{REQ} PRS Custom 24 w/HFS & VB Pickups - OEM

[n9nu]

YES...I searched, but could not locate an OEM wiring diagram for the PRS Custom 24 series guitars using the OEM HSF Treble & Vintage Bass pickups.

I am re-wiring a newer SE model for the kids at youth group and they provided me with the pickups which were out of a 3rd party Custom 24 and the Stew-Mac wiring kit (5-way rotary switch, 2 caps, jack and 2 500K pots).

For this setup, I am looking for just the 'basic' or 'oem' switching...as it is with the Custom 24 series....unless someone can offer up a 'mod' or two for bonus sounds.

NOTE: YES on the Stew-Mac diagram and YES on the generic guitarelectronics.com diagram. I looked at both, but I am a tad confused as I need a bit more to go on.

As a Ham Radio operator, I am extremely experienced in electronics and soldering, however, these two diagrams are for the birds unless you know a bit more of the details...such as the HFS/Vintage wiring colors.

The pickups I have are 3 conductor plus the shield. Each has White, Black, Red and Shield. It is my interpretation that with one pickup the White wire is HOT and for the other set, the HOT would be Black with the White being ground (reversed).

Are my notes/mods on this diagram (in RED) correct ?? If so, then I can finish the 5 minute project and send her off to play




Thank You

Tim
N9NU

[newey]

Tim-

Hello and Welcome to GuitarNutz2!

I confess to not knowing much about PRS guitars, nice but always out of my wallet's range.

So I looked at the PRS website and found this:

www.prsguitars.com/csc/schematics/schem08/custom5wayrotary.pdf

Now, this depicts both a pre-2007 and a current version of the wiring. In both cases, the HBs are three wire, and the color schemes are the same for both pickups, with the red as the series connection, black and white as the start and finish of each HB. I doubt yours would differ from the PRS diagram, but a quick email to their support staff could probably confirm the colors.

Note, however, that the rotary switch is depicted as, apparently, having a circuit board appended to its side, with the connections to the edges of the board. The switch is depicted in a "black box" fashion; we don't know the switch logic. Without having such a switch "on hand", we don't know its internal logic- unless we know what the guitar is supposed to do on the various switch positions.

And I have no idea what it's supposed to do, so I'm stymied for the moment. But if you know, we can work backwards.

Your diagram shows a standard rotary switch, so knowing the switch positions, we can suss out the scheme. We'd have to transpose from the other switch diagram anyway, since the switches are so dissimilar.

Yes, the tone pot shell needs to be grounded because the capacitor is soldered to it, and it has to find ground. You could ground the end of the capacitor to another ground point, the back of the tone pot is merely convenient, and saves manufacturers a bit of wire.

EDIT: For some reason I can't get that link to the .pdf file to work correctly. If you reload the page, it should pull up the diagrams.

[flateric]

I have a custom 24 with 5-way rotary, I converted it to the McCarty setup - 3-way toggle switch and push-pull tone knob for coil tap, a few years ago (then converted it back a year later...)
The 5-way is a little pcb. The pups are 4-conductor else you couldn't coil tap, and theres something weird about the wire colours, I'm sure I recall something about the HFS and the vintage being opposite way round from eachother! I dont have time to open up my guitar for u at the moment but I'd be tempted to ask on the prs forum, someone there will tell you in a flash.