Wiring HSS Guitar with Fender S1 Switch; 2 Wire vs 4 Wire Humbucker

[RobRed]

I am rewiring an HSS Strat-style Ibanez. I have included the business end of my initial schematic as attachment 1. The plan involves switching out active pickups I was not too hot on, changing to a Super switch, and putting a rotary capacitor selector (about which I recently put another question up here) in place of one of the original tone pots.

I am obsessing about wiring all of a sudden, and today I had the fortune (or misfortune as you'd see it) of running into yet another plan (I've put up the schematic as attachment 2) for wiring HSS pickups using the Super switch but getting more than the typical 5 pickup selections by adding a Fender S1 switch in place of the volume pot. That is intriguing, both in terms of its offering more tone options and in terms of getting my feet wet in another area of wiring, as it looks like another pretty complicated switch.

I have 2 questions:

The primary one arises from the fact, as will be obvious from attachment 1, that I am working with a 4 wire humbucker and the plan with the S1 switch demonstrates a 2 wire humbucker. How do I deal with a 4 wire humbucker using the schematic for the S1 switch? In my initial plan, north and south finish wires are tied together but they run off to the Super switch. Can I tie them together and just leave them hanging, or would tying 2 other wires together be the equivalent of using a stock 2 wire humbucker?

The secondary question gets back to my rotary capacitor selector but in the context of this potential change in plan, to involve the S1 switch. In my original plan the lead output from the pickups selected at the Super switch all goes to the volume pot, so basically whatever group of pickups is selected, they are all treated in the same way in terms of volume and tone control. I haven't bothered trying to map out what is going where in terms of the pickup leads going to the 2 tone pots in the S1 schematic because before I went to all that work I wanted to assure someone here would not have good reason to shoot down the whole idea! But if I do end up using this plan for the 2 switches and increased options of pickup selection along with my rotary capacitor selector, I find I will have only one tone control instead of the two in the new schematic, and there will be two outputs from the pickups selector switch rather than the one in the original schematic. Can I tie both of those wires together and run them into the same tone pot?

Sorry for the length of this Rob R

[big_teee]

I am rewiring an HSS Strat-style Ibanez. I have included the business end of my initial schematic as attachment 1. The plan involves switching out active pickups I was not too hot on, changing to a Super switch, and putting a rotary capacitor selector (about which I recently put another question up here) in place of one of the original tone pots.

I am obsessing about wiring all of a sudden, and today I had the fortune (or misfortune as you'd see it) of running into yet another plan (I've put up the schematic as attachment 2) for wiring HSS pickups using the Super switch but getting more than the typical 5 pickup selections by adding a Fender S1 switch in place of the volume pot. That is intriguing, both in terms of its offering more tone options and in terms of getting my feet wet in another area of wiring, as it looks like another pretty complicated switch.

I have 2 questions:

The primary one arises from the fact, as will be obvious from attachment 1, that I am working with a 4 wire humbucker and the plan with the S1 switch demonstrates a 2 wire humbucker. How do I deal with a 4 wire humbucker using the schematic for the S1 switch? In my initial plan, north and south finish wires are tied together but they run off to the Super switch. Can I tie them together and just leave them hanging, or would tying 2 other wires together be the equivalent of using a stock 2 wire humbucker?

The secondary question gets back to my rotary capacitor selector but in the context of this potential change in plan, to involve the S1 switch. In my original plan the lead output from the pickups selected at the Super switch all goes to the volume pot, so basically whatever group of pickups is selected, they are all treated in the same way in terms of volume and tone control. I haven't bothered trying to map out what is going where in terms of the pickup leads going to the 2 tone pots in the S1 schematic because before I went to all that work I wanted to assure someone here would not have good reason to shoot down the whole idea! But if I do end up using this plan for the 2 switches and increased options of pickup selection along with my rotary capacitor selector, I find I will have only one tone control instead of the two in the new schematic, and there will be two outputs from the pickups selector switch rather than the one in the original schematic. Can I tie both of those wires together and run them into the same tone pot?

