# Wiring Help/Ideas



## THRobinson (Jun 29, 2014)

So... guitar been sitting here a while... Cort body/neck I got with no electronics.

Originally had SSH with a vol/tone and 5-way.

Bought some Warman pickups to give them a try. Bought two single coil sized humbucker rails... and a G-Rail... their version of a P-Rail I guess, with a full sized single coil and a single coil sized humbucker.

Twin Loco - Single Coil Humbuckers

G-Rail Hybrid

So, the cavity has room for me to add a 3-way toggle for the G-Rail. Or I can use push/pull pots. Ideally I'd like to use 2 push/pull so when down the coil is on, pulled out it's off, and the volume turns on/off the single coil and the tone turns on/off the humbucker. Both down both on, both up both off.

Kinda looking for ideas and/or help. mini-toggle would probably be the easiest, I would rather push/pull but no idea how to make that work at all.

Any wiring guru's out there? Sadly the tech course I took was LVL1 and only covered stuff like levelling, referetting, making nuts and saddles etc.... wiring and stuff like broken headstocks etc is a LVL2 deal.

Will also mention the single coils can also be split... could use a push pull to have everything on in down position, or all single coils in up, and the 5-way toggles between them.

Again. LOTS of options. I have a few Strat style guitars so, would more prefer this for metal/shred since I have nothing like that.


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## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

If you go with push-pull, you might want to check the depth of the control cavity as that could influence your decision. Our local luthier mentioned that to me the other day.
This is a sample of the dimensions.









This looks more "compact"...











THRobinson said:


> Ideally I'd like to use 2 push/pull so when down the coil is on, pulled out it's off, and the volume turns on/off the single coil and the tone turns on/off the humbucker. Both down both on, both up both off.





THRobinson said:


> Will also mention the single coils can also be split... could use a push pull to have everything on in down position, or all single coils in up, and the 5-way toggles between them.





THRobinson said:


> Again. LOTS of options.


It would likely be best to decide on which options you would most like to have available to you and then we can proceed from there.

BTW..How is your soldering? These pots and mini toggle switches can be somewhat demanding to solder.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Note that:

1) The sensing area will remain between the two rails, that are magnetically coupled. So, while bypassing one of the coils will change the inductance, resonance, and tone, it will NOT sound like a single coil. Certainly closer to single coil than HB, but not SC with a sensing area between top and bottom. You'll lose a bit of level. Not a LOT, but enough to notice.

2) Cancelling a coil means you lose the hum-rejection. With another dual-coil pickup on, you'll have _some_ hum-rejection, but not maximum. I leave it to you to decide what's liveable and not.

3) The standard 5-way switch does not provide neck+bridge. Some folks are fine with that. Being partial to Telecaster sounds, myself, I wire up the switch differently. I swap the hot leads of the middle and bridge pickups at the switch. This gives neck, neck+bridge, bridge, bridge+middle, middle. You forfeit one Strat-type "cluck" sound but get the Tele N+B sound in return.

4) It has always both puzzled and annoyed me that the tone cap value used for the bridge pickup in dual-V/T-control guitars was the same as that used for the neck. Exactly how many players switch to their bridge pickup for a dull muted sound? In that spirit, if you are going to wire up a push-pull pot, consider using the Tone control, and wiring up the push-pull option for two different tone caps. One position is the standard .022uf cap to ground, and the other could/would be .0056-.0068uf. The former is capable of muted sounds, while the latter rounds the edges and gives a slightly more vocal resonance.

5) If you really really want to use coil-cancelling, and the wiring permits it, consider the following: get hold of a 3-position SPDT on-off-on mini toggle. The centre lug is connected to the junction between the two coils. One outside lug is soldered to ground, and the other is soldered to the "hot" lead of the pickup. In the middle position, both coils are in circuit, yielding normal HB function. In one outside position the bridge-most coil is active and the neckmost is bridged (=bypassed). In the other outside position, the neckmost coil is in circuit, and the bridgemost coil is cancelled. In principle, especially since they are so close together, it ought not to make much of a difference, but surprisingly it does; especially when combined with the neck or middle pickup. With option #3 above, a toggle like that gives you:
neck
neck+bridge coil 1
neck+bridge coil2
neck+bridge both
bridge
bridge coil 1
bridge coil 2
bridge+middle
bridge coil1 + middle
bridge coil 2 + middle
middle

That's 11 possibilities. You lose full hum-rejection in two of them, but four still provide partial hum-rejection. And note that the first three switch positions work exactly like a Tele: N, N+B, B. How you "flavour the B is up to you, but you don't need to flick more than one switch to get to a lot of sounds.


