Hey, I have a Strat with two humbuckers. I want to wire them in series, but I have one question. Which pickup goes first? Right now I have the neck pickup feeding the bridge pickups former ground. So the neck pickup is the only one connected to ground and the bridge pickup is the only one going to the switch. Is this the right order or does the order not matter?

To be honest all i have done is drawn up a diagram, but that's how I have the diagram setup. I still cant wire stuff right from my head.

Thanks

I don't really see why you would want to wire humbuckers in series with each other.

Now i'm not an expert when it comes to wiring but it seems that your combo position neck and bridge should already have them wired this way. Most people would want to wire each pickup in parrallel, so that you effectively have 4 hum cancelling single coils.

like i said i'm not an expert and maybe i don't understand what your asking but it doesn't really make sense. Someone please chime in and correct me if needed.

At the risk of sounding hypocritical and/or pompous, this IS off the top of my head:

Not including your buss (ground or shield) cable, you'll need at least a two conductor lead wires from each HB, neither of which can be connected to any of the pickups' hardware (grounded). These two lead wires are more popular for phasing capabilities yet are also necessary for series wiring. Each unlike color will link (making the series connection) whereas the other two unlike colors will start and finish the run. If you have a four conductor lead wire, the two coils of each pickup should be linked in series as you would normally wire a HB; more on this below.

Based on what you've stated above, I don't know if you have the minimum two lead wires necessary per pickup. Premising you do, we'll continue. Note that running your neck pickup into your bridge pickup or vice versa is arbitrary but I've committed them by the following example.

Using Seymour Duncan pickups' color coding, the black would be your hot lead wire on each pickup and the green, your ground lead wire on each pickup. You can also reverse them, depending on your phasing choice. The red and white wires of the SAME pickup get soldered together and insulated. Again, the bare wire (the buss) from both pickups gets grounded. The red, white and buss wires are absolutes in their respective designations.

Here we go:

With the shaft of the neck volume pot facing toward the floor, solder the black wire from the neck pickup to the left terminal of the volume pot.

Solder the green wire from the bridge pickup to the can of the bridge volume pot.

Using a Double Pole, Double Throw (DPDT) switch, wire like this (the capital 'O's are the terminals on the bottom of the DPDT switch):

Link these two terminals together O-O with either a soldered wire or just solder

bridge pickup green wire ----------O O----- bridge pickup black wire

ground -------------------------------O O----- to bridge volume pot

Also make sure the switch itself is grounded. What I do is take the ground wire you see above (bottom left), solder it to that terminal, then to the metal side of the DPDT and then run it to the back of either of the volume pots.

There are several variations, of course, depending on the type of switch(es) used, the amount of volume and/or tone pots used, etc. but this should get you going. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

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Hey Martian, thanks for the run through, it really helped. I ended up doing it a little different in the end. Here is how I did it.

Link these two terminals together O-O with either a soldered wire or just solder

bridge pickup green wire ----------O O----- neck pickup black wire

ground -------------------------------O O----- to 5-way switch

It seems to be working, when I put it in series I get a volume jump and the tone is the same but it sounds thicker. I now have a guitar with 9 sounds.

To give you a better understanding here is a diagram I draw up:

Glad to be of help and congrats, you did it!!!

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