Stratocaster wiring options

Roland

After years of playing humbuckers I've become more interested in single coils. It started with Telecasters. Then I acquired a set of Oil City Stone Tones from @Richardj, which have been sitting in the workshop. I'm now ready to build a guitar for them. It will have single volume and single tone controls, a five way superswitch, and the possibility of metal plates under one or more pickups.

What pickup wiring configurations do you like?

Lebarque

Scott Henderson wiring for me: vol, neck/mid tone, bridge tone. Uses superswitch to ensure the in between positions have no tone control, so they don't sound darker.

Richardj

Not sure (it's been a while) but doesn't the bridge pickup already have a base plate?

I feel that with a Strat simple is good, but the good things are to have the bridge pickup wired to a tone control (I'm quite happy for it to share with the middle pickup) and a switch or push/pull to give you neck and bridge and all three on can give you a lot more tonal options.

simonk

I like standard wiring but with the bridge pickup tone mod. 

And the Stonetone bridge pickup with a baseplate on is mighty!

Lebarque

Not a fan of the base plate, myself. Too much like a Tele!

simonk

Lebarque said:

Not a fan of the base plate, myself. Too much like a Tele!

And this is a bad thing..?

robinbowes

I like the Kinman K9 harness - it has many useful tones.

R.

Lebarque

simonk said:

Lebarque said:

Not a fan of the base plate, myself. Too much like a Tele!

And this is a bad thing..?

Yeh, if you want a Tele, get a Tele. :0)

ICBM

Given a Superswitch and a baseplate (on the bridge pickup) I would go for:

Neck
Neck + middle
Middle
Neck + bridge
Bridge

The best combination of Strat and Tele sounds without the one I don't like usually. It's annoying that you have to go to a Superswitch to achieve it when it's only one setting different from a normal 5-way, but there's no other way short of swapping the neck and middle pickups, which I don't like because then the positions become non-intuitive.

If you have only a single tone control so you don't need a switch pole to select those, you can parallel two sets of poles on the Superswitch which will improve reliability and reduce switching noise.

Roland

Lebarque said:

simonk said:

Lebarque said:

Not a fan of the base plate, myself. Too much like a Tele!

And this is a bad thing..?

Yeh, if you want a Tele, get a Tele. :0)

Ah, but what if you want the Strat In-between sound? I have thought of adding a middle pickup to a Tele, but wanted to start from the other direction, with a conventional Strat, and then move it towards a Tele sound.

robinbowes

robinbowes said:

I like the Kinman K9 harness - it has many useful tones.

To elaborate:

Outwardly, it looks like regular Strat controls - 1 x 5-way switch, 3 x knobs.

So, you have the regular five Strat combinations:

1. bridge
2. bridge/middle in parallel
3. middle
4. middle/neck in parallel
5. neck

The top knob is regular volume, the middle knob is regular tone.

The bottom "tone" knob has two functions:

1. neck blend - blends in the neck pick up in positions 1, 2, 3.
2. push/push switch that connects bridge and middle in series (in position 2)

I find myself using neck blend a lot, and the series mode quite a bit.

R.

Richardj

robinbowes said:

robinbowes said:

I like the Kinman K9 harness - it has many useful tones.

To elaborate:

Outwardly, it looks like regular Strat controls - 1 x 5-way switch, 3 x knobs.

So, you have the regular five Strat combinations:

1. bridge
2. bridge/middle in parallel
3. middle
4. middle/neck in parallel
5. neck

The top knob is regular volume, the middle knob is regular tone.

The bottom "tone" knob has two functions:

1. neck blend - blends in the neck pick up in positions 1, 2, 3.
2. push/push switch that connects bridge and middle in series (in position 2)

I find myself using neck blend a lot, and the series mode quite a bit.

R.

I'd not seen that before, that's quite cool.

Lebarque

Roland said:

Lebarque said:

simonk said:

Lebarque said:

Not a fan of the base plate, myself. Too much like a Tele!

And this is a bad thing..?

Yeh, if you want a Tele, get a Tele. :0)

Ah, but what if you want the Strat In-between sound? I have thought of adding a middle pickup to a Tele, but wanted to start from the other direction, with a conventional Strat, and then move it towards a Tele sound.

Get both a strat and a tele! Trying to combine the two will always result in some kind of compromise (read: you'll ruin a perfectly good strat) :0)

Richardj

Base plate on a Strat bridge pickup won't make it sound like a Tele, the two pickups and how they are mounted are just too different. What the base plate does well is to fatten and take away some of the usual spikyness. I like them as are a sort of 'more' option.

paulnb57

3 way Tele Switch, wired to give neck, neck and middle with shared tone, bridge with dedicated tone... it works for me as I prefer the neck and middle mix to the middle and neck mix..and treble bleed, oh and I also prefer a much hotter bridge single coil too...

normula1

I quite like the opposite of @ICBM with bridge, bridge + middle, middle, neck & bridge, neck. I often use an S1 switch to toggle standard and as above apart from having all three on the middle position

english_bob

G&L style wiring?

It requires two tone pots (but then a Strat with only two knobs looks like it's missing a body part or something), but the bass cut pot is useful for tightening up the neck pickup, and turning both down gives you an interesting mid-honk tone. 

crunchman

I've had a few different wiring options on my main Strat over the years.  I've settled on having a (no-load pot) tone on the bridge pickup, and a push-push to add the neck pickup to any other sound on the other tone control.  This gives me neck and bridge together which is a good option.  The no load pot gives me that spiky bridge pickup tone when I want it, but turning it down even marginally brings the tone pot into the circuit and softens it up.