Sorry for the length of this Rob R

About the only help I can offer is about the 4-wire Humbucker.
On a 4 Wire humbucker the north coil is the slug coil.
The South Coil is the adjustable coil.
On Seymour duncan layout you would make the hot output lead the black wire.
You would tie the 2 finish leads White and red together and tape, if no Coil tap is used.
You would ground the South start Green wire and the bare ground wire.
I would think with all that wire and loops, it would be an extremely noisey setup, but I may be wrong.
I have a 2 humbucker guitar with a 5 Pos. Super switch.
I still mainly use the neck Humbucker, and the bridge humbucker posistion.
Same goes with a Strat.
It has a 3 singles, and 5 way switch.
I use the neck 90% of the time.
Your setup will be neat to play with, but when the smoke clears, you will probably use one or 2 posistions.
Please keep us posted and let us know what you come up with.
Best of Luck!
Terry

[Tommorichards]

Regarding the tone pot. All you need to do for it is to connect it in parallel with the hot output. So what ever wires you have going to the hot on the jack, connect the same ones to the tone pot at the same time. Should work.

and heres a schematic for a fender 5 way super switch for a 4 wire humbucker. After which, you run the hot and ground off it to the S1 switch.... if i understand what you plan to do.

[RobRed]

I must acknowledge 1) I may be looking for too much here and 2) I'm probably in way over my head (after I formerly mentioned getting my feet wet-curious the way we can use expressions!). I am driven by having had a former guitar with HSS pickups where all five switch positions had very distinct tones, and I found use for all of them. At that time I had no interest in wiring, so I don't even know what was what, although I suspect it was just the typical bridge, bridge-middle, middle, middle-neck, and neck arrangement. Now I've been doing all this reading, and it sounds so interesting, having coil taps and series/parallel options, and all--I figure the more the merrier. It hadn't occurred to me that more wires would mean more noise, although I am using Lace pickups in all 3 positions, and my understanding is that they are prone to produce very little noise in the first place--even the single coils.

Terry: Let me add insult to injury. You walk me through the Seymour Duncan pickup, converting it functionally from 4 wires to 2, in response to my request, then you add, "if no coil tap is used." Wouldn't you know I was in the shower this morning before I even got to the PC and it occurred to me I might just try to figure this out using the 4 wire pickup as a 4 wire pickup and treat the two coils of the humbucker as separate single coils. Then it would be like wiring a guitar with 4 single coils to some extent, I guess, That's going to leave me pulling my hair out trying to decide how to use the Super switch and S1 switch together with functionally 4 separate pickups. Anyway, I have time to do some pondering and planning here before I decide what to do. At the worst, I'll just end up with my initial plan but have learned a lot about pickups and wiring in the meantime.

Tommorichards: Thanks for the info regarding tying into the tone pot. That will definitely go into my final plan. That schematic is confusing in one regard. It certainly allows for some of the choices I'd like with the humbucker, but it does not allow any selection options regarding the middle and neck pickups. I only have room for one 5-way switch in my control cavity. As such, I was considering using the Super switch for general pickup selection among the 3 (or 4) pickups and then trying to use the S1 switch to possibly allow selection of some phase reversal, coil splitting, and series-parallel switching options. The one thing I'm sure of is that there is not likely a way to get every option out of one guitar, but I have time to study this and see what I come up with. I am definitely going to study the diagram you put up to see what I can learn from it, though.

Thanks, again, for your input. Rob R

[big_teee]

Rob:
Sounds like your having fun, and that is the important thing.
Now myself, If I was going to that much trouble.
What I would consider is in place of the S1 Switch, is a small switchable preamp.
There was a thread a while back where a guy picked up a booster.
He put it in his strat in place of his back tone Pot.
He had a sound clip.
He used a clean amp and he could switch among the 3 pickups, and switch gain in and out at different levels.
It appeared very useful. He and I was surprised how well it worked.
I will try to find the link to his post so you can listen.
Later,
Terry

[jrfrond]

There are a few flavors of the S1 switch, depending on the application, and the last time I checked, you couldn't get one unless you were doing a replacement on a Fender guitar. In fact, they wanted the OLD one back!

