Another Breja ToneWorks DIY Wiring Mod. This mod gives you 9 unique Strat pickup combinations spread across 15 switch positions. It also includes my Dual Capacitor Mod.
Your answer gives probably the answer to anyone working on electric guitar ! It gives a good guess wether we are working on humbucker or single pickups !
+breja tone works: I think its important to note you need a ground wire from the volume pot to the s4 on the "on.on.on" switch. If "on.on.on" switches differ in orientation then it would be nice to know exactly how depicted switch is oriented so all could double check their orientation with diagram. Great modification by the way thanks for posting again.
I was a bench tech for quite a few years, as well as loving to tinker. I went through more wiring combos than I can count and it almost always boiled down to 3-5 good sounds and a dozen others that all sounded almost the same. Less is more.
Well, Session guitarist or people who play through a multiple amp using different effects or Traveling around playing indoor, outdoor, amped or through a machine, If you are picky about the tone you want everyone to hear then sometimes those settings that normally sound like there is no change actually has its benefits at certain Freq ranges. or where you pick the strings. The best way to hear it it to crank your amp up and barely touch the strings when you pick
Thx for this works perfect. Love the bridge/neck together parallel and series are a nice extra option. Also the capacitor made a big difference to the bridge. Sounds much brighter. I used. 022
I love the 7-way mod (Gilmore) you showed - I am rewiring my Squire Classic Vibe 60's strat and will try this 9-way mod // thank you for the wiring diagram........jt
Breja ToneWorks: Wiring mod properly done (soldering) works perfectly with SSS pickups configuration and also HSH or even HHH (last one has a huge signal / loudness...). Of course We have to keep in mind the experimental selection of tone capacitors to get the correct tonal range using TONE pots. One remark: If You want to use humbucker as a neck pickup, make sure that neck pickup metal frame and ground wire CANNOT be grounded (diagram gives an answer). Thank You for a connection diagram.
Wish you demo'd audio of this mod. You have some excellent pickup demos so I'm sure this would be excellent too. Pick your favorite strat, pickups, amp & educate us please. Cheers!
I'm planning to build my son a super Strat hybrid. I know electronics, but I have never built a guitar. The plan is to use three humbuckers with separate switches to split them out. Duel tone controls, one for the singles, one for the humbuckers. Separate phase switches for each single like Brian May's Red Special. A single volume control. In our way of thinking in single mode you can pull off Brian Mays using phase switching, use all three singles like David Gilmore, all three humbuckers like John Lennon's Rickenbacker, or just one or two humbuckers as a Les Paul. Ok, I know it will not be exactly like those guitars, but I think close enough that with some peddles and dialing in the amp it will be close enough. Feel like making a video on this one? Or posting a diagram? Anything would be a help! Keep up the videos. It's great to have good technical information.
Don, great mod...I wired this with a greasebucket circuit, but I'm not get all the tones as the .1 capacitor is on lugs 2 and 3 of each tone pot, what should I change?
Hello Don, I'm doing this wiring setup on a left-handed guitar. I'm keeping the pot connections the same as the right-handed version and the on/on/on the same in terms of up/down orientation but on the 5-way, if I've got this right, I need to reverse A1-A3, (but not A4) and B1-B4, am I correct on making this change?
Hey, Don. Aren't Strat pickups usually, when selected in tandem, parallel? I'm a little confused by where you label combinations as (parallel), while others have no such parenthetical. What is the difference?
I noticed on the diagram you have a ground from volume pot to S4, but you didn't include that in your verbal instructions. I added that wire to the guitar now and there is only one missing selection. It is the neck setting on off position of 5-way. I did another guitar to verify and it has the same result, so this mod is great except for the one flaw. Fortunately you can use neck position selection in the down mode of mini toggle.
+gerard cousineau Caps are highly subjective. IMO - .015uF or .022uF Anything higher (or lower depending on you viewpoint) gets too dark too fast for my taste. Happy Modding, Don
Hey man, how are you? I hope you're doing fine in these hard days. I'd like to ask you, what would I have to do differently in order to adapt this wiring scheme to a strat with just one volume and one master tone knob? I would really appreciate your help. Thanks!
