Need a diagram - standard HSH layout with a super switch

[gdeviant82]

I've been looking around on here as well as Seymour Duncan and a few other sites trying to find a wiring diagram but so far I've come up short. I'm not trying to do anything too crazy here, basically just want to upgrade a couple pickups to a standard HSH format.



I've got a HSS player strat thats wired with a super switch. As of right now its bone stock. The current wiring can be found here: www.fmicassets.com/Damroot/Original/10001/SM_014452XXXX_Player_Strat_HSS_Rev_A.pdf



Its got a master volume and 2 tones, with T2 dedicated to the bridge pickup. - which I would like to keep. So here's what I'm trying to do:


Bridge Pickup - I'll remove the fender humbucker and put in a SD JB.

Middle Pickup - No changes, I'll keep the Fender RWRP single coil, and preferably keep the wiring already in place.

Neck Pickup - Remove the single coil and put in a SD hot rails neck humbucker.



No fancy switches, I just want positions 2 and 4 to auto split and hum cancel with the middle pickup. I guess the fact it has that super switch is why I'm having trouble finding a diagram for it, otherwise this should be pretty common. I put the JB face to face with the middle RWRP pickup and its magnetically attracted to the north coil slug coil side. So does that mean it needs to have the north coil active for position 2? I'm not sure. I'm not an expert at this at all which is why it would definitely help to have a good wiring diagram to follow. So if anybody can help me out here or point me in the right direction I would be extremely grateful. thanks

[reTrEaD]

Sept 1, 2020 12:47:42 GMT -5 gdeviant82 said:

I put the JB face to face with the middle RWRP pickup and its magnetically attracted to the north coil slug coil side. So does that mean it needs to have the north coil active for position 2?

Yes. If your Middle pickup is attracted to the North (slug) coil of your HBs when the pickups are face-to-face, you can maintain hum-canceling in the switch positions where the Middle is paired with a North coil.

Sept 1, 2020 12:47:42 GMT -5 gdeviant82 said:

No fancy switches, I just want positions 2 and 4 to auto split and hum cancel with the middle pickup. I guess the fact it has that super switch is why I'm having trouble finding a diagram for it, otherwise this should be pretty common.

It should be relatively easy to bend the player strat wiring diagram for use with a HSH configuration.

As I understand it, you want this for your pickup selections:

5 - Neck (series) HB
4 - Neck North in parallel with Middle
3 - Middle
2 - Middle in parallel with Bridge North
1 - Bridge (series) HB

But which tone control(s) do you want enabled in each of the 5 positions? Personally, I'd avoid doubling up the tone controls the way the Player Strat does in the #2 position. But the choice is yours. Just tell us what you want.

[newey]

gdeviant82-

Hello And Welcome to GNutz2!

RT has the goods on this, we just need to know the question about the tones. Personally, I'd just use the bridge tone alone for positions 1 and 2 (Bridge and Bridge North + Middle), and have the neck/mid tone active only in positions 3,4, and 5. But the choice is up to you.

I am surprised Fender even used a Superswitch for this wiring, other Fender HSS guitars do the autosplit at position 2 just using a regular 5-way switch.

While we would assume that the polarity of your SD pickups are the same, as far as which coil is North, I would also check the SD Hot rails jsut to be sure it's the same as the JB.

Also be aware that stock Fender pickups are (AFAIK) wound opposite to SDs, so your middle pickup is likely to be out of phase when combined with either of the SDs. Understand, the magnetic polarity is only half of the equation when it comes to phase. If the middle is OOP after wiring, it's a simple matter of swapping the leads for that pickup around, but with a Strat with a pickguard, it means unbuttoning it and at least partially destringing it/restringing it, so you may want to test this first, just to be sure before you wire it up.

[gdeviant82]

I'm ok with the double tone controls in position 2.  I'd like to keep my soldering to a minimum so if its possible to just keep them wired the way they are currently then that's fine by me.

Sept 1, 2020 13:28:22 GMT -5 reTrEaD said:

As I understand it, you want this for your pickup selections:

5 - Neck (series) HB
4 - Neck North in parallel with Middle
3 - Middle
2 - Middle in parallel with Bridge North
1 - Bridge (series) HB

That's exactly right!  And thanks for the reply!

