HSH pickups or wiring or modding for maximum quack in positions 2 + 4?

Bork

I'm planning a build for my first HSH guitar.  Three piece through body laminate of 1x maple + 2x mahogany, ebony fingerboard, lightweight sapele wings and quilted heart/sapwood golden camphor top.   Styles of music it'll be used for range from jazzy vibe all the way to pop rock.  So ideally 80's classic rock in the bridge, stratty quack in positions 2 and 4, tele-ish in position 3 and jazzy in position 5.  I understand there will always be an element of compromise in this kind of set up but the greatest challenge is predicting how successful positions 2 and 4 will be while many manufacturers don't publish impedance or resistance info on each coil in their humbuckers.

I don't use the middle pickup much either so will wire things up so the middle position is neck and bridge together using a DiMarzio EP1112 5 way selector and a push pull vol for splitting the humbuckers.  Should be a fairly uncomplicated system to use with no options that I won't actually use (which is why I shied away from a Freeway superswitch and similar).

Pickup wise I've been looking at: 

DiMarzio Tone Zone + FS-1 RWRP+ PAF Pro

Suhr SSV neck, ML Standard middle, SSH+ bridge

Dimarzio Dual Sound + True Velvet RWRP + PAF 36th Ann

Are there any other recommendations or approaches to achieve the options I've mentioned above?  I'd be grateful for experience only, please.   There's already a lot of advice out there on what people think *might* work.

ICBM

If you're using a Superswitch of some sort so position 3 is neck+bridge (either split or not) and you won't have the middle pickup alone in any position, then you want the weakest, thinnest, most gutless middle pickup you can find... really . Doing this sucks all the midrange out of the sound and gives a much more convincing 'Strat' tone in the 2 and 4 positions than trying to match the middle with the split humbuckers - which can work, but is much more difficult to get right.

My PRS Swamp Ash Special has exactly this, with a Duncan Vintage Rails in the middle - normally, literally the worst 'decent' Strat pickup I've ever heard - but in combination with the humbuckers, it sounds really very Stratty... even with PRS Dragon II pickups. The best 'Strat' sounds are actually with the neck split but the bridge *not* split, amazingly - these are the stock PRS settings. (I've added an extra switch to split the humbuckers separately from adding the middle pickup, so I have been able to directly compare all the options.)

If you don't want to do that, but want to split both humbuckers in the 2 and 4 positions, you need to look for a bridge humbucker which has about double the output of the middle - this one is harder to get right than the neck, which seems to work as well with a lower-output pickup - and ideally split both humbuckers to the coil nearer the neck, and if that's not practical then both to the coil nearest the middle pickup.

Does that help at all, or even make sense?

Funkfingers

Since May, I have been mostly using, 
Oil City Scrapyard Dog Plus
Oil City Stonetone (overwound version)
Oil City Nightfighter 4

Both humbuckers are covered. Steve Vai style circuit with automated coil splittage to the stud coils for positions 2 and 4.

Host guitar - Heartfield Talon 3, a 22-fret Ibanez RG wannabe.

Bork

ICBM said:

Does that help at all, or even make sense?

Thanks, it does make sense and it's the path of thinking that I'm already on.  This is why I lamented the lack of manufacturer information on individual coils within split coil capable humbuckers.   I have some singles in my spares department, one middle coil from a set of hand made 60 replicas, truly the most gutless pickups I have ever encountered.  The other could be salvaged from an incomplete Powered by Lace set (the bridge coil windings broke).   I think the PbL coil might be a stacked humbucker which throws up a question about the importance of whether the middle coil is RWRP or not in this kind of scenario.  Do you have any thoughts?  I'd rather use the Lace than split an otherwise saleable set of vintage coils.

Funkfingers said:

Since May, I have been mostly using, 
Oil City Scrapyard Dog Plus
Oil City Stonetone (overwound version)
Oil City Nightfighter 4

Both humbuckers are covered. Same circuit as the OP but with automated coil splittage to the stud coils for positions 2 and 4.

