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Just finished a build for a friend (first guitar I've made for someone else after building about 8 between the son and I). I'm having a little wiring issue that I am hoping one of you guys can help me with. Here's the setup:

The guitar has a single-coil tele-style neck and a bucker in the bridge. I have a 3-way switch, two volumes, and one tone. I put a coil tap on the bucker wired to a push/pull pot in the bridge pup volume knob. I used this wiring diagram as a guide, and other than the coil tap wire, my wiring matches: http://www.guitartechcraig.com/techwire/tech09.jpg

Only other weird thing is I mixed my pots, using a 500K for the bucker but 250K's for the single-coil neck and tone control.

Now for the issue. I get good full tone in bridge switch position, and pretty good tone when in the neck position. However, when I switch both pups on together, the tone becomes very "tinney" and sounds almost like its being run through a wah pedal with the pedal all the way down. Turning down one volume knob or the other knob improves the sound, but I seem to loose any "blending" effect as you either get full bridge sound or full neck. Even then, the volume in the blended switch position is much "cooler" and there's not much punch to the tone.

Looking for suggestions here. Anyone see any obvious issues? I'm thinking it may be related to the mixed pot values, or maybe it has something to do with the polarity of the pups when they are on together. I'm stumped. Any suggestions or resources would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Everett

Everett,

The first thing I would do is replace one of the volume pots so they match. Then I would swap the wires to reverse the polarity of the bridge. See, you weren't stumped, you just didn't know you were on the right track.

Steve

The pots could be contributing (or helping...who knows?). When you mix HB's and single coils, sometimes you can get mismatches that just sound awful, but I'd put my money on out of phase wiring. Just swap ground and signal on one pickup, whichever is most convenient.

Hey, guys. Thanks for the quick replies.

I've been doing some reading, and the sound I am getting is consistent with what is described as an out-of-phase (reversed wired) setup--the descriptions typify it as producing a "nasally" tone. I kept the "hots" with the hots and the grounds common (based on the pup wiring identifications), but I know the neck pup (a Golden Age for Tele from StewMac) is RWRP. Would that change the wiring so that the "ground" would become the hot?

Soon as I can get back in the shop, I'll try reversing the wires on one pup. Can't hurt, and if they are out of phase, that will tell me. Also, I've got a couple of 500K pots coming to replace the mismatches.

By the way, here's a pretty good link to some good wiring info:
http://www.deaf-eddie.net/drawings/drawings.html

Thanks again,
Everett

Well, there really is no hot and ground in the traditional sense of the words. We arbitrarily choose one side to be ground and the other side to be signal. Generally, pickup manufactures try to stay consistent within their product lines but there's no real standard. But to answer your question, no a RW/RP pickup doesn't change the phase. It's reverse wound (which would change the phase on it's own), and reverse polarity (i.e. magnets are in upside down, and that would change phase on it's own) but together they are the same phase as if they were not RWRP. What you get, though, is noise-cancelling when combined with regular pickup. This is why Strat pickup sets often come with a RWRP center pickup...you get noise canceling and positions 2 & 4 are still in phase. BUT, that's RWRP in relation to the other two. There's no absolute sense of a pickup being RWRP. It's only RWRP compared to another pickup. There is no standard as to which way manufacturers wind their pickups. RWRP compared to a Lollar pickup might not be RWRP compared to a Duncan.

So basically forget about the notion of ground and hot because it's meaningless unless you're using pickups from one manufacturer, and even then sometimes some pickups are backwards just cause. Somewhere I had a list of various pickup manufactures and how they're wired. If I find it, I'll post it here.

Again, thanks for all the input.

I solved the problem. And, I learned some things in the process, so it's all good.
I switched the wires on the bridge pup and changed out the 250k pot on the neck volume. Not sure which change fixed it, but I suspect that the problem was an out-of-phase issue. Tone is now very good. The bridge pup by itself is very sharp and when used with the more mellow neck pup (middle switch position), things smooth out very well. I get a nice range of sounds across the different positions, which I think will be very useful.

Just gotta finish the setup now and she will be all set. I'll post up some picks of the build in another thread.

Thanks again for the help.
EWC

If you have a few hundred bucks to spend on a nice set of pickups for a Strat, try the Barden S-dlx set. They are REMARKABLE. I just became a dealer for Barden and ordered some extra sets for my personal Strats and Teles that I keep around for demos. They're expensive, but I've never heard a better set, and that includes single coils. I'm thinking of ordering another set for my other strat, actually.