This diagram clearly illustrates Dirk Wacker's wiring mod for this month.
If you want the maximum tones out of an HSS-configured guitar, here’s how to wire the switching and eliminate two pet peeves from a basic auto-split wiring.
Welcome back to Mod Garage. This month we’ll have a deeper look into auto-splitting pickups on an HSS-configured Strat and similar guitars. We covered this a long time ago, exploring the basic version of this wiring in “Stratocaster Auto-Split Mod.” Today we’ll take it one step further with a pro version and discuss what can be done with it.
The HSS setup with a bridge humbucker plus two traditional single-coils is the perfect combination for many Strat players, but it’s not limited to Strats. With the bridge humbucker you have a powerful pickup for soloing and rocking the crowd, while the two single-coil pickups give you traditional sounds and everything in between. When you choose a bridge humbucker with 4-conductor wiring, you can even split it for more possible sounds and to also get the famous in-between “quack” tone with the bridge and the middle pickup together in parallel. That’s exactly where the auto-split wiring comes in when you want an easy-to-operate setup. Let’s have a look what can be done with such an HSS pickup configuration and a 5-way pickup selector switch.
Some players may not need the in-between pickup position with the bridge plus the middle pickup together in parallel. Maybe they can’t use this tone in their musical context, or they simply don’t like these slightly hollow tones with less output. Even Leo Fender himself never liked this tone that he called “out of phase” (which is technically incorrect). These players are fine with a standard 2-conductor bridge pickup and standard Stratocaster 5-way switching.
- Both coils in series (standard humbucker operation with full output)
- Both coils in parallel (a kind of hum-free, single-coil-like tone with less output)
- One coil shut down to ground (real split mode with only one coil engaged)
- With a simple 2-way toggle switch you can shut down one of the coils to ground to get an additional single-coil-like tone from the bridge pickup. This can also be used to get the in-between sound together with the middle pickup. You can also use any standard push-pull or push-push pot, or the Fender S-1 switch, for this operation, so you don’t have to alter the appearance of your guitar.
- If you want more, you can use a DPDT on-on-on switch like the DiMarzio “multi-sound switch” to get all three sounds from your bridge humbucker. This operation can’t be done from a push-pull or push-push pot—you need an additional 3-way toggle for this.
- If you want all four possible sounds from your bridge humbucker, an additional rotary switch is the way to go. We discussed this just a few months ago in “Mod Garage: How to Triple Shot Your Humbuckers.”
That’s where the pro version kicks in, replacing the standard 5-way switch with a “super switch” that has four individual switching stages instead of only two, eliminating the two peeves from the basic auto-split wiring.
Please note: This is only possible with a humbucker sporting 4-conductor wiring. You can’t do this with a humbucker with traditional 2-conductor wiring!
Of course, there are players who don’t need all the gadgets. They simply want a powerful humbucker tone in the bridge position and the typical traditional Strat tones from all the other switching positions, including the in-between position of the bridge plus middle pickup. The auto-split wiring is perfect for these players because it’s a set-and-forget situation.
What will happen without the auto-split wiring when dialing in the bridge humbucker together with the middle single-coil pickup in parallel? You won’t hear a big difference in sound compared to the bridge humbucker alone, simply because usually the bridge humbucker is a lot louder compared to the single-coil and will dominate the tone by out-acting the single-coil. To combat this problem, the auto-split wiring will automatically (hence the name) split the humbucker into a single-coil by shutting down the other coil to ground for a traditional in-between sound of both pickups, like we all know from a regular SSS-configured Strat. The switching matrix of the auto-split wiring looks like this:
- Bridge humbucker with both coils in series for full humbucker operation
- Bridge humbucker split + middle single-coil in parallel
- Middle single-coil
- Middle + neck single-coil in parallel
- Neck single-coil
Deciding what coil of the humbucker will be sent to ground leaving the other active could easily be the subject of a whole column. Depending on the winding direction and polarity of both pickups, you usually don’t want to end up with an out-of-phase tone when both pickups are engaged and when your middle pickup is RWRP (reverse-wound, reverse-polarity), you also want to have the hum-cancelling function this switching position can provide. So … choose carefully!
While the basic version of this wiring works great, it has some peeves that some players complain about:
- It’s not possible to freely arrange the dual tone controls. They are fixed to one for the middle and the other for the neck single-coil, leaving the bridge humbucker without any tone control, like in standard Strat wiring.
- You’ll have to use individual tone caps for each tone control.
