I'm hoping someone here has a good amount of knowledge about guitar wiring.

I was looking at a Fender Duo Sonic II off Craig's List. I was reading up on it to see if it was something I might be into. The Wiki page said that the 2 single coils were reverse wound and reverse poled and the switch was set up so these could be used apart like single coil or together as a humbucker. I found this quite intriguing. The switch in my strat just went out and I'll have to solder up a new one and was wondering how I might accomplish this when I replace the switch and what switch I should buy. Anyone have any idea how to go about this? I don't know very much about electronics. I've dabbled a bit and can solder fairly well but that's about it.

I was also informed that the middle PUs in strats are reverse wound.

I'll list what I want the configurations to be.

Bridge
Bridge/Middle
Middle
Middle/Neck (in Humbucking configuration)
Neck

Is this possible? any thought? could you direct me to someone that might know?

All help is greatly appreciated.

Having a reverse wound reverse polarity middle pickup essentially makes positions 2&4 into humbucking options.

The passage you read sounds like sales gumf to me.

All you'd have to do to get the switching you want is make sure that the bridge pickup is wound and has the same facing polarity magnets as the middle pickup.

Unless of course you're playing a vintage instrument.

_________________
No no and no

I got the information off of Wikipedia and another forum. So it wasn't a sales pitch. Although the information is not necessarily accurate either. But when I replaced the PUs in my MIM strat with some MIA PUs the wires on the middle PU were color coded opposite from the others so maybe it is true.

Howdy!

I'm not familiar with the Duo Sonic wiring so I may have this wrong but didn't the middle position have the pickups in series as opposed to parallel?

If that's what your after you'll need a 5 Way Super Switch. I reckon I could sort you out with a wiring diagram but I'm pretty busy at the moment and as a hobbyist it takes me little while to get my head into wiring mode!

If you don't find a diagram sooner I'll post something here when I have more time.

Hope this helps

Andy

_________________
Pending Greatness

I think this should work for you.
http://www.guitartechcraig.com/techwire/tech12.jpg

Cheers,
Robin

_________________
_________________________________
http://www.youtube.com/robinstrower
_________________________________

Thanks! but I have a few questions.

Do I need to buy the 5 Way Super Switch for this or just or regular one?
Does one of the Tone knobs become a "Blend" knob or do I have to buy one?
Do you know what configurations the scheme will give me?

Yes, Andybighair. I believe you're right about the series wiring. From what I recall that's how humbuckers are wired so it makes sense.

Thank you all so much for your time!

You don´t need any new hardware, no switch no pot.
Pos1 gives you neck humbucker(neck+middle in series)
Pos5 gives you bridge humbucker(bridge+middle in series)
All the other pos middle pickup can be blended in.
The blend pot is the Hendrix mod that gave Jimi the possibility to add the pickup.

I didn´t tried out the switching yet but it looks great and simple.

Cheers,
Robin

_________________
_________________________________
http://www.youtube.com/robinstrower
_________________________________

I'd like to be able to keep the single PU configurations if possible.

Neck
Middle
Bridge

Do you know what positions 3,4,5 will be with this mod?

Thanks again!

Problem with this mod is you have to roll the blend knob to keep the single coil sound.
So you would have to switch and roll the knob sometimes for a change from neck/middle series to bridge single coil sound.

As said I didn´t tested the switching but I think it´s worth a try.

Cheers,
Robin

_________________
_________________________________
http://www.youtube.com/robinstrower
_________________________________