[gdeviant82]

Sept 1, 2020 14:05:44 GMT -5 newey said:

Also be aware that stock Fender pickups are (AFAIK) wound opposite to SDs, so your middle pickup is likely to be out of phase when combined with either of the SDs. Understand, the magnetic polarity is only half of the equation when it comes to phase. If the middle is OOP after wiring, it's a simple matter of swapping the leads for that pickup around, but with a Strat with a pickguard, it means unbuttoning it and at least partially destringing it/restringing it, so you may want to test this first, just to be sure before you wire it up.

Yes I had heard that before as well, and I meant to ask about that.  I left the low E string on it so I'll be sure to test it before putting it all back together completely.

And I can check the polarity of the hot rails pickup as soon as I get home this evening.  Thanks for the help.

[gdeviant82]

As for the hot rails, it is also attracted to the middle single coil by it's north coil.

Let me know if there is anything else I can check or if there's any more info you need. I really appreciate the help with this.

[newey]

You have a 50-50 shot at getting the Fender middle SC in phase with the other two by random chance, but if you want to be sure before you start, you would perform this testing.

Testing phase- the screwdriver pull-off test

OTOH, if you want to take your chances, worse case scenario, as I said, is swapping the middle pickup wires around. Given that the internet seems to agree that phase is an issue between Fender pickups and SDs, you might want to just go ahead and swap them around, acknowledging that you may end up going in again to change them nonetheless.

Other than that, the wiring changes are very simple. First, you need to correlate the Fender bridge HB wire colors with SD's. As per your diagram (and, I looked at our chart of wire colors in the References section), your current Fender HB, at position 2, is split to the North (slug) coil, and the slug coil on the SDs is also the North coil. The Fender HB is wired:

Black to lug#1 on the one pole of the Superswitch
white to "ground" (i.e., back of pot as shown on diagram)
Red and green pair form the "series junction", and are wired to lug #2 on one pole of the Superswitch.

(Since the common lug of that pole connects to the hot output, this shorts the two wires of the South (screw) coil to hot at position 2, and leaves us with only the North coil connected, with the green wire connected to hot output and the white wire connected to ground).

For your SD pickups, the black wire and white wires are the wires to the North coil.

The White wire is wired to lug #1 on the Superswitch, same place the black wire of the Fender was wired.
The Red wire is grounded, just as the Fender white wire was.
The Black and Green wires are wired together at Lug #2 of the one pole of the Superswitch, just as the red and green wires were on the Fender.

Now, as for your SD hot rails at the neck, the wire colors will follow the same as the JB, except that the Black/Green pair will be wired to Lug #4 on the lower right pole of the Superswitch (That lug #4 is currently empty, and the only thing wired to that pole is the one tone control).

But, while I think I've got the right wire colors/coils, please let someone else double check this first, before you break out the soldering iron.

Since you don't want to change the tone controls, you are now done.

[gdeviant82]

Dude, I just realized how the super switch works! I was just reading your above post then I looked at the fender diagram and it just clicked all of a sudden. For some reason I thought it was more complicated before.

But this is awesome, I can take it from here. I really appreciate all the help guys, thank you so much!

[reTrEaD]

Sept 1, 2020 22:31:14 GMT -5 gdeviant82 said:

But this is awesome, I can take it from here. I really appreciate all the help guys, thank you so much!

If you'd like to create your own diagram, that would be good practice.

I modified this one earlier today but didn't have time to get back online and post it. As per your intentions, none of the connections for the tone controls have been changed. Also, the connections for the middle pickup stay the same. The only change is in the four connections for the Bridge and Neck pickups in the upper-left section of the superswitch.



I'm not really thrilled with this, as the unused south coils of the HBs hang from hot in positions #2 and #4. Not a deal-breaker but it could be better. It would be simple to clean this up by using just one pole of the superswitch to select just one tone control at a time. That would free up a pole that could be used for the (-) connection to the HBs. But doing so would require more wiring changes and you expressed a desire to make as few changes as possible.

[newey]

Sept 1, 2020 22:57:11 GMT -5 reTrEaD said:

I'm not really thrilled with this, as the unused south coils of the HBs hang from hot in positions #2 and #4

RT, My suggestion was to wire the SD HBs "inside out", with the black/green forming the series junction. This then shorts the South coil to the output, avoiding the hanging coil, correct? Is there an issue with what I suggested?

gd-

RT has both series junctions on the upper right pole, I said to wire the neck HB series junction to the unused lug #4 on the lower left pole. Either way will work. But to be clear, on my version of this, the white wire from the neck HB would be wired to both lugs 4 and 5 on the upper left pole, just as the neck SC is currently wired.

