Do you have a guitar with 3 single coils, sometimes referred to as a Strat™ type guitar? If you are thinking of replacing the pickups to get more sounds from your guitar, there is another, less costly solution. Try changing the guitar switching instead. There are many switching modifications for 3 coil guitars. This particular switching arrangement offers a lot in return for relatively little work. Before you do this modification, let's look at what you will lose and what you will gain.
3) This will change the appearance of your guitar. In fact,
the modification will look like this: ![]() The guitar's change in appearance isn't that drastic is it? In fact, some might even consider this an improvement. Of course it is your guitar and the choice is up to you.
• Three Single Coil Sounds - Neck Middle Bridge. • Neck & Middle in Parallel • Middle & Bridge in Parallel.
4) You'll get the following new sounds:
If your guitar was made in the last 20 years or so, the chances are
good that the middle pickup is reverse wound and has reverse polarity
(RWRP). If that's the case you already had 2 "humbucking" positions
- choice 2 & 4 on the old 5 way switch. Now you will have 3 more
humbucking options. (These are the first 3 of the 6 listed). (You
might be surprised by the "out of phase" choice being humbucking but
2 coils with identical windings and polarity become humbucking when
they are wired out of phase).
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A schematic is okay for seeing how a circuit works but a wiring diagram is much more helpful when you go to do the actual work:
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To make it easier to read (and to follow):
You do not have to know this, but in case you are curious, by redrawing the schematic and not showing the phase switch, the switching becomes a little easier to understand. ![]() Switching to parallel, the middle terminals are now connected to "—" and "+". The switches still function the same way. When you want neck and middle, the bridge pickup is "shorted" and the neck "minus" terminal goes directly to ground and its "plus terminal" goes directly to the "hot" (or '+') output. When you want bridge and middle, the neck pickup is "shorted" and the neck "minus" terminal goes directly to ground. These are the only parallel combinations you can obtain. Why? If you wanted Neck and Bridge, you would flip the middle pickup switch "on" and do you see what happens? The middle pickup switch causes the ground and hot outputs to be connected together which results in the entire guitar turning "off" and no sound comes out. By the same reasoning, you can see why trying to choose single pickups when the switch is set for parallel will also have the same effect. (Luckily, you can get ALL 3 single coil choices when the switch is set for series).
In order to maximize the humbucking possibilities, the pickup that is
reverse wired with reverse polarity (RWRP)should be on the "left" side
of the circuit. Let's suppose the RWRP pickup was in the bridge? Then
we would want to wire the guitar in this way: ![]() As you can see this circuit is quite "flexible" in accomadating the kinds of switching that you want.
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