Little strat wiring I'd like verified

[ryb]

Hey there! Just signed up to your lovely lovely forum. Hopefully I can make posting as engaging a habit as rewiring my guitar.
Right now I have my strat wired up with the "Strat lover's Other strat", which this forum provided the brilliant shematic for. What I intend to do is keep the bridge on/ phase switch on bridge, but introduce a humbucker in the bridge. My idea is to use the lace sensor red dually and have the bottom coil wired up to change phase, while the other coil wired into the new on/off push pull switch I'd add to the 'bridge' tone pot.

for tidyness sake, I've omitted pretty much everything apart from the circuit pertaining to the pickup.

(just noticed, there should be a little link on the left most switch between the two centre lugs.)

Bottom left box is the five way switch only showing the bridge selected with the two purple boxes being the common.

The idea would be that the bridge pickup, single or humbucker, can go on at any switch setting (a la strat lover's), can be just the humbucker out of phase, can be single coil out of phase with the other pickups if the bridge on switch is activated without sacrificing any of the original strat pickup settings.

...Phew... Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Let me know if I've missed anything crucial out.

Thanks!






(EDITed by sumgai to make the image show up correctly.)

[newey]

ryb-

Hello and Welcome to G-Nutz2!

Your diagram may be a bit too simplified, we need more information.

I was assuming that the N coil Orange wire represented the "hot" connection, since only one wire is shown emerging from that coil. IOW, I assumed the other wire from the N coil was permanently grounded and not shown on the diagram.

But, if that's true, then I can't make sense of the diagram since the pickup doesn't seem to attach to the 5-way switch.

I also don't know, on the far right-hand switch, what is meant by "to volume pot lug/other common on switch". Are the two commons of both the right-hand switch and the left hand switch connected?

In order that we can properly validate your diagram, please post a "truth table" to show the expected coil combos in each switch position.

[ryb]

Hey newey. I can see what you mean by simplifying. What I had intended to do was strip away the other parts of the wiring diagram and only isolate the switches acting on the bridge pickup. The rest of the wiring would be pretty identical to the "Strat Lover's Other Strat". With that in mind, the middle of that switch connects to the right lug of the volume pot, then is connected to one of the commons on the 5 way switch. The pickup itself would (in my inceasingly humble reasoning) connect to the five way switch via the middle left of the left most switch (which I'm not completely drawing, but would be a push pull tone pot) I did forget to draw a connection from right to left, but I reckoned that when the switch is down, would have the humbucker on in normal series mode. When up, only the S pickup, after being flavoured by the phase switch, would be on.

A truth table would probably be along the lines of:
Bx= Bridge on in series with
-B = Out of phase
(H) = bridge is full humbucker

 

    Switch               Bridge on(series)/Phase/Single coil 

                        In/In/In  In/In/Out    In/Out/Out            Out/Out/In
       1                 (H)B           B                B                   -(H)B      
       2                   (H)B+M       B+M          -B+M                -(H)B
       3                   M             M                M               -(H)BXM
       4                 M+N           M+N              M+N                  -(H)BxM+N
       5                   N             N                N                 -(H)BxN


  Switch 
                        Out/In/Out       In/Out/In
      1                    B                       -(H)B
      2                    B                     -(H)B+M
      3                  BxM                        M
      4                Bx(M+N)                 M+N
      5                  Bx                           N

My idea was that if the south coil can change phase *and* could be turned on, I have all the original settings of the Strat Lover's Other Strat. Also, if the humbucker is on, then the N+S coils could go out of phase with the phase switch.

Regarding the "Hot" wire, I could ground that wire, or connect it to the other side of the five way switch for the bridge, but that is something I could really do with some advice for.

thanks for taking the time to have a look for it, hope I cleared up my ramblings a bit

P.S Sorry for the dodgy truth table, proboards just doesn't like formatting my text :/

[newey]

P.S Sorry for the dodgy truth table, proboards just doesn't like formatting my text :/

Yeah, that's a problem for sure, I generally do the tables externally and then post them as an image file, along with the diagram.

