mine keeps blending active in 2 and 4, giving two extra tones. These are still quacky, being parallel mixes with M, but a little thicker than usual. You may prefer the simpler operation of not having these tones though, so then you just set your blender for position 5

With all these schemes, need to be very careful to figure out what wires go to which coil, and the N S order of the coils on the guitar. My diagrams show how these are on my Fender HSS, which is also very explicit since you can see on the back of the pickup where each wire goes. But most pickups need interpretation and checking. No matter what, for an in-phase hum-canceling combo, you need a north and a south coil. You can identify relative polarity with a compass.

For the tone, I think a no-load 250k tone pot and a 250k volume is a great combo for HSS.

Good luck with wiring!

[xweto]

I ended up trying your suggestion with the ssm2 first, thinking I could just simplify it if needed. I bloody love it! Considering giving the full version a go. The only thing holding me back is thinking it might be too complicated to keep track of all the positions. Anyways, thank you! Cheers!

[JohnH]

Oh great! thanks for postng!

f you look at my avatar, thats the Strat that I dd this too. I have a sub-miniature toggle between the pots, and thats the extra switch. I usually leave it un-moved, so ts as you have wired it. But, when its flicked, you get another interesting selection of different sounds n about the same relationship to each other. Its like the same guitar but swapping to a different set of pickups.

I like reTrEaD's scheme too

[xweto]

Thank both of you so much for all the wonderful help. I would like to try a few changes. Would it be possible to make a sort of combination of the two diagrams? Having in series options in the neck position and a N+B combination, but simplifying the blend knob.

Ideally it would look like this:
Switch down:
Pos 5 N -> Nxbs
Pos 4 N+M
Pos 3 M
Pos 2 M+B coil tapped
Pos 1 Bhb

Switch up:
Pos 5 N -> NxM
Pos 4 N+B coil tapped
Pos 3 M
Pos 2 M+B coil tapped
Pos 1 Bhb

Do you think it would be worth having another push/pull to put the Bhb in parallel or tap it?

Where to put a resistor for the coil tap and what value would you recommend?

[JohnH]

I think the most practical combination of the two schemes would be reTrEaD's zerobux, and add S2 from mine. S2 simply swaps the hot dnds of M and Bsouth with each other. So they swap places in all positions where they occur. This will give you N to NxM blending, N+Bs, Bs, Bridge parallel. Really all tbe good tones eith blending just in position 5 and the autosplit at 2

[reTrEaD]

Aug 23, 2023 8:17:48 GMT -5 JohnH said:

I think the most practical combination of the two schemes would be reTrEaD's zerobux, and add S2 from mine. S2 simply swaps the hot dnds of M and Bsouth with each other. So they swap places in all positions where they occur. This will give you N to NxM blending, N+Bs, Bs, Bridge parallel. Really all tbe good tones eith blending just in position 5 and the autosplit at 2

Do you reckon adding a DPDT such as a push-pull to the SSM could result in the best of both?

[JohnH]

It's a clever idea, swapping the second blender to a tone control.

[xweto]

The main tones that I want are a coil tapped pos 2 and an option for NxB and NxM using blending whilst keeping the rest as stock as possible.

I've tried to adjust the SSM diagram to get atleast to the point where pos 2 is coil tapped, you have a full bridge HB and you can blend the neck. Would the following work?

[JohnH]

I don't see N x M on that mark up. Did you see my suggestion in the post before reTrEaDs?

Keeping thd tones that you want unchanged and also having borh the series options that you want may be getting outside of the range of these simple parts.

[xweto]

I've tried making one with a superswitch to get as close as possible, I'm still learning so it might not work entirely as intended. I know you guys have already helped me out tremendously, but if you could take a look I would really appreaciate that. I'll post it in a different thread.