Tone Blender and Beyond...

[AndyG]

Hi there,

I came across your forum and details searching for wiring diagrams for my strat. I noticed a posting from 04-08-2006, 09:31 PM where Fezza was advising Mr Carson on wiring options for his strat and recommended a 'Strat with Blender Pot' arrangement.


I can understand from the diagram that the tone pot is acting to blend the neck and bridge pickups. I can see that with the five way switch selecting the bridge or the neck pickups that the position of the blender pot will determine how much signal you get......

I give up....this thing won't let me post the rest of my question....HELP!!

[Kap'n]

The blender works great.

[Gravity Jim]

I'm taking a wild guess at what your question might have been....

Whichever pickup is selected by the five-way switch - the neck in positions five and four, or the bridge in position two and one - the blender pot adds in the other one.

So, if you've selected the neck alone, you're blending in the bridge with the blend pot.... the bridge alone, the neck. If you select one of the in-between settings, turning the blender pot acts like a "blow" switch, turning on all three pickups at once.

And yes, it works great.

Was I even close?

[AndyG]

Thanks to both of you.... Now I want to take things a step further.
Here's my situation….I have a Strat with Lace Sensor Hot Gold single coils in the neck and middle and a Seymour Duncan Jeff Beck humbucker in the bridge.

It's an upgraded jap strat but has only one volume and one tone.

I have managed to buy a fairly unique pickup from ebay that I plan to put in the neck position. It is humbucker format but is made up of two independent pickups on a humbucker backplate. It's a hotrails humbucker (single coil dimensions) on one half (Custom 5 model) and a true single coil on the other side (SSL5 Hot vintage single coil). There are 4 wires coming from the hot rails and 2 wires coming from the single coil.

[AndyG]

So this is what I plan to do:

1. Buy a scratchplate H-S-H configuration with holes for 3 pots.

2. Wire in using your blender pot configuration, with the following changes.

A) On the volume pot, get a stacked 250k/500k pot and connect the single coils to the 250k and the humbuckers to the 500k.

B) On the normal (middle) tone pot, use a push/pull pot to be able to switch between the single coil half of the custom pickup, and the hotrails half of the pickup - eg in the neck position I will be able to have either the hotrails humbucker or the true single coil. Any idea how I would wire this? Also, any idea what to use, a 250k or 500k tone?

If I'm correct I'll then have the best of Gibson and Fender worlds. With the push/pull pot set for single coils I will have true single coils and combinations for the neck and middle positions which are the Fender sounds I like best. With the push/pull pot set for humbuckers I can have neck humbucker and bridge humbucker in any combination using the blender pot…..

Does that all make sense?

Thanks in advance!
Andy

[Kap'n]

Well, first, I'd refer to it as a Japanese, MIJ or CIJ Stratocaster.

Second, if you're talking about a concentric pot, like on a Danelectro, I think the wiring will be pretty complicated.

[AndyG]

Ok, on my MIJ strat I'm gonna use a stacked pot. That's just where the same shaft turns two pots at the same time that are stacked on top of eachother, one of 250k and one of 500k. I haven't got any issue with wiring that, you just wire as per a standard volume pot but attach the hot of the single coils to the 250k pot and the hot of the humbuckers to the 500k pot. Or at least I think so....

It's the wiring of the two way switch that I wanted to check on. I'm thinking that I would wire the hot from the single coil part of the 'custom' pickup to one side of the switch and the hot from the hot rails part of the 'custom' pickup to the other side and then take a wire from the common of the switch to the tab on the 5 way switch where the hot from the neck pickup in a 'normal' set up would normally be wired.

Does that make sense to anyone outside of my head!? ;)