HSS Strat - 10 tones with no extra switches

[JohnH]

Here’s a sketch design for an HSS wiring that I would quite like to have on a Strat. There’s no extra switches to flick, no knobs to pull nor holes to drill, just a 5-way, a standard volume pot and two tone controls. But it has 10 distinct sounds that cover most of the range of Strats, Teles and Les Pauls.



It uses a Super-switch, with the tone controls providing transition from two coils to one coil at max treble. This is a feature that I have found to be very effective. The coils are arranged into two pairs being the Bridge humbucker, and also the neck and middle coils. One tone pot controls each pair, Sound options are as foliows:

1 NxM, transitioning to N at max treble on the neck/middle tone pot
2 N+M
3 (NxM to N), plus (BnorthxBsouth to Bsouth), with transitions using the two tone pots, ie four sound options based on coils selected
4 Bnorth+M
5 BnorthxBsouth transitioning to Bsouth using the bridge tone control. The Bsouth single coil is reinforced by bass from the Bnorth coil (which is bypassed by a 47nF cap rather than fully bypassed)

So at max treble, it has all the standard Strat tones except middle only, including the characteristic parallel pairs of single coils at 2 and 4, with the middle option being a hum-cancelling B+N combo, changeable to humbucker or humbucker/single combinations.

Cheers

John

[D2o]

Hey John – thanks for this … I may not know very much, but I know enough to recognize a worthwhile mod.

I suspect that those heavy series sounds would be much appreciated by someone who has a humbucker, in particular, in a strat … i.e. just by the very nature of choosing that configuration. I would not be surprised if they would be more pleased with the series sounds than the sounds they thought they were going to get with the humbucker.

As you likely recall, I am sentimentally fond of the clever use of the tone control to transition from H to S. I used to have a Peavey T-60, and that H to S transition via the tone control is part of why the T-60’s (manufactured from late 70’s to mid 80’s) are considered to be such versatile stock guitars … even today (note: the T-60 is a HH configuration - I’m really just comparing the usefulness of the coil transition).

Well done!

D2o

[chuck]

very interesting .
i might have to try that on my next project

[sumgai]

Holy Jeebus, John, don't you ever get tired of dreaming up all this good stuff? ;D

If I ever give up on modeling and go back to regular pickups, I'll have a tough choice between this thing, and your Dual-Sound circuit. Man, you give a guy nightmares, trying to make decisions like this, you know that?

+1, it goes without saying.



sumgai

[D2o]

Jun 23, 2010 16:53:43 GMT -5 sumgai said:

+1, it goes without saying.

You referring to the +1 I gave him this morning ... without saying? ;D

[chase]

I think John does this stuff while sitting in meetings. Or at stoplights.

Bravo!

[JohnH]

Thanks for the comments. Actually I draw most of my designs sitting on trains, or any time I cant play such as early in the morning while the house is asleep...

John