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## Guest (Jun 16, 2019)

THRobinson said:


> would more prefer this for metal/shred


You may not want to split the coils then.
Consider series/parallel instead? Still remains a humbucker, but a different sound.


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## THRobinson (Jun 29, 2014)

Soldering skills are decent getting better... just wired up a Squire/Strat with 3 GFS Brightons (TriSonic clones) with a Vol/Tone and 6 mini toggles for on/off/phase... had a diagram though. Not a great one, had to figure out a few things but works just fine, and really learned a lot trying to solder small wires to small switches and things got cramped quick. 

Space wise, decent sized cavity for so few things in there, and about 37mm depth excluding the thickness of the wood the shafts fits through. The Vol/Tone are oddly far apart. I could stick the mini toggle in between I think without it being in the way. Sorta how my Warlock is, except it has a 3-way in between the two knobs. 

I'm fine with losing the strat 'cluck'... I would prefer neck+bridge, bridge, bridge+middle, middle for sure on this one.

So basically... ixnay the push/pull... put in a mini toggle. Mini toggle affects the bridge only, and forget about splitting the singles. I'm good with that. Was about to place an order online for bone blanks, will add in a pairs of Bourns pots and a 3-way mini toggle.

Pot wise... normally I'd go 250 for singles, 500 for humbuckers... 0.047cap for tone... since these are kinda not the traditional single/humbuckers... what are we thinking?


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## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

THRobinson said:


> Soldering skills are decent getting better... just wired up a Squire/Strat with 3 GFS Brightons (TriSonic clones) *with a Vol/Tone and 6 mini toggles*


Good news!




THRobinson said:


> and about 37mm depth excluding the thickness of the wood the shafts fits through.


More good news!

Will you be posting some pics of your progress? (hint, hint)

BTW...How was Dwayne's course? Are you now finished LVL1 ?


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

THRobinson said:


> Soldering skills are decent getting better... just wired up a Squire/Strat with 3 GFS Brightons (TriSonic clones) with a Vol/Tone and 6 mini toggles for on/off/phase... had a diagram though. Not a great one, had to figure out a few things but works just fine, and really learned a lot trying to solder small wires to small switches and things got cramped quick.


Did you make that Strat body from your grandpa's fireplace mantle?


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## THRobinson (Jun 29, 2014)

No, no fireplace... But no plywood either. . Was surprised to find out the body on that was layered.

So, do i need spdt... On-off-on.... Or dpdt on-on-on? Since for the G-Rail it'll be single/both/minihumbucker?

Or best a 2way...single or minihumbucker. 3way probably better.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

SPDT, on-off-on, is sufficient to select either or both coils from a humbucker. It's what I use for each of the two P-Rails on my Epi Wilshire.

Here's the wiring rationale. Assume we have two coils in series, as below.

gnd - VVVVV <> VVVVV - hot

If one connects the midpoint and gnd, then that first/leftmost coil may as well not exist, and the midpoint is connected to ground. The other/rightmost coil is the one being sensed. If one connects the midpoint to hot, then that second/rightmost coil may as well not exist. And if the midpoint is bridged to neither (middle position) then both coils are in circuit.

So, centre lug of the switch goes to midpoint, one outside switch lug to gnd, and the other outside switch lug to hot.


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## THRobinson (Jun 29, 2014)

Ya that spdt dpdt stuff always confused me... But looking at parts site, most don't mention spdt... Stewmac for example says the 3way dpdt is for coil tapping. I was hoping to buy from Philadelphia Luthier because ordering about 25 bone blanks.

Will it work with either switch?


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

If you use DPDT, you can either use it, as described above for one pickup, to do two pickups at once, or you can simply leave one set of contacts unused, as a spare, or whatever. Many guitars will use one DPDT toggle to cancel one coil from both the neck and bridge humbuckers at once. If you go with the wiring I suggested earlier, a SPDT, with only one set of contacts is sufficient.

The CS Guitars Youtube channel has a little video about the difference between coil-tapping and coil-cancelling. Tapping technically involves taking the signal from a different point in the same coil. So, a "hot" single coil might have 9000 turns on it (standard Strat is 7600). If one had the option to take the signal after 7600 turns OR 9000 turns, then you would have "tapped" the coil at different points. That's a different thing than using only one coil of a two-coil pickup. Some mistakenly call that coil-tapping, when really one is simply bypassing or cancelling the second coil.


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## THRobinson (Jun 29, 2014)

Have you tried those Triple Shots? with your P-Rails?

Those were my first choice, until I saw the price. Cheapest I think after ship is about $60CAD for a single ring.


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## THRobinson (Jun 29, 2014)

Oh hey, after a lot of searching, I stumbled across this diagram that might work?

Not sure what pickups work or when using the 5-Way though... can that be easily changed with any 5-way switch?


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