HSH w/ Superswitch and S-1 UPDATE

[rocrates]

Hi everyone,

Around six years ago the good people here helped me work out a schematic for an HSH Strat with a superswitch and S1. The neck humbucker hasn't sounded right since (muddy/dark), and, thinking I'd like to make some changes, I finally got around to opening the guitar up and tracing the as-built wiring so I could compare it to the schematic. There are many differences!

Here's a link to the old thread, with schematics submitted to my guitar shop. I've been thinking for a while that I wanted to swap one tone control over to the neck from the middle. So I'd have bridge tone, neck tone, and middle without (unless in combo with either of the others). guitarnuts2.proboards.com/thread/8326/hsh-wiring-1

Tomorrow I'll make a nice-looking as-built schematic, but here's a summary of what I found:

• Superswitch jumpers and the connections from it to the pots/switch are all done as originally specified;
• S1 switch looks to have up/down swapped.
• S1 also has a treble bleed (cap & resistor in parallel) that I think I forgot about asking them to do.
  
• The White lead from the neck pickup has continuity with ground, but only via solder at one of the S1 terminals.
  
• The Black and Red leads from the neck pickup are swapped compared to the specifications.
  
• Bridge pickups leads have three round-robin changes. Black swapped for Red, which was swapped for Green, which was swapped for Black

I'm of two minds. One idea is to change over the one tone knob to control the neck, and also see about troubleshooting the muddy tone on the neck. The other is to do something less complicated but probably more labor-intensive. That would be to have a regular 5-way HSH switching pattern, use the S1 only to coil-split the two humbuckers, and have neck tone & bridge tone.

To achieve the former, here's what I *think* I need to do:

• Disconnect the White neck lead from the S1 and splice/solder directly to ground.
  
• Relocate the wire connecting the "middle" tone pot from S-1 #10 terminal to the superswitch terminal where the Neck Black lead lands, thereby making that pot a Neck tone pot.

Does this sound correct? I'm not sure what's making the neck sound so muddy, though. When the guitar was a regular HSH, the neck pup sounded fantastic, now it's pretty useless.

If I can't figure this out relatively simply, then I'm more likely to go the second route. For which I'm also out of ideas, so am more than open to suggestion.

Thanks everyone!

[newey]

May 26, 2024 21:42:43 GMT -5 rocrates said:

have a regular 5-way HSH switching pattern, use the S1 only to coil-split the two humbuckers, and have neck tone & bridge tone.

I didn't go through the original diagram to see if your proposed tone control swap would be done as you have specified or not. I will do so a bit later, unless someone beats me to it (hint, hint!). As for your second option, we should probably clarify what a "regular HSH switching pattern" is to you, as I see several different such patterns in different guitars. My old Ibanez HSH had full HB at positions 1 and 5, but positions 2 and 4 split each HB when combined with the middle, presumably to mimic the Strat "quack" to an extent. I've also seen schemes that had the full HBs combined with the middle single coil at 2 and 4 (often then combined with other switching for the coil cuts). And oftern, HSH schemes will use a Superswitch or similar to give both HBs at position 3, sacrificing the "middle alone" option in favor of an LP-ish option.

Some of those options can be done with a regular Strat 5-way switch, others (as mentioned) will require a Superswitch. So that may also affect your decision-making process here.

[rocrates]

Thanks newey. Here's the as-built schematic for the guitar. I'm really hoping that I can solve the muddy neck. If changing the tone from middle to neck doesn't make sense or can't be easily done, I'm curious what others might do instead.

For HSH w/ S1 switching, I was imagining something like I shared on a separate thread. S1 switches from regular strat to fat-strat

*Edit* I caught a mistake: The resistor on the S1 switch is drawn incorrectly on the large schematic. It is correct in the detail, though.