Originally Posted by: rightturnonlyWhy? :confused:
Why, indeed?
I have a Guild S-70, that I have nicknamed "The Psycho-caster". It looked like this when it was new
but by the time I got it, it was beat up.I bought it because I used to have a PRS Custom when I was in a working band, and I crashed it a few times playing on stages that were too small, so I found this Guild in a pawn shop for $190. The pickups were horrible. They buzzed like crazy, way worse than even a Squier strat, so on the very same day, I bought some Lace Sensor Gold pickups and put them in.
Well, just a few days ago, after playing nothing but acoustic for nearly ten years, I decided to pull out the old electric guitars and get them going again (they all needed at least a little work). I bought a 6 position, 4 pole rotary switch ( www.allparts.com part number EP_0920-000) and installed a Seymour Duncan Custom Trembucker in the bridge position.
The SD humbucker is controlled by the rotary switch, which I have wired thus:
1) Both poles in series out-of-phase (humbucking)
2) The north pole with the start to ground
3) Both poles in parallel out-of-phase (also humbucking but with a more mellow -- some say single coil -- sound).
4) The south pole with the finish to ground
5) Both poles in series in phase (very thin sound with no bass whatsoever)
6) Both poles in parallel in phase
The middle and neck pickups (the lace sensor golds) are controlled by on/off switches which enable me to get some wonderful combinations of tones, many that are remarkably similar to off the shelf guitars and many that aren't even close, and yet are intoxicating to behold.
Had this guitar been a fender strat, I would have wired it up in the same way -- unless, of course, it was a pre-CBS strat, so the answer to your question of "why", for me anyway, is because adding a humbucker to a strat and wiring it up in the way I described would allow one to get the thick, in-your-face sound of a humbucker, the twang of a Tele, any sound a standard Strat can make and about 25 other tones that no off the shelf guitar makes.
