Strat Wiring

Yeah, I know there are thousands of strat wiring schemes out there, so who needs another one? Well, I did, and I don't think my needs are all that outrageous. Basically, I wanted:

1. The stock sounds had to remain available, and had to be accessible in the normal familiar places.

2. My guitar had to continue to look the same as it did before. I didn't want a bunch of toggle switches getting in my way, or any irreversible changes to my instrument.

3. The setup had to be consistent -- that is, I didn't want switches that worked one way in one configuration and another way in another. Similarly, I didn't want any duplicate sounds, nor would I tolerate any combinations that would cause things not to work at all.

The schematic described here uses two push-pull pots and a Yamaha 4-pole, 5-position replacement switch to yield 11 distinct sounds

Description:

The schematic discussed here uses two push-pull pots and a Yamaha 4-pole, 5-position replacement switch to yield 11 distinct sounds:

Stock sounds

1. Neck only
2. Neck + middle - parallel, in phase
3. Middle only
4. Bridge + middle - parallel, in phase
5. Bridge only

New sounds

6. Neck + middle - parallel, out of phase
7. Neck + middle - series, in phase
8. Neck + middle - series, out of phase
9. Bridge + middle - parallel, out of phase
10. Bridge + middle - series, in phase
11. Bridge + middle - series, out of phase

The illustration above shows the full schematic. For those who want to understand how things work, the links below right provide a sound-by-sound analysis of the circuit.

Note: I have reversed the ordering of the positions because my installation required the switch to be mounted backwards -- that is, if you follow my working diagram exactly, positioning the switch to where you would normally get the bridge pickup only will give you the neck pickup only. (This was necessary because I was installing the switch in a RolandReady Strat, and the up-down buttons were in the way. ) You can mount the switch in its normal orientation by switching the wire leading to the neck pickup with the wire leading to the bridge pickup.

The Yamaha 4-pole Switch

If you're not familiar with the Yamaha switch, it's basically 4 switches in one unit, as shown below. When the switch is set to position 1, each of the 4 poles connect their zero terminals to their #1 terminals. In position 2, each zero terminal is connected to it's corresponding #2 terminal, and so forth

Details

Conclusions

This circuit was particularly challenging because I wanted a single switch to control the series-parallel function for either the bridge-middle or the neck-middle combination, depending on which one is selected with the main 5-position switch. It would have been relatively easy to use an additional switch and have each one control the either the Bridge-Middle or the Neck-Middle series-parallel combination. My reason for doing it the way I did was because I was wiring a RolandReady Strat, in which the third pot (normally the tone control for the middle pickup) was replaced with a 5K pot for the synth volume, and 5K pots with push-pull controls are difficult to find. The links provide a detailed explanation of the circuit on a sound-by-sound basis. Oh yes, this is not a trivial circuit to build. The Yamaha switch is very delicate, and there's a lot of wiring to fit in the Strat cavity. The picture below shows the actual implementation: