Standard Strat HSS Mods

[phatocaster]

Hello everyone. I'm the new guy here with lots of questions. I purchased a MIM HSS Strat a few months back and now have the upgrade fever. I have purchased locking tuners, Graphtech saddles, nut and string tree. I am ordering a Callaham Tremolo Block tomorrow as well. I want to replace the pickguard with a pearl white and I figured while I was at it I had would replace the pickups, wiring etc. I have been reading for a few weeks about upgrades and was wondering if anyone had any experiences in the HSS setup. Mine has a five way selector switch with master volume and two seperate tones. The humbucker is split. I am looking for a good blues combination that will work well with some Zeppelin, 60,70,80's rock. Just a all around good setup. Any suggestions, diagrams etc. would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

[semisolid]

hello Phatocaster.

As you know there are many ways to do the switching with 4 coils. Here is a suggestion that will give a rather versatile setup, but your guitar will look stock. You need to replace the 5-way switch with a 4P5T, and your pots with push-push pots. You can use push-pulls as well, but they are More fiddly to operate when playing.

The switching will work like this: The 5-way gives this sounds with all the pots in the down pos. 1. Neck (N), 2. neck series bridge (N>B), 3. neck plus bridge parallel (N+B), 4. Neck out of phase series bridge (Nx>B), and 5. Bridge (B). One push-push will turn on the middle on in parallel, the other in series, and when both is set to on you will have middle alone. The last push-push will split the bridge humbucker to a single coil. The pots them self is set up as master vol and tone, and the last as a half series pot.

This gives you 16 sounds as a start, but since bridge can be either humbucker or single coil, and pups in series can be in half series as well, you end up with a total of 45 sounds or something. F.eks. N>B bucker can be switched to N>B singlecoil can be turned into N half series B singlecoil can be switched to N half series B bucker.



The schematic looks like this. The reed dots is the 5-way, the blue is middle on parallel, the green is middle on series and the yellow is the split for the bridge. Switches set as shown is middle series bridge bucker.



This design needs to be proof read before it's built, so don't go heating that soldering iron just yet.



Semisolid.

[phatocaster]

Thanks alot. I like the push/push suggestion. I always wondered in the back of my mind if the push/pulls might be a pita when trying to play. I will make a copy of your post and as you suggested, wait on a confirmation reading on the wiring. Thanks, again.

[JohnH]

semisolids design is close to his previous one:
guitarnuts2.proboards45.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=wiring&thread=1173700274&page=1#1173700274

, which I checked, so this should be OK too. SS - on the setting with M series and parallel switches both on, the other design goes to all M. Personally, I liked that better since its easy to remember, and since M+B is available elsewhere. Just my view though.

J

[semisolid]

Hi John

I see your point. The reason I have for doing it this way is that on a SSH (or HSS) guitar I like pos 3 with M on series to be S>S + Bucker. Sort of a two humbucker sound. Or a neck bucker and bridge single coil if you have a coil split on the bucker. The other solution would give (N+B)>M. (See, I did write it like you suggested. Not N>M<B.)

I have tested this design now and I it's great in my mind. Great variation in the sounds and quick and easy to navigate between sounds. Stock aperans on a strat style guitar.

Semisolid