[gdeviant82]

Sept 1, 2020 22:57:11 GMT -5 reTrEaD said:

I'm not really thrilled with this, as the unused south coils of the HBs hang from hot in positions #2 and #4. Not a deal-breaker but it could be better. It would be simple to clean this up by using just one pole of the superswitch to select just one tone control at a time. That would free up a pole that could be used for the (-) connection to the HBs. But doing so would require more wiring changes and you expressed a desire to make as few changes as possible.

I think I see what you mean. I did all the desoldering on it last night and removed the bridge and neck pups. And I noticed that it looks like if I just break the connection for Tone 2 from going to that 2nd position lug then that would disable it there and give me just one tone control at each position. But then if I'm gonna do that then I might as well move it to the pole above and connect to lugs one and two and break the connection between 2 and 3. That would give me the bridge tone for positions one and two and neck/ middle tone for the rest, correct? It would also free up a pole (pole 3 it's called?). Then I could move my green and blacks to two and four there and send the common to ground, then expand the reds to positions two and four in pole two. Do I have all that right? Or any of it?



Also, the fender humbucker that I removed actually attracts to middle pickup with its Screw Coil, which is the south coil right? So does that mean that it was actually out of phase magnetically in position two?

Thanks for making that diagram btw!  Thats awesome.  You guys have been very helpful.  I hope to have this thing done tonight finally.

[newey]

Sept 2, 2020 8:36:42 GMT -5 gdeviant82 said:

Also, the fender humbucker that I removed actually attracts to middle pickup with its Screw Coil, which is the south coil right? So does that mean that it was actually out of phase magnetically in position two?

Yes, the South coil is the screw coil on Fender HBs. But don't confuse magnetic polarity (North vs. South) with phase.

Think of a HB. In order for the hum cancellation to work, one coil is both of reverse magnetic polarity and is reverse wound from the other coil (i.e, RWRP). As such, the two coils will be hum-cancelling and will be in phase with each other.

If one coil was of reverse polarity, but was wound in the same direction as the other, then the HB coils would be OOP (i.e., "out of phase") with each other. Likewise, if the two coils were wound in the opposite directions, but had the same magnetic polarity, they would also be OOP with each other.

Think of phasing as being like rotating something 180°. If two coils are in phase and we change only the magnetic polarity of one of the two, we have put it 180° OOP with the other. Likewise, if we reverse the winding of one, it's 180° from the other. If we do both, reverse the winding and also reverse the magnetic polarity, then we've done a full 360° and we're back where we started, in phase.

However, unless I'm wrong on the Fender polarities, the original diagram you posted showed the North coil as the one being auto-split at position 2, and since (presumably) the combo with the middle SC at that position was hum-cancelling, it would have to be the North coil that was RWRP with respect to the middle coil. A SC pickup will always be RWRP with respect to one coil of a HB, but will be of like polarity and winding with respect to the other coil of the HB. Therefore, your result doesn't seem to make sense. Are you sure it wasn't the neck single coil you used instead of the middle one? (presumably, the Fender neck and middle SCs are RWRP with respect to each other, so that position 4 is hum-cancelling as the guitar was originally wired).

[reTrEaD]

Sept 2, 2020 6:27:22 GMT -5 newey said:

RT, My suggestion was to wire the SD HBs "inside out", with the black/green forming the series junction. This then shorts the South coil to the output, avoiding the hanging coil, correct? Is there an issue with what I suggested?

Shunting a coil that's already hanging from hot, really isn't a good solution imho. Also, you'll run into a bit of a problem if you try to shunt the South coil of the Bridge pickup. There isn't an unused throw in the #2 position.

Sept 2, 2020 8:36:42 GMT -5 gdeviant82 said:

Do I have all that right? Or any of it?

If you were to free up a pole by using just one tone pot at a time, you can use whichever of pole you desire for the tone selection. Either upper-left or lower-left. Make the change(s) in connections to the throws to select the desired pot in the various positions.

Currently, all four poles are connected to hot (the CW lug of the volume pot). We would need to change that wiring so the freed-up pole is connected to ground.

We would also change all the wiring for both HB. Connect the White and Red wires together as the series link.

The Black from the Neck HB goes to throws #5 and #4 in the upper-right section of the superswitch.
The Black from the Bridge HB goes to throws #1 and #2 in the upper-right section of the superswitch.

The Green from the Neck HB goes to throw #5 of the newly-freed section of the superswitch.
The Red and White from the Neck HB goes to throw #4 of the newly-freed section of the superswitch.

