Thoughts on Suhr HSS wiring?

barhrecords

Axe-Master
In particular,

Anyone have an HSS guitar setup to automatically split the bucker in position 2? And are you using RWRP in the middle? And last but not least, are you using a 470K resistor for the SC's with 500K pots for the whole guitar?

Richard
 
In particular,
Anyone have an HSS guitar setup to automatically split the bucker in position 2? And are you using RWRP in the middle? And last but not least, are you using a 470K resistor for the SC's with 500K pots for the whole guitar?
Richard
Yes, just a few weeks ago I got new Duncan pickups and rewired one of my main axes:
Bridge: Custom Custom
Middle: SSL-2 RWRP
Neck: JB Jr. (Oh, I guess that makes it's technically HSH)

Wiring:
#1 bridge pickup
#2 bridge split & middle + 470k to ground
#3 neck pickup, coils in parallel
#4 neck pickup split & middle + 470k to ground
#5 neck pickup

500k volume but I don't have a tone pot at all so the total load is ~250k in the #2 and ¤4 positions.
Works really well!
 
Yes, just a few weeks ago I got new Duncan pickups and rewired one of my main axes:
Bridge: Custom Custom
Middle: SSL-2 RWRP
Neck: JB Jr. (Oh, I guess that makes it's technically HSH)

Wiring:
#1 bridge pickup
#2 bridge split & middle + 470k to ground
#3 neck pickup, coils in parallel
#4 neck pickup split & middle + 470k to ground
#5 neck pickup

500k volume but I don't have a tone pot at all so the total load is ~250k in the #2 and ¤4 positions.
Works really well!

Cool and thanks for the reply!

I've got two pots and 5 way switch but I haven't decided on how I'll wire the pots. My first thought was Master Vol and Master Tone.
 
I wired my strat HSS with 500k pots and a 470k resistor to the sc.
Master volume and master tone.
Humbucker sounds great. Singles sound good but slightly thinner than if like. I may go to a bigger resistor. I think part of it was that they were bright pups as it is and this just made it a little brighter. May just depend in the pickups
But you without a doubt need a resistor in the chain for the singles. And a humbucker definitely needs the 500k pot. It will sound way too muddy with a 250k pot on the Humbucker
 
Singles sound good but slightly thinner than if like. I may go to a bigger resistor. I think part of it was that they were bright pups as it is and this just made it a little brighter.

Actually, if you want to tame the brightness you need a smaller value resistor. Try 330k or 270k.

And a humbucker definitely needs the 500k pot. It will sound way too muddy with a 250k pot on the Humbucker
Yes, I tried both pot values with the Custom Custom and came to the same conclusion. Some people seem to like the JB with 250k pot but I haven't tried that yet.
 
As a heads up for you guys... if you don't have a piezo and want to do that acoustic tone match thing:
I did tonematches of an acoustic with all five pickup switch positions (guitar was HSS: JB/SSL-2/SSL-2).
The best acoustic likeness was definitely with a single-coil neck pickup.
 
I wired my strat HSS with 500k pots and a 470k resistor to the sc.
Master volume and master tone.
Humbucker sounds great. Singles sound good but slightly thinner than if like. I may go to a bigger resistor. I think part of it was that they were bright pups as it is and this just made it a little brighter. May just depend in the pickups
But you without a doubt need a resistor in the chain for the singles. And a humbucker definitely needs the 500k pot. It will sound way too muddy with a 250k pot on the Humbucker

What about the cap value for the master tone? What did you go with there?

And I'm not going for a treble bleed mod on the volume. I'm too used to using the vol to darken up a tone live.
 
Actually, if you want to tame the brightness you need a smaller value resistor. Try 330k or 270k.

Are you sure? The wiring spec says to use a 500k resistor because with the 500k pot you get 250. I would think the smaller the resister the higher the overall value will be due to less resistance being added to the 500k pot.
 
Are you sure? The wiring spec says to use a 500k resistor because with the 500k pot you get 250. I would think the smaller the resister the higher the overall value will be due to less resistance being added to the 500k pot.

The resistance is not added - that's not the way it works.
The new resistor is wired parallel with the volume pot to effectively lower the load seen by the pickups.
Here's a nice calculator that you can use to determine the combined resistance: Parallel Resistor Calculator

500k in parallel with 500k = 250k
500k in parallel with 330k = ~200k
 
That still doesn't make sense to me because a 500k pot with a 470k resistor sounds brighter than when I had a 250k pot.
 
That still doesn't make sense to me because a 500k pot with a 470k resistor sounds brighter than when I had a 250k pot.
That might be due to component tolerances, pots can be 10% or sometimes 20% off the nominal value. If you have a multimeter you can measure both pots and use the parallel resistor calculator to find the exact resistor value needed to match the 250k pot.
 
That still doesn't make sense to me because a 500k pot with a 470k resistor sounds brighter than when I had a 250k pot.

I've been researching some more.

The Suhr V60LP single coil pups have a low resonance peak and are darker than a traditional strat wind. That is the explanation for not going with a 500K resistor for a straight 250K to the SC's.
 
I've been researching some more.

The Suhr V60LP single coil pups have a low resonance peak and are darker than a traditional strat wind. That is the explanation for not going with a 500K resistor for a straight 250K to the SC's.

I also think the reason they use 470k and not 500k is because 500k is not very common and harder to find. 470k is very common.
 
I never wired one up, but I liked the idea of using a dual gang volume pot for this application so that when the 2 pots are paralleled for 250K load, you would still get something more like audio taper (vs. having a fixed resistor in parallel that changes the audio taper of the pot).

Here are a bunch of versions of this with no explanations other than the switching position descriptions:

https://sites.google.com/site/phostenixwiringdiagrams/hss-guitars#HSSDualGangVol2


What I ended up doing on my HSS guitar was put a SD Stag Mag in the bridge along with the stock Peavey single coils (which are fat & midrangy) & wired it up like this:

https://sites.google.com/site/phostenixwiringdiagrams/strat-o-teles#ssothss


I used Fender 500K S-1 pots, but I never made the Visio drawing for that. I've had somewhere between 5 & 10 of these Fender S-1 pots and I've never measured one to be anywhere near 500K. They usually measure high 300's, so they work well with humbuckers & single coils. I modified the tone pot to be a no load pot (super glue on the end of the trace) to get the full brightness of the bridge pup when needed.
 
I've got an email into Suhr too for some direct advice just about their pups.

Since I want a split bridge + RWRP middle for position 2, to get hum cancelling, I want to go with a tried and true pickup combination and wiring scheme like with the Suhr pups.

Bare Knuckles has some nice HSS matched sets too.

I want the volume to be relatively balanced. With HSS usually the bridge is the dominator :)
 
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