HSH Strat Style Wiring

[naofumi]

Hello, I'd like to know If everyone of you guys have a wiring diagram of HSH Strat Style Wiring Diagram. I searched online on the diagrams and I always encounter 5 wire H's

My humbuckers are generic, 2 wire humbuckers neck/bridge. Is there a wiring diagram for this? Btw, I'm going to do a 1 vol, 2 Tone knobs. And also, some other tips and pots specifications for this? Thank you very much everyone, I really appreciate your help.

[newey]

naofumi-

Hello and Welcome to G-Nutz2!

The more modern style of humbucker has 4 wires, plus a ground for the case. Yours are the older two-wire style. So long as you do not plan on coil splitting, yours can be wired just like any Strat SSS diagram. Just treat the 2 wires of each of your humbuckers as it they were the two wires, "hot" and ground, of a single coil pickup. The two tone controls will be wired off the second pole of the 5-way selector switch just as with a regular Strat. If the 2 tone controls are to be on the neck and middle pickups, as with regular Strat wiring, they get wired as per the SSS Strat diagram. But my assumption was that you wanted the two tones to be neck and bridge instead. If so, the wire to the middle tone just has to move over one lug to the bridge position. You may also want to use separate capacitors for each tone pot, rather than having the two pots share a single capacitor as in the regular Strat set-up.

This is the reason you don't find a separate diagram- it's basically just like a regular Strat diagram if there are no coil splits.

[naofumi]

okay, now I guess my assumptions are right. i also thought that I can wire them like a regular sss strat. I think capacitors for both tones is the way to go. Thank u for clarifying my thoughts. I really appreciate the help and I'll take note of your suggestions. Thank u sooo much and have a nice day ahead good sir.

[naofumi]

Also I want to ask if should I go for neck and bridge tones (no middle tone) or should I go for neck/bridge and middle tones?. What's the best tone pot configuration is the best and more reasonable?? Thank you and I really appreciate your insights

[newey]

Tone pots are a matter of preference. If you don't use the middle pickup a lot, moving the middle tone pot over to the bridge is a classic Strat mod. This also avoids the interaction between the two tone pots at position 4 on a Strat (Neck + middle); by moving it to the bridge, only one tone pot is in circuit at any one time.

Personally, I'm a middle pickup guy, so I like the mid tone pot on my Strat-type guitars. But let your playing style and preferences guide this choice. You could also have middle and bridge tone pots, but I don't think I've ever heard of anyone doing that. Both pots would then interact at position 2 instead of at 4.

[stevewf]

Another option for getting three tone controls in a Strat, without drilling new holes in the pickguard: a dual-gang pot.

Like concentric pots, dual-gang pots have two potentiometer components in a single unit. Unlike concentric pots, though, both components are controlled by a single knob. When the knob is turned, both pots get changed.

So by using a dual-gang pot in place of one of the standard single-gang pots (meanwhile leaving the other tone pot as-is), you could now have a total of three tone pots.

There's a hitch (of course). The interaction between tone pots was described in the post above: If the guitar has a standard 5-way switch, then in positions #2 and #4, there would be two tone pots involved at the same time, similar to the description above. For example, if you like to play the middle pickup with its tone at 6, and you also like the bridge pickup with tone at 8, then when you select both pickups, the two tone controls will "subtract" even more treble.

This can be worked around, sort of, by using the new dual-ganger to control the bridge and neck pickup tones. That's because, in a standard Strat wiring, those two pickups are never selected simultaneously. The workaround introduces two new problems, though: weird physical layout of the controls, and pre-setting one pickup's tone when dialing another pickup's tone. I say the layout is weird because the middle tone knob would be on one side of the neck/bridge knob. And by "pre-setting" the tone, I mean that while adjusting an active pickup's tone, you're also adjusting the inactive pickup's tone, so when you switch and activate the other pickup, its tone knob has been twiddled.

The dual-gang pot, like dual-concentric, needs more depth in the control cavity than a single-gang pot does. Some very thin guitars might not be able to accommodate stacked pots.

As for choice of pot values, most folks tend to use 250KΩ pots to tame the highs of single coil pickups, and 500KΩ pots to allow Humbuckers to show some highs. If you end up using a dual pot, that might be a factor in deciding what pot to assign to what pickup. Most dual-gang units offer the same value for both pots, so you could use a 500K dual-gang for the neck and bridge, and a 250K signal pot for the middle. With concentric pots, you can find on the market a choice of twin same-value pots or mixed-value units; this offers more freedom of assigning controls to pickups.

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And yet another option, if you're spending money: the Fender "Discrete" switch (another, perhaps more telling photo at this shopping site). It's a replacement for the 5-way selector switch. It offers the function of a standard 5-way switch plus a "half super" switch. Using that switch, you could have the same function for pickup selection (using the "standard" half of the switch) and have more flexibility of choosing which tone pot gets used in which selector switch position (by using the "super" half). For example, you could have a 500K pot for #1 and #5, and a 250K pot for #2, #3 and #4, without interaction between the tone pots, and without needing a dual-gang or dual-concentric pot.

With two tone pots, you again face the problem of pre-setting the "other" pickup's tone while it's inactive.

The Discrete switch is physically wider than the standard switch, so it needs more space.