I'm going to have to take some time to look at this, there's still too many "not shown" connections.

Sorry, I don't mean to be dense- your diagram may very well be right, I just can't quite figure it out from what you have there.

Bottom left box is the five way switch only showing the bridge selected with the two purple boxes being the common.

I see only one purple box, so this has me confused.

That purple box has a red wire connected to it. The red wire is connected to the commons of the left-most switch. But the commons is connected to . . .nothing.

The red wire continues over to the right-most switch upper left lug. It seems like it could go there directly, avoiding the left-hand switch entirely . . .but then, there was something about a wire joining the two commons, not sure if that was on that left-handed switch or not.

I think we need a more complete diagram here, I understand this is supposed to integrate to the SLS wiring but it's not clear to me how it does so.

[ryb]

Ok, I'll get to drawing the full diagram as soon as I can. I actually didn't meant to say two purple there The purple box there is one side of the 'bridge' lugs on the five way switch. the two boxes on the corner are the common. Since I was isloating it, I didn't see the point in filling out the neck, mid etc lugs, but I'll try and fully draw it out for you. I don't suppose you'd know any good software for drawing out a good mechanical wiring schematic? Appreciate the help, btw.

[ashcatlt]

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned this yet. I guess I'll go ahead and ask:

Why do you want one coil of the HB out of phase with the other? I can almost see some special situation where a particularly experimental noise type guitarists might dig the extremely weak, thin, and noisy signal which this will produce. I happen to be a paricularly experimental noise type guitarists and I never use that setting on my SHS mini-strat. I do use it as a way of maintaining humcancelling for the B-N and B*(-N) settings, but that's a different deal.

[newey]

ryb-

I'm not saying we (or I) need a complete diagram, just more information. But I've looked at this some more and I think there are issues.

First, you said that:

(just noticed, there should be a little link on the left most switch between the two centre lugs.)

And:

The purple box there is one side of the 'bridge' lugs on the five way switch. the two boxes on the corner are the common.

With those assumptions, the left-hand switch won't operate as you intend. This is supposed to be switching the bridge pickup from single coil operation to full humbucker (per your truth table).

The green wire represents the output of the S coil phase switch (it has to be, since the other output of the phase switch goes to ground.)

The red wire is then connected to the Bridge lug on the 5-way switch. If the two common lugs on that switch are joined as stated, then the S coil (whether in or out-of-phase) will always be "on" in parallel whenever the 5-way switch is set to "bridge".

You will thus never get a series connection between the two coils regardless of the position of that switch. Since a series connection between the coils is what makes a "full HB", you'll never have that.

There may be other issues since the right-hand switch still has me mystified. In any event, don't start wiring just yet . . .

[ryb]

Yeah, wouldn't dream of breaking out the soldering iron juuust yet. I'm getting a bit more of a firm idea of what I need to address now. It seems the humbucker does seem to be in parallel the now. Would there be a way for the coil to be split, *and* reverse phase of the S coil then, since I seem to have it it in parallel.

I am looking over the schematics, and I'm wondering if it'd be better for me to change the phase wiring over to the single coil neck pickup. In reply to ashcatlt, I'm not too bothered with the 'humbucker out of phase' setting, but I am fond of the 'single coil neck and single coil bridge' out of phase sound that the SLS schematic has. I rarely have use for the middle single coil and bridge single in series on my strat the now, and if I have a humbucker in the bridge, I guess it would make that setting quite redundant?

[ashcatlt]

May 3, 2012 8:38:50 GMT -5 ryb said:

I am looking over the schematics, and I'm wondering if it'd be better for me to change the phase wiring over to the single coil neck pickup. In reply to ashcatlt, I'm not too bothered with the 'humbucker out of phase' setting, but I am fond of the 'single coil neck and single coil bridge' out of phase sound that the SLS schematic has. I rarely have use for the middle single coil and bridge single in series on my strat the now, and if I have a humbucker in the bridge, I guess it would make that setting quite redundant?

The bridge OoP with itself is almost nothing. If the phase switch comes before the split switch, then you would have two useable sounds rather than one usable and one "gotcha".