[big_teee]

Here's the link to the thread with the booster.
The sound clip is still there.
Circuit Advice On Strat Active Device
I listened again, it still impresses me how good much it transformed the strat.
All in the guitar and the amp remained the same.
T

[Tommorichards]

To be honest, im not sure why you would choose the S1, unless you were just trying to hide an 8pdt switch.

And With regards to a wider variety of sounds. I have a bass which has essentially the exact same configuration of pickups as your guitar.

All i did was put 3 5-way rotary switches in it, and i can get a bagillion tones out of it. I have:

5 way rotary for the bridge, 4 wire humbucker
5 way rotary for the Neck J and P, which i wire as a 4 wire humbucker, treating each pickup as a coil
5 way rotary to combine the outputs of each 5 way rotary switches.

This gives me suck varied options os:
-neck J and Bridge humbucker south coil in series
-Middle P and humbucker north coil in series, giving a mild stingray sound.
-all 3 pickups in parallel.

You just need to decide what you want.

[Mark Hammer]

1) I said it in 1979 ( http://hammer.ampage.org/files/Device1-12.PDF ), and I'll say it again here: figure out which half dozen or so sounds are most important to you, and leave it at that. All the exotic combinations can often result in far less return on investment than you might think, once the volume gets cranked.

2) If the guitar has 3 controls (vol, tone, tone), adapt one of the tone controls for the front pickup, and the other for the middle and bridge, or simply the bridge alone. Switching tone caps is fine, but unless done right, you can get switch-popping when changing cap value. At stage volume nobody appreciates that. Alternatively, if you are not content with the existing tone control, install a bidirectional tone control. Here, you would use a higher value pot, such as 1M. The wiper of the pot goes to the input lug on your volume, and a different-value cap (e.g., .022uf and .0068uf) goes from each outside lug to ground. In mid-position, there is no treble cut, rotating in either direction gives a treble rolloff at a different point; like having two different tone controls. Takes a wee bit of getting used to, but provides some real flexibility for very little investment. If the tone control is within reach, the new arrangement also permits easier "pinky wah" since the range of settings for each direction is now compressed into half the rotation arc.

3) Getting a neck+bridge setting on a 3-pickup guitar with a 5-way switch can be easily achieved simply by swapping bridge and middle hot leads at the switch. Flip those two leads and you end up with: neck, neck+bridge, bridge, bridge+middle, middle. So you get the "Tele" position but have to sacrifice one of the Strat "cluck" positions to do so.
Alternatively, you can flip neck and middle leads at the switch, such that you get: middle, middle+neck, neck, neck+bridge, bridge. Again, you get the N+B "Tele" setting, but sacrifice the other cluck position to do so. This works on a standard-issue 5-way switch.

[big_teee]

To be honest, im not sure why you would choose the S1, unless you were just trying to hide an 8pdt switch.

And With regards to a wider variety of sounds. I have a bass which has essentially the exact same configuration of pickups as your guitar.

All i did was put 3 5-way rotary switches in it, and i can get a bagillion tones out of it. I have:

5 way rotary for the bridge, 4 wire humbucker
5 way rotary for the Neck J and P, which i wire as a 4 wire humbucker, treating each pickup as a coil
5 way rotary to combine the outputs of each 5 way rotary switches.

This gives me suck varied options os:
-neck J and Bridge humbucker south coil in series
-Middle P and humbucker north coil in series, giving a mild stingray sound.
-all 3 pickups in parallel.

You just need to decide what you want.

That's really cool.
Not trying to hijack the thread further, but could you show a wiring diagram of your bass, that's really neat.
After the smoke clears, like I said earlier, what combo do you use the most?
Terry

[Tommorichards]

Its pretty much 3 of these


I wire that diagram using the 4 wires from the bridge humbucker to one 5-way
Then i wire the P and J to a second 5-way
I then take the output and ground wire from each of those switches, and wire to a third 5-way.
Then i take the 2 wires from that third 5-way and wire them to a volume and tone pot.

