Mike Richarson's strat wiring question

[Carl]

Hello all. I'm doing the "Mike Richardson's Strat Wiring" along with "Quieting the beast" with a hot rails in the bridge and two single coils. I was excited when I jammed all my wires into the body of my strat and bolted on the pick guard, ready to blast away on my newly modified guitar when I realized that all my switch positions sound very much the same! Also it seems my dpdt switch does nothing and the 5 way superswitch only changes the tone controls....weird! I wired straight off of "Mike Richardson's Strat Wiring" diagram ( ).

If anyone has done this mod or have heard of any problems with the wiring, please let me know. I need all the help I can get with this one. Thanks.

[StratLover]

Which diagram did you use? The first, second or third with the mod? In the notes Mike states that you should "do at least a triple check on all re-wiring."

It could be that your seeing a possible compatability problem as stated and pickups out of phase.

Re-check your work and make sure that all ground wires are making a good connection.

With all due respect to your abilities, there are a lot of wires in this mod and it looks fairly easy to make a simple mistake.

There are several explainations of the sounds that you should achieve in Mikes notes as well.

1) "I never use the middle pickup alone, so that sound was replaced
by "bridge + neck."

2) "This wiring works best with cleaner, brighter sounding pickups."
"Most rail-type units will be too muddy. Joe Barden's should befine."
"I have used this setup with Duncan SSL-1s, APS-1s, Vintage Rails, and Fender Lace sensors (Silver and 2 Gold) with fine results."

"In the first "mode", the sounds are the normal 5
you'd get with any stock Strat. In the other mode, starting at the bridge position, you get: B+N B+N again, which is kind of a drag... M^N M^(B+N) M^B"

"+=parallel, ^=series"

[Carl]

I'm doing the original mod, or the first one. I am by no means an expert, but I did check the wiring 5 or 6 times and everything seem to check out. It just seems like there should be a definite sound difference between switch positions, but it all sounds the same. Even the dpdt that switches to series wiring sounds the same. Here is a pic of how I have my wiring set up.

A few notes: On the drawing, the tone pot lugs with an "x" are not used (t1)(t2)
On the super switch wherever lugs are jumped together, I used a bead of solder to join them.
On the dpdt switch, I used a piece of wire to jumper the bottom left and top right lugs together. Also the switch is actually a push pull pot (T2)
Any help would be appreciated.

[Carl]

Also my bridge tone pot (t2) is not grounded. Does it need to be? Would this be my problem?

[Mike Richardson]

Well, it worked when I did it. The problem may be in the tone controls. You have them sharing a cap, as in a normal Strat. My mod doesn't do that. I've gotten emails from other folks who've had trouble with the mod, and if I can ever figure out why they had problems and I didn't, I'll be sure to let everyone know!

[CheshireCat]

Mike said:

Well, it worked when I did it. The problem may be in the tone controls. You have them sharing a cap, as in a normal Strat. My mod doesn't do that. I've gotten emails from other folks who've had trouble with the mod, and if I can ever figure out why they had problems and I didn't, I'll be sure to let everyone know!

Mike!!! You're back!! Welcome back!

[Carl]

Whoops! ;D
So I connect a capacitor to the middle terminal of the bridge pot then ground the capacitor? Do I have to connect the bridge pot to the volume pot?

[Carl]

I wired another capacitor separately to the bridge and I can definitely tell a difference between switch positions now. I did not connect the bridge to the volume. Would 500K pots give me more sound?