I Need Some Help With A Fender S-1 Switch ...

[kurdt]

Hello again!

If ya don't mind, I could do with a little help from you guys ... again ;D

I'm putting a new Strat together and have decide on a set of Seymour Duncan single coil SSL-3 (tapped) pickups.

I was going to wire them up to a push/pull switch to activate/deactivate the coil tap on all pickups at the same time, but after discovering those Fender S-1 switches, I thought that would be a neater way to do it.

I've looked online, and apparently it is possible to wire the S-1 switch for coil taping/splitting, but I can't find a diagram for it anywhere ... so can you guys point me in the right direction?

The pickups have got 3 wires on each one, black is the ground, and the red and the white wires are both live.

I take it the black ground wire goes to the back of a pot as usual (?), but I've no idea about the others.

Here's a diagram of the S-1 ...



Like I said, all I wanna do is wire it up so that I can activate/deactivate the coil tap on all three pickups at the same time.

Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers.

[reTrEaD]

Hey kurdt!

Good thing you chose an S1 switch instead of a push-pull. You need 3 poles to switch all pickups from full to tapped (at the same time). The S1 has 4 poles (one more than you need). Push-pulls only have 2. You would have come up short.

Seymour Duncan has a wiring diagram on their site. Use page two. It's meant for 3 SPDT toggle switches, but I think you can figure out how to draw that for a single S1 switch.

Here's a pic I grabbed from the web. It shows which connections are which on the S1.



If you want to make a drawing, I'd be glad to proofread it for you.

[kurdt]

Jun 28, 2012 10:41:58 GMT -5 reTrEaD said:

Hey kurdt!

Good thing you chose an S1 switch instead of a push-pull. You need 3 poles to switch all pickups from full to tapped (at the same time). The S1 has 4 poles (one more than you need). Push-pulls only have 2. You would have come up short

Doh!, I didn't even think of that.

Thanks for the info. So going off that diagram, have I got this right ? ....

(grey wires = white on the pickups)

[4real]

May I ask where you found a fender S1 swtich...i didn't know you could buy them on their own?

[kurdt]

Hey,

Well I got mine from WDmusic.com, but I've seen them for sale at a few other online places too.

I think any good spares shop should be able to get them for you from Fender.

They're pretty expensive tho, mine was £24 (about $35), and that's just for the switch, you have to buy the special knob / insert separately, which is another £7 ($10).

Just hope I don't screw this one up!

[newey]

Fender apparently won't make these available to the aftermarket, they can only be ordered as service replacement parts, i.e., at least theoretically sold to someone with an S-1 equipped Fender.

Or so the innernets say . . . Whether a local Fender authorized service center person could be "persuaded" to order one for a particularly insistent customer is unknown to this writer.

One can probably safely assume that most S-1s one sees for sale are "pulls" from a guitar being parted out.

Darren Riley
has them. He also stocks the special S-1 knobs. He will ship to Oz for a (high) fee.

The Ebay seller Reliable Fender usually has these up for sale as well. Not sure about int'n'l shipping from him.

For interested Nutz™ overseas, "rumors abound" that difficult to source (or overpriced to export market) parts can often be had through the helpful ministrations of certain US-based Nutz™. In most of these cases, no bribery is required . . .

[reTrEaD]

Jun 28, 2012 18:58:06 GMT -5 kurdt said:

So going off that diagram, have I got this right ? ....

Yes. SD doesn't indicate which wire (red or white) is full and which is tapped. But going by the switches on their pdf, red seems* to be full. That means when the S1 button is pressed down you would get "full" for all pickups. That seems a good choice.

I'm sure you figured that the pole of each section of the switch will be wired to the appropriate position of the 5-way.



*If you want to be sure, use an ohmmeter and measure from red to black, then from white to black. Which ever one is higher resistance will be "full".

Jun 28, 2012 19:29:35 GMT -5 kurdt said:

Just hope I don't screw this one up!