Regarding which combinations i use most, i go through phases of liking certain ones. But the most common i find myself using are:
-MM north coil, P, series
-MM south coil, J, series
-MM north coil, J, p, Parallel
-MM series out of phase, J + P series in phase, Parallel
-P or J on its own (simple, but i like the tone)
-MM series out of phase, J + P series in phase, out of phase (it gives a mid cut which is cool)

[RobRed]

1. Terry: I guess I'm having fun. I'm not so sure how much fun I'm going to have when I get around to wiring (I hope a ton), but I am an obsessive soul. This is all new to me, and I am trying to catch on to a lot of stuff fast. Part of the problem there is, of course, ideas I run into can sound interesting or great, but I have no experience to base real expectation on. I think in the end I'll just pick something interesting and try it out. I can always try other things later.

2. Terry: I am not a huge overdrive guy. I play mostly jazz and fusion stuff. I have my days, but then I can get all the overdrive I want from my Podxt. I like the option of being able to select among a bunch of different clean tones.

3. John: I found a site that at least claims to carry S1 switches in several styles--http://www.darrenriley.com/fenderparts.htm. I am surprised to hear that that is unexpected. If I decide to go along with this, I hope I am not in for a bigger surprise in terms of whether or not I am even able to get the switch. My big interest in the S1 switch is that it can be purchased stacked on a volume pot, so it is like a push-pull volume pot, but the switch offers more wiring possibilities than the typical push-pull pot. In fact, the guitar I'm rewiring had active pickups I did not like, and they were wired up with a typical 5-way switch and an ordinary push-pull pot for volume control. I can't use that left-over hardware, because with the active pickups, the pots were only 25K.

4. Tommorichards: The bass with 3 five-way rotary switches certainly sounds interesting and looks cool. Part of my problem is that I am starting with a guitar that does not have a pick guard, so everything comes through a cut-out in the wooden face of the guitar and it would be hard to hide the cut-out for the more typical 5-way switch that I have. Your approach brings up another point that I guess is probably tied to experience more than anything. If you have room for three rotary switches and choose to use those for pickup selection, then either you have more room on top of that for volume and tone pots, or you figure with that many pickup choices there's no point in worrying about tone control. I have room in my cavity for only 3 pots and the 5-way switch. As it is, the first idea I came across when I decided to rewire this instrument was the rotary capacitor selector, so that is taking up the space of one tone pot, then one of the remaining spaces will be a no load tone pot to control the signal through the cap that I select with that. That leaves me with the 5-way switch and room for one more pot, so when I ran into this discussion of the S1 switch, I grabbed onto it. It seems there are scads of different approaches that can be taken and scads of different tones you can shoot for, but it's hard for me to be selective beyond what I see people recommend, because a lot of these pickup choices I have no direct familiarity with. It leaves it exciting but a bit anxiety provoking diving into this.

5. Mark: It's hard for me to figure out my favorite half dozen favorite tones because I lack experience with all of this. Part of the reason I want to get a big bunch of tones is to hear them and see what I like. I remain confused regarding the issue of the rotary cap selector and noise. When I first saw discussion of that, there was no mention of pops or crackles and no discussion of approaches to avoiding them, and the soul who put it on line claimed it worked great, so I presumed happily it was fairly straightforward. Then I found a discussion from about a year ago of the same device on this group, and someone reported you need to put a resistor in line with each cap to avoid getting noise from the cap selector. In response to that, I put up a question here on the topic a few days ago to get more input on that. One responder reported you definitely need resistors (in fact 2 in line with each cap!) to avoid pops and crackles. Then another came up and reported (and I found it convincing but must acknowledge it's easy to find convincing what you wanted to hear in the first place ;D) that you only need to worry about noisy discharges from caps if they are in a circuit with DC signal but that the AC signal in a guitar's wiring would not charge up the caps in the first place. With that, I decided to keep it simple...I hope that's not a mistake. As far as playing in public goes, I'd love to but I have a physical handicap that would make that difficult, so I play for my own enjoyment and plan on getting into recording. I imagine if it turns out the thing makes a significant amount of noise, I'll just get used to turning the volume down before I change caps.