Thanks!  Did you buy them as a set?  I may drop Oil City a line and see what suggestions they have to offer.  

ICBM

Bork said:

I have some singles in my spares department, one middle coil from a set of hand made 60 replicas, truly the most gutless pickups I have ever encountered.  The other could be salvaged from an incomplete Powered by Lace set (the bridge coil windings broke).   I think the PbL coil might be a stacked humbucker which throws up a question about the importance of whether the middle coil is RWRP or not in this kind of scenario.  Do you have any thoughts?  I'd rather use the Lace than split an otherwise saleable set of vintage coils.

I would try the Lace first as stacked humbuckers tend to be inherently slightly gutless.

When my SAS belonged to a friend, he didn’t think the ‘Strat’ sounds were Stratty enough, so thinking it was the problem, he got me to replace the Vintage Rails with a proper Strat single coil - a Duncan Alnico 2 - which actually made it worse. I put the original back when I acquired it, but the key - even more surprisingly - was to replace the stock McCarty humbuckers with Dragon IIs. Totally counterintuitively, the hotter humbuckers actually sound more Stratty combined with the middle - and they aren’t out of phase, I checked!

The RWRP question probably doesn’t matter - you will get a little more hum in the 2 and 4 positions than you would with an accurately matched single coil of the right polarity to cancel with the split humbuckers, but probably still less than one of the wrong polarity, if that makes sense! The split positions in my PRS don’t hum badly even though the middle is a Rails. It also means the middle+bridge *un*split is completely hum-free, which is good.

If you have the means to experiment with these positions split and un-split before committing permanently, I would try it.

Bork

ICBM said:

Bork said:

I have some singles in my spares department, one middle coil from a set of hand made 60 replicas, truly the most gutless pickups I have ever encountered.  The other could be salvaged from an incomplete Powered by Lace set (the bridge coil windings broke).   I think the PbL coil might be a stacked humbucker which throws up a question about the importance of whether the middle coil is RWRP or not in this kind of scenario.  Do you have any thoughts?  I'd rather use the Lace than split an otherwise saleable set of vintage coils.

I would try the Lace first as stacked humbuckers tend to be inherently slightly gutless.

If you have the means to experiment with these positions split and un-split before committing permanently, I would try it.

I'll almost certainly experiment once I have the parts assembled.  Through habit I tend to attach quick connect plugs and sockets to my passive pick up leads if I ever do a pickup swap.  It makes swapping things back less inconvenient and allows for future experimentation.

Funkfingers

Bork said:

Did you buy them as a set?  

No. I acquired the SYD+ pre-owned via the classified ad listings of this forum. Then, two overwound Stonetone single coils from a different seller. (These made a nice HSS set, BTW.)

The SYD+ was in a non-standard colour scheme. This obliged me to order a brand new Nightfighter IV Neck humbucker to match. 

Thus, I arrived at my pickup combination by a combination of chance and my severe bias towards covered A4 neck position humbuckers.

Bork said:

I may drop Oil City a line and see what suggestions they have to offer.  

Yes. Always better to talk to the organ grinder rather than the monkey.

Bork said:

Pickup wise

DiMarzio Tone PAF Pro

Dimarzio True Velvet RWRP

IMO, these models would serve well for the neck and centre positions. 

My tastes in DiMarzio bridge position humbuckers are The Breed, Crunch Lab and Illuminator. 

The Tone Zone is very low end heavy. It might not sit well with your choice of body woods.


NOTE: If your guitar is going to have a near flat fingerboard radius, a single coil pickup with "staggered" length polepiece rod magnets might not be suitable. 

normula1

One of my Strats has an old Ibanez V2 (quite hot and fat) in the bridge and position 2 sounds way better full humbucking than when split. Other Strats with more vintage HBs sound better with a partial split. So just choose what sounds best to you.

axisus

I've never heard a quack I liked that involved a humbucker.