HSH / HSS diagram with noiseless pickups - need help

[speedwagon]

Hi there - it's my first time trying out custom wiring, and I'm hoping someone on this forum can share some wisdom.

I was inspired by this diagram, which tries to capture a variety of Strat-style and Gibson/PRS sounds, but I wanted to improve noise cancelation by using hum-canceling pickups in all positions.

Specifically, I'm using a mini rails humbucker in the neck, a stacked hum-canceling single in the middle position, and a regular humbucker in the bridge (all Dimarzio). The rails pickup sounds like a humbucker in series but provides a decent single-coil approximation when wired in parallel, so I wanted to capitalize on that. In terms of limitations, only the top (north) coil of middle pickup is useful as a split coil. I came up with this wiring diagram, using a superswitch and a Fender S-1 switch:




After wiring it up yesterday I've clearly done something wrong: positions 1 & 2 are giving me some sound, but not acting as expected, and positions #3-5 are dead silent. Since it's my first time doing this, I suspect I've made some kind of obvious rookie mistake. If someone with more experience than me can spot it, or knows a better way to achieve what I'm trying to do, I'd be very grateful for your advice. Thanks!

[speedwagon]

If it helps anyone looking at this, what I'm hoping to achieve is almost exactly the same as the HSH switching in this thread: guitarnuts2.proboards.com/thread/8858/help-hsh-super-switch-wiring?page=2&scrollTo=98970



The only difference is I'm hoping to have the middle pickup operate as a stacked humbucker in position 3 (on its own) but split to only the top coil in positions 2 & 4 to cancel noise when combined with the neck and bridge split coils. I'm using a Fender S-1 switch, so I'd have a 4PDT to work with instead of just DPDT, but I can't quite figure out how it could work since all the superswitch poles in positions 2 & 4 are being used in that diagram.

Thanks in advance to anyone who has some ideas on this!

[newey]

Speedwagon-

Thanks for reposting this as a new thread. Your diagram checks out OK, so I suspect it's a wiring issue. Your diagram has the S-1 switch disambiguated, so we don't know how you translated your diagram to the actual S-1 switch- I suspect that may be where the trouble lies.

You said positions 1 and 2 work, but not as expected. What exactly are you getting at those positions?

But a depiction of how you actually have the S-1 wired will probably be necessary.

[speedwagon]

Apr 1, 2021 5:37:58 GMT -5 newey said:

Speedwagon-

Thanks for reposting this as a new thread. Your diagram checks out OK, so I suspect it's a wiring issue. Your diagram has the S-1 switch disambiguated, so we don't know how you translated your diagram to the actual S-1 switch- I suspect that may be where the trouble lies.

You said positions 1 and 2 work, but not as expected. What exactly are you getting at those positions?

But a depiction of how you actually have the S-1 wired will probably be necessary.

Thank you for checking it Newey! Here's the diagram redone with the S-1 positions. Sorry that it's a bit of a mess with wires crisscrossing each other, but I didn't see any way to avoid that. It's a bit of a mess in real life too, so I suppose that makes it accurate…



Right now, with the S-1 switch up the sound is thinner, almost like a single coil, but both bridge humbucker coils seem to be active - I hear a pop when I touch pole pieces on either one with a screwdriver. When I push the S-1 down there's a big jump in volume (sounds like a humbucker) and the middle pickup becomes active along with the bridge (same pop test with the screwdriver) but you also start hearing hum that wasn't present in the up position. What puzzles me most though is that the sound / pickup response is the same in both positions 1 and 2.

I'll recheck all of the solder points this weekend, hopefully it's just a bad connection somewhere. Thank you so much for your help on this!