Thanks, All Rob R

[Mark Hammer]

The thing with caps is that they store charge. In a sense, there is more charge to store if a DC voltage is applied to them than if it's AC, so the AC/DC thing is correct, in principle. But, speaking from experience (because I have a cap-switch on one of my guitars), even AC signal from a pickup can produce an audible pop, when the cap has had time to accumulate charge but not enough time to drain off.

The trick is to never have a "free end" on a cap, such that it always has a means to drain off to ground. So, let's say I have 6 caps to ground from the volume pot input with a 1meg resistor in series with each. Every cap is now connected between hot and ground, with no free ends left hanging. If I use a switch to short out the resistor to the cap I'm interested in using, then that cap provides a low-impedance path to ground for treble content, but the other caps that each still have their 1meg resistor in series provide minimal treble cut. Once I change from one cap to another by shunting/shorting its particular resistor, the one I was using a moment ago gets to drain off.

The bidirectional tone control I described provides a nice compromise, since there is considerably less wiring to it, and quite frankly, two different rolloffs with variable cut provides a lot of variation. Anything beyond that is probably done better by an EQ pedal or the amp, in my view.

Do you play clean or dirty most of the time? Neither is "better", but depending on what is typical for you, some exotic combinations will not yield much for you, so I figure why put yourself through the aggravation.

Those superswitches can be pricey. It may well be easier to get a normal 5-way (or stick with what you presently have) and throw some money at a switching pot, for cancelling one of the coils on the HB.

[RobRed]

Thanks for the detailed response. I guess I'll put the resistors in after all. I liked it without because it made for a much neater wiring job, but if you're telling me as someone with experience with it that the noise occurs, I guess there's no arguing the point.

Part of the problem is I jumped into buying some of the stuff, thinking I knew what I was doing. Then I had to get snoopy and keep looking around on line. I should have just made my initial plan and stopped looking around until the next project. I already have the super switch, the 6 position, 2 pole rotary switch, the no load tone pot, and the capacitors (and they weren't God-awful expensive, but they weren't cheap). I also have a simple, cheap 250K pot to use as volume control, but that was cheap enough I wouldn't mind putting it aside for some other future use and replacing it with the S1 switch. I have switched out pickups before and put in a commercial, pre-wired harness, but this is the first time I've gone beyond that, so it was easy to think the first ideas I ran across that looked interesting were the way to go. As it is, I am having fun trying to sort out wiring these switches together as a puzzle. I have one schematic using the super switch together with the S1 for an HSS guitar with 2 wires on the humbucker and another for an SSS guitar. I'm studying them and trying to figure out how they do what they do, and then I'm going to try to come up on my own with a schematic that treats my 4 wire humbucker as 2 single coils, so it will be sort of like wiring up 4 single coils, I guess. I'll be considering coil splits and series/parallel switching, in addition to individual pickup selection. The worst thing I can do is totally bomb! If it doesn't work, I'll just try something else.

I foresee doing a lot of this. I have played guitar for a long time and I enjoy woodworking, so I figure now that I'm retired I can tie the two together in this and have a lot of fun. Now, on top of that, I am intrigued by learning about wiring them up. I will certainly keep the bidirectional tone control in mind for another guitar, but I have the stuff for the cap selector already for this one, and although I am by now convinced the two switches together are overkill and will probably be a nightmare, and there are probably cheaper and easier ways to do the same thing, I figure if I can sort this puzzle out, other stuff will be easy down the road.

Thanks, again Rob R

I play clean most of the time, so the ability to vary the tone on the guitar will have more effect than if I were burying the guitars tone behind a lot of overdrive or distortion, I think. I also have a Roland MIDI pickup on this guitar, and I really enjoy blending guitar tones with synthesized tones, so I think having more guitar tones will be of benefit there, too.

[Mark Hammer]

Consider reserving one of the 6 positions on your switch for NO treble cut. That is, the tone control is lifted out of circuit, with only the volume pot having any impact. Nice n' bright.