Yoy would wire everything the same as the video. Minus the bottom pot. And on the 5 way switch, The lugs B2 B3 B4 All NEEd to have a Jumper wire. So Lugs B2 B3 B4 will all be connected together. Then wire the tone pot occording to the video. This allows the right side of the switch to have all 3 pickups connected, you can run the wire to the tone pot from ANY one of those lugs as long as they are all connected with a jumper wire. what i do is take 1 piece of wire and strip it so it is long enough to fish the bare wire through all 3 lugs and then solder it to the switch and take the remaining wire to the tone pot
Hey Don, love your instructional vids.so thanks so much for that. I'm wanting to do your 9 way Strat wiring scheme but i have a RWRP middle pup and I've read and my tech has told me there's problems when mixing in serial with the middle pup when it's RWRP.. Does your scheme compensate for a RWRP middle pup?
No - the scheme here doesn't take in account RWRP or not. You'd get the same hum cancelling effect like you'd normally get because of the RWRP. What was the problem that was described? In a typical series connection, the wire (resistance) is longer so you'll lose a little more treble but that's about it.
from what i've read and what my guitar tech has told me - if you but a rwrp middle in series with the neck and the bridge in series you get some odd tonal effects. but i haven't gotten a more specific answer than that. Also, I'm looking to to do your 9 way scheme and have a tandem master tone control with an Artec EXP and an Artec BCU (both are active) - any concerns with doing that ?
I saw a similar mod in guitar player magazine some years back that used 2 "on-on" two-way mini toggles and 1 "on-on-on" three-way mini toggle. It created the following 12 tones: Bridge Bridge/Middle (parallel) Bridge/Middle (series) Middle Middle/Neck (parallel) Middle/Neck (series) Neck Bridge/Neck (parallel) Bridge/Neck (series) Bridge/Middle/Neck (parallel) Bridge/Middle/Neck (series) Bridge/Middle/Neck (series/parallel) Do you have a video for that?
I think it was called the Dan Armstrong mod. Tried it on a cheap strat. Really fun but impractical for fast changes. The neck/bridge combos in both the series and parallel were great though and I'm considering modding my current strat to get those sounds back. Just need to find the right sized push pull pots so I don't need to mod the pickguard. That Dan Armstrong mod was an absolute pain to wire up though.
First of all, do you have a video which describes 9-way wiring using push-pull tone pots rather than adding that 3-way "on-on-on" switch? 6-String Supplies in the UK has a wiring diagram for this, but not step by step instructions. Also, I notice that the 10 position Freeway switch & every 9-way wring mod (using the 3/way switch or 2 push-pull tone pots) yields 9 pickup output combinations, in 10 & 15 or 20 positions, respectively...there being at least two identical bridge only, middle only, and neck only outputs from 6 positions. Are more combos possible with these mods (w/o even more switches being necessary) or are we stuck with those identical outputs from multiple switch positions? Possible examples, on an HSS Strat, would be to enable a split coil &/or parallel rather than serial humbucker coil connection at one of the bridge only position would be tremendous...or even for all outputs w/ bridge output component. These options would yield significantly different output sound than some of the other alternate positions. Another idea is to use one of those duplicate positions to swap out the bridge or middle pickup for a piezo pickup. Again, is this possible?, I haven't been able to figure out how to accomplish ALL of the above options, without adding additional switches, even with push-pull pots EXCEPT, possibly, by swapping out the pots for push-pull AND swapping out the 5-way for the Freeway 10 position switch. Am I right about this? The reason why I ask is because there are two other mods that would require an addition pot or rotary switch and the goal is to not have the guitar look like an aircraft "dashboard". Oh the other hand, these other mods are not complicated: One is to add a blend/balance pot between the two tone pots & master volume. This is to offset how much the bridge pickup overwhelms (...often a lot!) the output from the middle/neck tone pot when they're mixed together. The other mods is to add a "varitone" switch for the bridge pickup (allowing swapping of multiple different tone caps) since it is the pickup that is likely to have a sound that is at one (too much bass or treble) extreme or the other. On course, adding a treble-bleed to the volume control is suggested...as most people don't realize that it is effectively out of the output circuit when guitar volume pot is at 10. And, it doesn't interfere with the other tone mods.
Hi! Thanks! But after rewiring i have a problem... Everythinks sounds grate but neck and mid tone knob does not change a tone. Were could i go wrong? Mb i have burn mu capacitor? It was 0.047...
Just picked up on this wiring. If I may suggest, if you could list the part of that on-on-on part and even a source I think it would be helpful. Thanks.
getting a problem where the bridge pickup is on for all 5-way positions when the On On On switch is in the middle orientation, anyone know how to fix this?
Por qué complicarse tanto, cuando existen dos cableados de Fender (S1 2010 ó 2013) que no alteran la estética del instrumento y a demás te ofrecen 10 sonidos distintos ?
