I'm new here as of five minutes ago and already am asking for advice. My son has a swampkaster strat that came with scratchy pots, so I put in new ones for him wired like the others were. He now wants me to install different pickups into it, but wire it so the neck pickup is controlled by the first tone pot and the bridge and middle pickup by the second tone pot. As of now only the bridge and middle are wired to the tone pots. Would someone be able to offer me advice or a diagram to do this correctly, because I basically just redid the factory wiring when i put in the new pots? Or his second choice would be Neck pickup controlled by first pot and bridge by second tone pot. Thanks for helping a dad out, guys.

Hi Fossilman, welcome to the Forum.

Slightly confused, cos those two sentences seem to mean the same thing. Anyhow: a useful resource is the wiring diagrams page:

http://www.fender.com/support/wiring_di ... _lists.php

Second column over gets you the wiring diagram for each guitar. To have the first tone control working on the neck, second one on middle and bridge, the American Standard diagram is as good as anything:

http://www.fender.com/support/diagrams/ ... 02CPg2.pdf

You will notice a tiny wire joining the middle two tags on the selector switch, on the side facing the knobs. That wire adds in the bridge pickup to the second tone control. If you omit that wire then the second tone knob only controls the middle pickup.

Howzat?

Good luck - C

Spot on Ceri

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The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

Thomas Jefferson

Hey cvilleira: don't know if you've been following schmintan's set up problems thread... But if you ever make that move to Ireland I have a feeling you have a good living ahead of you doing guitar tech work. Anywhere they're prepared to spend €200 / $272 on a basic setup - well, there's gold in them there hills!!

Cheers - C

The moment he said in the first post Quote[I decided to mess with the setup to see if I could make it better} End . He started on that slippery slide down hill. That is a crazy amount of money for sure.

_________________
The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

Thomas Jefferson

Sorry, mixed stuff up in my first post. What I was supposed to say was that now the first tone pot controls the neck pickup and the second tone pot controls the middle pickup. This leaves the bridge pickup with no tone control and the sound from it is too sharp and brittle. He would like it rewired so the first tone pot is still on the neck pickup but the second tone pot would control the bridge only or both bridge and middle. How I rewire to this situation? Thanks again.

There are various schematics for guitars with the jumper cable so that the bottom tonepot covers both bridge and middle pickups. My 57hotrod uses that wiring unfortunately its diagram is no longer on this site. I will email it to you should you wish but make sure to ignore the pickups in the schematic as their nothing like a standard strats.

I actually prefer a master tone pot and the other tone pot to be used as a blend pot to bring in the neck pickup regardless of switch position. It offers many more sounds and in a lot of ways provides the ultimate 3 singlecoil pickup guitar. Heres a link to it.
http://www.fralinpickups.com/images/blendschem2.jpg

Pop him that one in and see if he likes it. A lot of people do and it will solve the harsh bridge problem as well as giving him neck and bridge or all 3 pickups on options.

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No no and no

Hi fossilman: the answer is in my first reply to you, above.

Cheers - C

That's the way Strats should come wired from the factory, vintageness be damned. It's the ultimate tone-shaping hot set-up.

Thanks guys. I printed out the diagrams, the one from Ceri shows to use the jumper wire at the selector. This is a clever idea. The blender diagram is a good one too. I would like to see the one that Nikininga said he had available. My son is bringing the guitar to me this weekend, so I can't look at it now, that is why I am printing these out.

The one for the 57hotrod is just a jumper cable much the same as the one Ceri posted, nothing to get excited about im affraid.

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No no and no

Just the regular wiring, these days.

In fact, that jumper is a feature Fender belatedly adopted from a widely applied user mod. Apparently, Leo Fender didn't like the "in between" sounds - not the way he intended us to use his guitar. So the five-way switch didn't come in till well after he'd sold the company. The jumper wire to bring the bridge p/u into the tone circuit then followed after that.

Don't know if you could do the same thing with a three-way switch - could you?

Cheers - C