HSS wiring question

Jonathangus

I currently have an HSS guitar (albeit in bits) which currently looks like this under the pickguard:

So, a couple of questions first:

1. It's only using one side of the switch - why?  (The switch in question has a label marked 51854 - from a quick Google, I think it's a Fender switch).
2. The white leads from the single coils (SD Quarter Pounds) are grounded, and the black for hot.  Is this the wrong way round?  Does it matter?

What I'm planning to do is wire up a new pickguard, still with single volume and tone, but with a push-pull coil split (to the slug coil) on the tone.  (Also swapping out the Custom for a JB.)  Have I got this right?

Thanks in advance.

SteveRobinson

1. On a Strat with two tones the other side of the switch switches the tones. It's not necessary here with only one tone control.

2. The "standard" polarity of single coils and humbucking pickups is opposite so the singles have been connected like this to match the humbucker.

ICBM

SteveRobinson said:

1. On a Strat with two tones the other side of the switch switches the tones. It's not necessary here with only one tone control.

My stuck-record addition to this is that it's not necessary, but it's *better* to connect both sides of the switch in parallel - connect each unused terminal to the corresponding one on the other side (top left to second-from-top right, and so on for the other two) - this maximises reliability and can reduce switching noise.

You could similarly jumper the push-pull, but it's less important because a bad contact won't result in silence.

Jonathangus

Brilliant, thanks.

So I want this?  (With @ICBM 's optional additions in orange.)

ICBM

Yes, that's it.

Jonathangus

OK, so I finally got round to completing the wiring at the weekend, and something's not right.  Have a listen:

• Neck
• Neck + middle
• Middle
• Middle + bridge (humbucker)
• Bridge (humbucker)
• Middle + bridge (split)
• Bridge (split)

Both the middle + bridge selections sound really thin and weedy.  What have I done?

Pics:

TIA

ICBM

The bridge pickup is out of phase with the single coils.

You can fix it either by reversing the hot and ground wires on the humbucker, or on both single coils. If the humbucker splits to the coil you want, it’s probably easier to do the singles.

This will also allow you to twist the wires for the singles together much better, which will reduce noise .

Jonathangus

Fantastic, thanks @ICBM .  Thought it might be something like that.  So I basically want it like I had in my original diagram above?

ICBM

Yes, it's really just that you've connected the single coils the wrong way round according to standard Duncan colour coding - black should be ground and white hot.

Grampa

Resurrecting an old thread but I'm about to upgrade the electronics on a Nick Johnstone HSS Diamond Series. I fully understand the wiring diagram but can't make out the pot size from either the pics or the physical guitar.
Could someone with far more knowledge than me please let me know....

Pot value required for volume
Split pot value required for tone
Capacitor value

Thanks as always

Jonathangus

Grampa said:

Resurrecting an old thread but I'm about to upgrade the electronics on a Nick Johnstone HSS Diamond Series. I fully understand the wiring diagram but can't make out the pot size from either the pics or the physical guitar.
Could someone with far more knowledge than me please let me know....

Pot value required for volume
Split pot value required for tone
Capacitor value

Thanks as always

@Grampa - in this case, both pots are 250k.  Ordinarily you'd use a 500k with a humbucker, but the JB was apparently designed to work with 250k - presumably for those who wanted to beef up the bridge position of their Strat.  So that's what I went with.  I know there's a trick you can do with a resistor to make the singles see 250k and the humbucker 500k.  As always, @ICBM is the man in the know.

The cap is 0.022µF.

Grampa

@Jonathangus - Thank you sir, hugely appreciated.
The resistor trick sounds very interesting, I'll look in to it.

Grampa

Daft question, but is the resistor trick done on the volume pot, or the split tone pot?

normula1

It doesn't matter. If you've a tone dedicated to the bridge, it makes sense to put the resistor onto the other tone control.

Grampa

normula1 said:

It doesn't matter. If you've a tone dedicated to the bridge, it makes sense to put the resistor onto the other tone control.

Single tone control....

ICBM

If it’s a single tone control you need to switch the resistor in when either the single coils are selected or the humbucker is split. There’s a way of doing this, I thought it was in this thread but there must be another similar one!

Grampa

@ICBM - Many thanks, I'll start searching and see what I can find.

ICBM

Found it, although I had remembered it wrong, this is for a two-tone circuit.

https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/232515/push-pull-pot-wiring/p1

If you look at the diagrams, the pull-switch wiring is still the same though - the terminal labelled 10 still goes to the volume pot hot, and the one labelled 8 goes to the 5-way terminals 1 and 2. Just connect the (one) tone control to the volume pot hot as well.

Grampa

@ICBM - Thank you, greatly appreciate the info.