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I've never had pickups installed before so I need your advice as to what wiring would be best. I've got a JB for the bridge, Vintage Rails for the middle, and Cool Rails for the neck. It's a 5-way switch. How would YOU wire this (I gotta explain this to the music store guy so please don't make it extremely complicated)?

To start with, I would keep this simple, ie., conventional. Tie the red and white of the JB and the Cool Rails together, and tape them up. (Individually - not all together.) Take the green and bare wires and tie them together to ground. Connect those to the 5-way switch in conventional Strat style.

The Vintage Rails is a bit different. It depends on whether you have the new one or an older one. The older one will only have two wires. You connect the ground to ground and the hot to the 5-way.

If its the newer 4-wire VR, you need to make a choice. To wire it like a quot;conventionalquot; VR, you'ld tie the green and white together to ground, and tie the black and red together to the 5-way. But if you want, you can also connect it like the others. Red and White together and taped off, green to ground, black to hot.

If that sounds confusing, its because the new VR's give you the ability to wire them like a series humbucker, but they've always been wired in parallel from the factory.

Hope this helps.
Artie


Originally Posted by ArtieToo

Tie the red and white of the JB and the Cool Rails together, and tape them up. (Individually - not all together.)

I better clarify that:

Tie the red and white of the JB together and tape them up.

Tie the red and white of the Cool Rails together and tape them up.

I'd follow Artie's advice with two additions:

1. Master Volume and Master Tone with .02 tone cap. Personally, I prefer 500K pots...not the 250K pots in a stock Strat.

2. Instead of a second tone control I'd use that space for a Fralin Blender Pot so I could combine the neck and bridge pickups and blend them together in any proportion. Especially great for creating new rythym tones.

Lew

Yeah that's very confusing actually lol

So what does this setup give me in each position? I guess my only real issue would be the Vintage Rails/JB notch, which I'm assuming would sound bad?

With the blender rolled all the way off, you'ld have this: (#1 being the neck.)

1. Cool Rails
2. Cool Rails and Vintage Rails
3. Vintage Rails
4. Vintage Rails and JB Jr.
5. JB Jr.

The blend pot would allow you to dial-in the bridge at any time. It would be most effective in the #1 and #2 positions, to give you:

1. Cool Rails and JB Jr.
2. All three pups.

btw - I think the JB and VR would sound great together. Not so much for the pups themselves, but for their relative positions. The quot;twangquot; of the bridge balances nicely with the slightly more mellow middle.

The bridge pickup is a regular JB, not a JB jr. Does that change anything?


Originally Posted by Satch1222The bridge pickup is a regular JB, not a JB jr. Does that change anything?

Yeah . . . how soon I make it back to the optometrist.

This may sound so STUPID but if your have the wiring diagrams that come with the PUP's or download off a site, give them to the tech!
If he can't work it out from these and your instructions then GET ANOTHER TECH!