That’s where the pro version kicks in, replacing the standard 5-way switch with a “super switch” that has four individual switching stages instead of only two, eliminating the two peeves from the basic auto-split wiring.
Good idea, but unfortunately the road to hell is paved with good resolutions.
The super switches are physically a lot larger compared to the standard version, so take care that they’ll fit into your guitar. Recently I had to upgrade an Ibanez HSS guitar with this wiring, and it was impossible to put a super switch in without extensive routing to make space for it. I had such problems before with Yamaha and Fender guitars. The PCB-based versions of this switch require less space, so often this is the way to go.
Often such extended auto-split wirings are trying to also handle what I like to call the “resistance paradigm.” Fender used 250k pots for their guitars with single-coil pickups in the early days, while Gibson used 500k pots for their humbucker-loaded guitars. I don’t think the resistance values were chosen for any tonal reasons. We’re talking about the 1940s and ’50s, when they simply didn’t have the choices we have today. Especially Fender used whatever was available in large quantities for a low price, and it’s likely that Gibson had a similar approach.
Today you can still find unfounded rumors all over the internet that single-coils sound best with 250k pots and humbuckers with 500k pots. While the basic idea behind this contains some truth (500k pots still leave some high-end with a humbucker while 250k pots prevent the single-coil from sounding too harsh), such rules are not set in stone and usually such debates totally neglect that we’re talking about a passive system.
Often 500k pots are used for an auto-split wiring, incorporating some additional resistors to “convert” them to 250k for the single-coil pickups. Good idea, but unfortunately the road to hell is paved with good resolutions. Digging deeper at this point is too much for this column but may be a good subject for a follow-up. My personal recommendation: Forget about it. In more than 20 years, I have tried every variation of such jack-of-all-trades wirings and not a single one really worked in a useable way. Here are my two cents regarding such a wiring:
- A good and useful distribution of the tone controls is one 500k pot for only the bridge humbucker and the other one 250k for the two single-coils.
- Using two tone caps (one for each tone control) is simply perfect for this wiring, i.e., I really like to use a small cap value for the humbucker to control the warmth of it plus a traditional value for the two single-coil pickups.
- Using a 250k master volume works excellent because in a passive system like a Strat, you can benefit from the much better taper regarding evenness compared to a 500k pot. The loss in high-end compared to a 500k pot is marginal: measurable, but not audible. Using a treble-bleed network is a matter of choice and up to your personal preferences.
The wiring layout seen in the diagram at the top of this page is what I recommend and that most players will be happy with, so here we go. I assume that the middle pickup will be a RWRP type, and as usual, I used the Seymour Duncan color code for the humbucker. If you have a humbucker from a different company, you’ll have to convert the shown color code with one of the converting charts online. The bare wire of the humbucker always goes to ground, no matter what type it is. I tried to keep the illustration as clean as possible by leaving out all ground wires, so, as usual, they’re shown with the international symbol for ground. Solder all these connections to the back of a pot of your choice.
That’s it. Next month we’ll build a cool and simple yet very effective diagnostic gadget for electric guitars and basses. I use it in my shop daily and you will love it for sure, so stay tuned!
Until then ... keep on modding!
It's been nearly 10 years since Mod Garage guru Dirk Wacker taught us how to series-wire a Fender Stratocaster. Now he says he's got an even better way.
Image 1 — Drawing courtesy of singlecoil.com
Hello and welcome back to Mod Garage. Today we'll talk about a kind of evergreen mod for a Stratocaster, to implement series wiring of the pickups. Longtime followers of Mod Garage might recall that way back in late 2011 we talked about this, but it's almost been a decade since that article, “Adding Series Switching to Your Strat."
Over the years, I've received many emails about this wiring, and a lot of people failed when trying to set it up … first and foremost because it's not an easy wiring. But even some of you who sailed through it had problems, so it was time to think about this mod again in order to enhance it.
This wiring is at least 20 years old and was the first version we used in the shop. It's not easy and it has some downsides, such as possible phasing issues depending on what middle pickup is used. It also has some problems with the controls. For example, you can't use it with the typical Strat configuration, leaving the bridge pickup without a tone control. No wonder that so many people failed with it! We don't use it in the shop anymore, since over time we developed a new circuit that does the same wiring but without all the aforementioned downsides. Now we have new downsides, but we'll get to that.
The problem with the first version is mostly the standard 5-way switch in combination with only a DPDT switch. When this wiring was developed, the 5-way super switch was not invented yet, and finding switches with multiple switching stages was a real and expensive challenge. But times have changed and today's hardware market is better than ever.
