05 November 2012

Wiring Diagram: Super Strato HSH mod 11

Classification

Guitar moded

Super strato HSH type, with 1 volume and 1 tone, Fender's 5-way switch.

Description
  • HSH pickup layout
  • 2 humbuckers (2 P-Rails, in this case)
  • 1 single coil
  • 1 volume
  • 1 tone
  • 2 pull/push DPDT on/on switches (under each potentiometer)

Difficulty Level

Medium-hard


Features
  • Allows to split to one or other coil or put coils in series or parallel to both humbuckers at same time. Which one is active depends on the 5-way switch.
  • Allows typical 5-way positions but, mixing coils in series, cois in parallel, rail coil, P90 coil for each position where the humbucker is active.

Wiring Diagram

Click on the diagram to watch it full sized.



Comments

As ever, color code schema for pickup's wires is Seymour Duncan's one but, the white wire is being represented here as light blue, for better reading.
That pair of pull / pushes work together to determine which coils do you want to select on both humbuckers at same time. Since each humbucker is just working on their own positions, whatever is being selected in the other humbucker has no effect on its natural selected position in 5-way switch.

So, what you have is as follows:

Pos 1: Neck pickup
Pos 2: Neck pickup in parallel with middle pickup
Pos 3: Middle pickup
Pos 4: Middle pickup in parallel with bridge pickup
Pos 5: Bridge pickup

But, Neck or Bridge pickup can have the following coils arrangement, depending on the combined work of the Volume and Tone pull/pushes:

VPP  / TPP  -> COMBO
Down / Down -> Coils in series (humbucker mode)
Up   / Up   -> Coils in parallel
Up   / Down ->  Rail coil
Down / Up   -> P90 coil

So, you can always select which of those 4 combinations to use for Pos 1 and 2 (for neck pickup) in the blade switch and, for Pos 4 and 5 (for bridgie pickup).
This gives you 4 + 4 + 1 + 4 + 4 = 21 different combinations of pickups.

Note: all grounds (represented here with the inverted triangel) should be soldered together to any grounding spot (a claw in your shielding, backside of any pot, etc.). Grounds not represented here (as the bridge wire ground, or the shielding ground, by example) should be also grounded together.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for posting this.
    I used it as a starting point for my wiring (P-Rails / Vintage Rail / P-Rail).
    Since I wanted another tone control, I used the Fender Super Switch and another push/pull pot.
    The 3rd push/pull switch enables the bridge pickup when pulled (parallel to the other(s)).
    That way the result is 5x2x2x2 = 40 combinations, where 2 are duplicates, so 38 distinct combinations.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Actually 35 combinations, since I forgot that the mid single coil is not affected by the vol and tone1 switches.
    Still the most versatile guitar I ever had :-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nice.
      It's hard to cover everything, possibilities are often only limited by imagination and electronics cavity room.

      Delete

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