Hi again ! I'm a little confused on your comments to the scheme you show at 05:57 - you say the wiring gives 9 unike conbinations - I don't get it ! I beleave it's 11 unike conbinations - right ?
+Breja ToneWorks I assume your table in the video is correct and I numbered the combinations and found 11 different descriptions - when the "parr" and "series" are counted too ... and why shouldn't they. I've set the table up a little different - look here: Tha new 3-way switch to the left and the standard 5-way switch in the upper row - I'm starting the numbering with the standard strat combinations in the middle row (1), (2), (3) ... and so on. Oh, I tried to show the table here but it was messed up - try this link to a picture of the table instead: kelds.weebly.com/uploads/2/8/3/9/2839278/951039_orig.jpg Follow the RED numbering.
+Keld Sørensen ... and here is the CORRECT Table - and the error shows very clearly in the table: kelds.weebly.com/uploads/2/8/3/9/2839278/3232470_orig.jpg Nice for me to get it right - thx for helping me to see !
Could you tell me how this diagram would look if I just wanted one master tone pot and wanted to put the On/On/On switch in the place of one of the tone pots?
A master tone pot would only need a simple wire from the L1 in the Volume pot to the L2 in the tone circuit, while removing all other wires into the tone pots that you see in Brejas videos. In other words, disconnect and remove all wires coming from the 5 way switch and going into the pots, then remove one of the tone pots, and then just add a wire from L1 (for a modern tone wiring scheme) into L2 of your remaining or new tone pot. Alternatively on that last step, you can link the wire from L2 from the vol pot into L2 of the tone pot for a 50s scheme / vintage tone knob. I have diagrams that can show this. (sorry, your answer here is 4 years late) Let me know if you'd like me to send you a link to my diagrams to do this.
Yes. I did this with a triple HB guitar. Too muddy sounding pickups for me so I wired the split coils only using the two wires soldered together that are normally taped off or used for splitting. I don't like the pickups still but the wiring is the same you just use whatever hot wire (or split wires) to the points he mentions.
Hi Don, You wouldn`t happen to know how your on/on/on switch activates, eg. which poles are active in which switch position, I have completed this mod and I now have a different order of switching to yours my normal strat activation is at p3 (down) on my strat. cheers, Dave.
+Dave Chandler Hey Dave... I don't have my switch anymore so I'm sorry I can't verify the poles for you. This was mod I worked on a long time ago and just got around to making the video on . and I didn't keep the switch I used in testing.
+Breja ToneWorks Hi Don, have sent you an Email with circuit and switch schematic, could you have a look for me and see if I have messed it up. thanks Don, love the video`s, I`m learning a lot from them.
I believe there are two types of On / On / ON switches, called Type 1 and Type 2. See here www.seymourduncan.com/blog/latest-updates/on-on-on-switch. Hey Breja, what type of On On ON switch is this one? Anyone else know?
Hi there ! I think I need a little more info on the toggle switch. I have searched the internet with the item number EP-0080-010 but i found no explanation there too. When you say ON-ON-ON-type I believe it COULD be interpreted in different ways - if we have the pin numbering seen from the back like this and with the positions on there too: 1 - 4 pos 1 2 - 5 pos 2 3 - 6 pos 3 Does ON-ON-ON mean that in A) Pos connection is between 1 1 & 4 2 2 & 5 3 3 & 6 OR does it mean B) Pos connection is between 1 1 & 2 AND 5 & 6 2 no connections at all 3 2 & 3 AND 4 & 5 OR does it mean C) Pos connection is between 1 1 & 2 AND 4 & 5 2 no connections at all 3 2 & 3 AND 5 & 6 D) Pos connection is between 1 2 & 3 AND 5 & 6 2 2 & 3 AND 4 & 5 3 1 & 2 AND 4 & 5 I have a switch of my type D) - can it be used ? Thx !
+Keld Sørensen I'm not shilling for any company but this would be an example of the switch: www.guitarelectronics.com/product/SWM23-17/Double-Pole-ONONON-Mini-Toggle-Switch-w-Bat-Handle-Chrome.html
Dear sir I want to put capacitors on my 12-string Stratocaster it's the wiring method the same mine have a 5 switch 3 pickups is there any way you can send me the schematic I'm putting the capacitors on the 12th string Stratocaster thank you very much. You Velez I will give you my email if you need it thank you very much sir and God bless you Gunnery Sergeant Velez United States Marine Corps
What's the schematic for this type of wiring a single coil Strat type of guitar? I'm a little slow. The colors he uses are crap for the slightly color blind people.