The new solution is still using the standard 5-way switch plus an additional on/on multistage toggle switch. The first "parallel" sound stage is the normal Strat operation we all know:
- Bridge pickup alone
- Bridge + middle pickup together in parallel
- Middle pickup alone
- Middle + neck pickup together in parallel
- Neck pickup alone
While you're playing the two "in between" positions—bridge + middle pickup together in parallel or middle + neck pickup together in parallel—you can engage the second sound stage with the toggle switch to get the two in-between positions in series rather than in parallel. This makes this wiring very easy to handle, because you only have to fiddle around with one additional toggle switch. I think it's a very useful addition to any Strat if you're looking for series pickup tones.
Only a few guitars use series wiring for their pickups. The most popular examples of series setups are the Brian May “Red Special" and almost all vintage Danelectro guitars. But there are several good reasons why you might want to wire your Strat pickups in series. If you want more volume and midrange out of your pickups, the parallel/series switching may be the perfect option.
In contrast to the classic parallel combination of the pickups, wiring two pickups in series produces a longer path with increased resistance, adding volume while preventing the highest frequencies from getting through. With series wiring, the output of one pickup goes into the input of another pickup. Meanwhile, with standard parallel wiring, each pickup takes its own path to the output. Besides being noticeably louder, series wiring emphasizes low and midrange tones, and this is a perfect combination to drive any tube amp into saturation—and also the perfect tone for lead playing.
Before we start, just a note about one of the most popular misunderstandings: Series wiring (also called out-of-phase wiring) is only possible when using two pickups together.
So what do we need for this mod? Not much, only an additional 4PDT on/on toggle switch. These switches are expensive and have a certain physical size, but it's no problem to place them on a regular Strat pickguard. Take care to buy an on/on type, not an on/off model. It's more likely that you'll find such switches in electronic stores rather than guitar supply stores. A 4PDT toggle switch is kind of a rare bird, but there are still plenty of manufacturers and finishes.
So what about the new downsides of this wiring? Because we need a 4PDT switch, you can't use a push-pull or push-push pot because they are only available with SPST or DPDT switches. But you can use a Fender S-1 pot for this, because the switch on these pots is a 4PDT on/on type. For more info about the Fender S-1 system and how to adopt the wiring to this switching matrix please have a look at my April 2011 article “Mod Garage: The Fender S-1 Switching System."
You also can't use this wiring as a kind of "deck wiring" with two preset stages. In series mode the three positions on the 5-way pickup selector switch where each pickup is dialed in alone are not connected and will have no signal output. It's possible to incorporate this feature into this wiring but you will need a 6PDT switch for this and these are really hard to find.
Any more downsides? Yes and no. You'll have to decide on your own if the following two situations are downsides for you or not:
1. There is no way around using two tone caps with this wiring—one on each tone pot. It's not possible to share one common tone cap like in a Stratocaster's standard wiring. I think this is more an advantage rather than a downside, because you can use a standard 0.022uF tone cap for the middle and a lighter 0.01uF cap for the neck pickup.
2. If you want to install the Stratocaster 7-sound mod to get access to all possible pickup combinations, this wiring cannot connect the bridge and neck pickup in series. You'll need an additional parallel/series switch if you want to do this.
So, here it is (Image 1). I tried to clear up the drawing wherever possible, replacing some ground wires with only the grounding symbol so there are no unnecessary connections across the diagram that might be confusing. As you can see, there is a strict separation of the two switching stages on the switch this time, and no jumper wire to connect them. The first switching stage is the stage for the tone controls while the second stage is used for the pickups. This is essential for this wiring and also gives room for further modifications. It's definitely not a beginner's project, so if this is your first attempt to mod a guitar, you should start with something easier. Otherwise chances are good you'll run into troubles with this one.
Next month we will take a deeper look into grounding—some common errors and misunderstandings about it, and, of course, some embosomed fairy tales, so stay tuned.
Until then ... keep on modding!
The most successful electric guitar of all time evolves subtly, but substantially.
RatingsPros:Comfortable neck. Super-sweet neck pickup tones. Combination neck/bridge setting. High-quality build. Sensitive tremolo. Cons: Combination neck/bridge tones can sound muddy in chord settings. Street: $1,599 street (with pine body, $1,499 with alder body) Fender American Professional II Stratocaster fender.com | Tones:  Playability: Build/Design: Value:  |
Fender designers tasked with a Stratocaster re-design probably veer between ecstasy and terror on some days. Such are the thrills and pitfalls that go with the responsibility of rethinking an icon.