The Green from the Bridge HB goes to throw #1 of the newly-freed section of the superswitch.
The Red and White from the Bridge HB goes to throw #2 of the newly-freed section of the superswitch.

(As always, the bare wires of the HBs go directly to ground.)

By doing this, no unused coils will hang from hot or be shunted.

---

That's a lot of changes to make based on descriptive text. If you choose to go this way, you should definitely make a drawing and we can proofread it. You don't need to show the complete circuit. Just the connections to the superswitch will be enough.

[gdeviant82]

Sept 2, 2020 9:39:56 GMT -5 newey said:

Yes, the South coil is the screw coil on Fender HBs. But don't confuse magnetic polarity (North vs. South) with phase.

Think of a HB. In order for the hum cancellation to work, one coil is both of reverse magnetic polarity and is reverse wound from the other coil (i.e, RWRP). As such, the two coils will be hum-cancelling and will be in phase with each other.

If one coil was of reverse polarity, but was wound in the same direction as the other, then the HB coils would be OOP (i.e., "out of phase") with each other. Likewise, if the two coils were wound in the opposite directions, but had the same magnetic polarity, they would also be OOP with each other.

Think of phasing as being like rotating something 180°. If two coils are in phase and we change only the magnetic polarity of one of the two, we have put it 180° OOP with the other. Likewise, if we reverse the winding of one, it's 180° from the other. If we do both, reverse the winding and also reverse the magnetic polarity, then we've done a full 360° and we're back where we started, in phase.

However, unless I'm wrong on the Fender polarities, the original diagram you posted showed the North coil as the one being auto-split at position 2, and since (presumably) the combo with the middle SC at that position was hum-cancelling, it would have to be the North coil that was RWRP with respect to the middle coil. A SC pickup will always be RWRP with respect to one coil of a HB, but will be of like polarity and winding with respect to the other coil of the HB. Therefore, your result doesn't seem to make sense. Are you sure it wasn't the neck single coil you used instead of the middle one? (presumably, the Fender neck and middle SCs are RWRP with respect to each other, so that position 4 is hum-cancelling as the guitar was originally wired).

Ok I gotcha, that makes sense.  I know it sounds crazy though but it was definitely the screw coil of the HB that attracted to the middle pickup.  I probably checked it 5 times because I was surprised to see that.  When I put the HB face to face with the neck pickup, the slug coil was the one attracted.  I haven't had this guitar for that long and I mostly used positions 1 and 4, so im not positive about position 2 but I know that pos. 4 was definitely hum-cancelling.  On my older SSS strat I actually used position 2 a lot but I remember not liking it as much on this one for whatever reason, and that could be why.  Fender does some strange things sometimes..

[gdeviant82]

Sept 2, 2020 10:30:05 GMT -5 reTrEaD said:

If you were to free up a pole by using just one tone pot at a time, you can use whichever of pole you desire for the tone selection. Either upper-left or lower-left. Make the change(s) in connections to the throws to select the desired pot in the various positions.

Currently, all four poles are connected to hot (the CW lug of the volume pot). We would need to change that wiring so the freed-up pole is connected to ground.

We would also change all the wiring for both HB. Connect the White and Red wires together as the series link.

The Black from the Neck HB goes to throws #5 and #4 in the upper-right section of the superswitch.
The Black from the Bridge HB goes to throws #1 and #2 in the upper-right section of the superswitch.

The Green from the Neck HB goes to throw #5 of the newly-freed section of the superswitch.
The Red and White from the Neck HB goes to throw #4 of the newly-freed section of the superswitch.

The Green from the Bridge HB goes to throw #1 of the newly-freed section of the superswitch.
The Red and White from the Bridge HB goes to throw #2 of the newly-freed section of the superswitch.

(As always, the bare wires of the HBs go directly to ground.)

By doing this, no unused coils will hang from hot or be shunted.

---

That's a lot of changes to make based on descriptive text. If you choose to go this way, you should definitely make a drawing and we can proofread it. You don't need to show the complete circuit. Just the connections to the superswitch will be enough.

Awesome.  Thank you for this.  If I get time today I'l make up a drawing for you guys to proofread, it may not be till later though.

[gdeviant82]

I just wanted to thank you guys again for all the help with this one.  I got it all wired up last night and it works great.  I was kinda crunched for time so I just went with reTrEaD's original instructions and diagram (which was awesome btw, thank you).  It seemed to pass the screwdriver pull off test and sounded great with just the one string I had left on there.  I can't wait to put some new strings on it tonight and let it fg rip. 


This is such a good website. Thanks again guys!