Take your time. Make sure your iron is clean and hot. Do all the grounds and pickup black connections to the case of a regular pot, not the side of the S1 pot.

A little feedback after you've finished would be nice. Good luck!

[4real]

Thanks guys, will keep that in mine...you never know when you need the power of a 4pdt switch (turn on a sustainer comes to mind LOL).

I've got a lot of stuff from reliable fender over the years, pups are often very good if patient with auctions...but the S1's were, because of restricted supply, very expensive. The tele knob looks great..not sure if plastic or metal as they look...hmmm

It's a neat switch, no doubt...though, some say perhaps fragile. It's interesting that fender have played with push buttons, usually unsuccessfully over the years, but there are some really interesting push-buttons about that are small and have many poles and functions that could be used on a guitar if so inclined...

[JohnH]

This is just an aside, for interest, since I think you are on the right path with the S1 switch:

But I reckon that, with a standard 5 way Strat switch, you can coil-cut all three humbuckers with just a single pole switch. Use the second half of the 5 way (move the tone controls off it and wire them directly to the pickups, or as a conventional master tone). Then bring all the coil-tap connections to the three lugs on that second half, and use the simple 1 pole switch to ground the pole of the 5 way. The only difference from normal performance would be that in positions 2 and 4, you would be joining two humbuckers at their mid connections as well as there hots – I doubt this will make a very significant or particularly adverse difference to tone however.

John

[reTrEaD]

Jun 28, 2012 21:23:42 GMT -5 JohnH said:

This is just an aside, for interest, since I think you are on the right path with the S1 switch:

Agreed. But it is an interesting aside. True to form, you've come up with a good solution to a problem.

However, these aren't actually HBs. They are true single coils with a winding tap. They aren't meant to have the Black to White shunted together. You select either the White (partial winding) or Red (full winding) as the hot. The Black is always grounded.

But I don't see any reason why the second half of the 5-way couldn't be used to shunt the Red / White to hot. This still leaves the White to Black in play when in "tapped" mode.

Jun 28, 2012 21:23:42 GMT -5 JohnH said:

The only difference from normal performance would be that in positions 2 and 4, you would be joining two humbuckers at their mid connections as well as there hots

Since you're only using one pole of the switch (minitoggle or push-pull) you could use another pole to connect/disconnect the tap wire on the middle pickup where it goes to the second half of the 5-way. That would prevent any "mid connection" when in the full mode.

I definitely prefer the S1 approach kurdt is taking. It's simple and direct. Plus the "button in knob" thing is just plain sexy. But not everyone has access to these. And they are pricey. So the other approach we've been discussing makes a nice addition to the Nutz arsenal, for future use.

[JohnH]

Jun 28, 2012 22:40:27 GMT -5 reTrEaD said:

Since you're only using one pole of the switch (minitoggle or push-pull) you could use another pole to connect/disconnect the tap wire on the middle pickup where it goes to the second half of the 5-way. That would prevent any "mid connection" when in the full mode.

Yes, good addition!, lets put that one in the trick bag for later.

That why I like this place.....

John

[kurdt]

Jun 28, 2012 20:52:03 GMT -5 reTrEaD said:

Yes. SD doesn't indicate which wire (red or white) is full and which is tapped. But going by the switches on their pdf, red seems* to be full. That means when the S1 button is pressed down you would get "full" for all pickups. That seems a good choice.

Yep, that's how I would like it.
I've not had a chance to test which wire is full yet, as the pickups are still in the mail, I'll have a look when they arrive.

So, just to make sure, does this look all right? (excuse the dodgy diagram) ...



Would it make any difference if I wired the middle pickup to section 4 of the S1 instead of Section 2 ? ... only I think it would make it a neater job soldering wise if I could use section 4.

Cheers.

[kurdt]

Jun 28, 2012 19:44:20 GMT -5 newey said:

Fender apparently won't make these available to the aftermarket, they can only be ordered as service replacement parts, i.e., at least theoretically sold to someone with an S-1 equipped Fender.

I had no idea about that, I thought you just didn't see them for sale that often because there isn't that much demand for them.

I don't really get it tho, what have Fender got to gain by restricting the sale of them?

[reTrEaD]

Diagram doesn't look dodgy. Easy enough to read.

Yes, choose what ever sections are most convenient on the switch. Just keep track of the red and white so all pickups are tapped in one position and full in the other.


ETA:

Fender likes to keep cool stuff like that to themselves. So if you want a guitar with an S1 switch, the only easy way is to buy a Fender.

[kurdt]

Jun 29, 2012 11:14:51 GMT -5 reTrEaD said:

Fender likes to keep cool stuff like that to themselves. So if you want a guitar with an S1 switch, the only easy way is to buy a Fender.

Oh I see, greedy Fender! haha.

Have tested the pickups and it turns out the white wires are actually full, and the red wires are tapped, so will have to switch the connections over.

Just waiting on some soldering supplies in the mail now.

One thing I noticed about the pickups tho, on the neck and bridge the pole pieces are level with the top of the case, but the middle (rw/rp) pickup the pole pieces are noticeably raised above the case.
I'm sure it won't be a problem, but I was just wondering if they make them like that on purpose, or if it's just luck of the draw? (I've never had SD pickups before).

[ashcatlt]

Jun 28, 2012 22:40:27 GMT -5 reTrEaD said:

However, these aren't actually HBs. They are true single coils with a winding tap. They aren't meant to have the Black to White shunted together. You select either the White (partial winding) or Red (full winding) as the hot. The Black is always grounded.

But you've still basically got two coils of wire - the top half and the bottom half. It's exactly like a 3-wire HB where the "series link" is internal to the pickup with only one wire exposed to the world. And when you switch to that middle wire you've still got the top half of the coil hanging "upside down" from hot. I still believe that shunting one or the other will give better noise performance.

[reTrEaD]

Hey kurdt, I dunno about the polepieces. The middle is rwrp, so maybe it was assembled on a different line or on a different day.

The wires being wrong compared to the SD wiring diagram does not surprise me in the least. SD wiring diagrams are notorious for being crappy.




Ash, some things about this are the same as a 3-wire HB, but others are a bit different. With a HB, we could shunt between ground and the series link. Or connect the start to one throw and the series link to the other with the pole of the switch connected to ground. Either way, there would nothing extraneous would connected to hot. But here we really should be using the section from start to tap. There are more turns in that section and the windings are closer to the magnet. Not sure how much difference that makes in terms of output/tone, but that is how these were meant to be used.

Shunting ground (start) to tap has no noise advantage over moving the ground from start to tap. The extraneous shiz is hanging from ground. But with hanging from hot, it may or may not be advantageous.

You and I have had this convo before about shunting a coil hanging from hot. This might be a good opportunity to see if there might be an effect. If we can enlist kurdt's help, we could gain at least one data point. Perhaps he's willing to install a jumper between white and pole on two of the sections of his S1. This would cause shunting on those pickups. The remaining pickup would not have a shunt. He could compare the amount of hum between shunted and non-shunted when in the tapped mode.

[kurdt]

Balls, if I'd of seen your post earlier retread, I would of tried that for ya.

As it is I've already finished, it's all back together, re-strung and set up, so I really don't wanna open it up and start messing about with it again now ... sorry!

It all went well apart from one little mistake of wireing the bridge pup to the neck position on the selector switch, and the neck pup to the bridge position ... luckily I spotted it while testing everything with a multimeter so it was easily sorted.

The s-1 itself is so much neater than a push pull, and works perfectly. I'll definitely be looking to always use them with any coil tap/split type of hook ups I do in future guitar builds.

The pickups sound awsome, and defo quieter (hum wise) than any other single coils I've tried.

Thanks again for your help, that picture you posted of the S-1 made things a lot clearer retread.

Cheers.

[reTrEaD]

No worries, kurdt. We'll find another opportunity to test the hypothesis somewhere along the line. Glad to hear things turned out well for you.