But as most modification enthusiasts know, the Stratocaster’s elegant simplicity leaves plenty of room for refinement and adaptation to personal taste. Indeed, that’s one of the most beautiful facets of its solidbody, bolt-on-neck design—you can drill, rout, shim, sand, and shave to your heart’s content and retain much of the guitar’s essence.
On the surface, the new American Professional II Stratocaster doesn’t look like a radical overhaul. Instead, Fender added incremental but sometimes quite substantial refinements that subtract little in the way of classic Stratocaster-ness. Fender originalists may balk at changes like a carved heel and flatter fretboard radius, but the American Pro II Stratocaster’s component parts add up to an instrument that still feels, looks, and sounds very much like a Stratocaster should.
In the Pines
One of the most interesting deviations from tradition in the American Pro II series is the use of what Fender calls roasted pine for the body—a move we’re likely to see more often as Fender pivots away from swamp ash, which is now threatened by boring beetles and flooding associated with climate change. Roasted pine is available in only two of the finishes in the American Pro II Stratocaster line—sienna sunburst and the natural roasted pine of our review model, both of which will set you back an extra hundred bucks. Superficially, the natural roasted pine and maple-neck version is reminiscent of the walnut-finished, black-pickguard-and-maple-neck Strats from the early-to mid-’70s. But if you, ahem, pine for a more ’50s or ’60s-style Strat, you can opt for the alder-bodied version—which is used for seven of the nine finishes. Several finishes can also be offered with rosewood necks.
The neck itself is a delight. A Stratocaster is the essence of balance. But it always seems to me that a Strat feels extra-well-balanced when the neck is a little bit on the thicker side. The deep C profile featured on this iteration does a very nice job of straddling the divide between the chunkier profiles of ’50s and early-’60s Strats, and thinner contemporary necks. But the comfort is really compounded by the rolled edges, which create the tactile illusion of making the bend-facilitating 9.5"radius feel like a more curvaceous and vintage-styled 7.25" radius.
The extra sense of comfort is compounded by the carved heel, which is beveled on the treble side in line with the 17th fret. Play a full-step bend at the 18th fret and you’ll definitely notice the absence of the hard edges on a blocky old-style heel. It makes it much easier to put extra muscle and nuance into string bends and vibrato at these higher reaches of the neck. Players with smaller hands will almost certainly appreciate the extra reach and room to move
Toasty Tones
While it’s hard to determine with certainty what specific effects the pine body might have on the overall tone, you perceive extra warmth and detail in many settings. The bridge pickup feels extra quick, responsive, and spanky, even by Strat standards, but exhibits excellent string-to-string balance. The real star is the neck pickup, which, to my ears, delivers a little extra size and low-mid glow, particularly from the bottom end. Drop tunings sound fantastic on this pickup—especially that thumping 6th string. And while I didn’t change the .009–.042 set the guitar ships with, it was hard not to be tantalized by the thought of using heavier strings on the bottom to add mass to the already tantalizingly rich low end.
Fender’s treble bleed circuit (which preserves high end as you roll back the volume) becomes a real asset in these settings. The push/push switch on the second tone knob is another cool addition to the Strat’s usual bag of tricks—enabling selection of the lovely neck pickup from both the bridge and bridge/middle positions. The sound is fat, complex, and can feel harmonically cluttered in some chord-centric situations. But leads, especially slow, chord-melody passages, sound balanced and pretty in these positions and make great use of the extra low-end ballast from the neck pickup. This is certainly a Stratocaster soul and jazz players can love.
The Verdict
The American Professional II Stratocaster is a positive evolution of a guitar that was pretty close to perfect in its original incarnation. Refinements like the fluid, bouncy, and precise vibrato, carved heel, and 9.5" radius fretboard with rolled edges manage to represent true improvements without sacrificing what you might call vintage integrity. The wide grain of the pine body on our review specimen may deviate a touch too much from the figuring in natural ash finishes to please hardcore vintage purists. But this particular guitar aligns nicely with Fender’s underappreciated ’70s instruments in stylistic terms, and there are many more vintage-style finishes available in its alder incarnation—along with some very modern ones, if that’s your fancy. In short, the American Professional II bridges the gap between vintage familiarity and a more expansive, modern tone vocabulary with grace. And the effort Fender put into these enhancements clearly has paid real dividends.
Watch our Fender American Professional II Stratocaster First Look demo: