4 Pickups wiring mod in a squier cyclone

[yauckt]

Hello,

I recently purchased a squier cyclone and decided to tweak it a little bit.

My mod will look like this :



I will need some help for wiring all this.

The pickups are :

2 single coils from a 90's mexican strat (or at least fender sourced).
2 P90 duncan design from a squier tele custom.

What i plan to do is to use external pickups on the 3-way toggle switch and the 2 extra inside pickups will be connected to a DPDT on/on switches that should act as "on in serie"/"off".

Here's what i designed. I'm sure it's full of problems, especially with grounding of the two inside pickups.



I also have a on/on/on extra switch that i can add to the mod to correct possible phasing problems.

Any help to make my wiring diagram working will be a dream

Thank you very much !

[idsnowdog]

The problem that I see with the schematic is two of the pickups don't really have off positions. This means you are adding or subtracting the other two pickups from the circuit. Rather than adding extra switches I would probably replace the 3-way toggle with a 7-way rotary switch. You could wire it so that either the odd or even number pickups are out of phase with each other.

[ArtieToo]

If, what you're trying to accomplish is to add either of the center two pups in series with either the neck or bridge, (or both), then your wiring is correct, except for two simple things:

1. Reverse the black and white wires of the center two pups. As you have them now, they would be out-of-phase.

2. Reverse the two terminals on the volume pot that aren't ground. You want the 3-way wired to the bottom lug, and the output jack wired to the center lug.

Other than that, it looks ok. Weird, but ok.

[yauckt]

The problem that I see with the schematic is two of the pickups don't really have off positions. This means you are adding or subtracting the other two pickups from the circuit.

Well that's exactly what i want to achieve So it's not a problem

Rather than adding extra switches I would probably replace the 3-way toggle with a 7-way rotary switch. You could wire it so that either the odd or even number pickups are out of phase with each other.

Not a bad idea indeed, i already planned to try such a thing. But i want to keep a somewhat cyclone II/jaguar spirit with sliders switches. Also, i want to keep it cheap

... then your wiring is correct, except for two simple things:

1. Reverse the black and white wires of the center two pups. As you have them now, they would be out-of-phase.

Done, yeah, still some noob problem

2. Reverse the two terminals on the volume pot that aren't ground. You want the 3-way wired to the bottom lug, and the output jack wired to the center lug.

Another big noob issue? hehehe. If i got it right, i inverted the ground stuff and output of the 3 way toggle? But if i also got this right, it's not a major issue and will do the work anyway once the jack's wire will be reversed? (a bit unsure about this one)

Other than that, it looks ok. Weird, but ok.

ahahhaha i take this as a compliment

The wiring scheme seems a bit bizzare (in a good way) that reminds me a bit of Danelectros, Teiscos and their ilk.

As i'm not experienced a lot with desiging wiring scheme, i probably think simple I got some lessons from my retired electrician father but some stuffs like ground remains mysterious. Anyway, glad to see that i'm not going nowhere with this.

The only addition I would make would be another DPDT switch so that you have the option to use the 2 inside pickups by themselves.

MMmmh, and you're giving me ideas, but i won't be able to wire this. How would you implement a 8 lugs 3 position on this? (and maybe add a secret feature with it? )

[ArtieToo]

The only addition I would make would be another DPDT switch so that you have the option to use the 2 inside pickups by themselves.

MMmmh, and you're giving me ideas, but i won't be able to wire this. How would you implement a 8 lugs 3 position on this? (and maybe add a secret feature with it? )

Actually, I would do this differently. Selecting the inside pickups would be equivalent to just moving the outside two inward an inch or so. I wouldn't see that as being all that beneficial for the added complexity of the wiring. However, what I would do, is make the vol/tone pots push-pulls. Use one to add the two singles in parallel, and one to add the two P-90's in parallel. That would give you the ability to use your present 3-way to select between the singles "quack", and the P-90's in whatever-P90's-sound-like-in-parallel.

Plus, you could have all four pups in parallel with the 3-way in the middle.

I'll draw you a diagram when I get home tonight.

[nalo1022]

Assuming I am looking at everything right the wiring looks correct. There may be some phase issues in certain settings, but given the nature of the wiring that is going to happen. The wiring scheme seems a bit bizzare (in a good way) that reminds me a bit of Danelectros, Teiscos and their ilk. The only addition I would make would be another DPDT switch so that you have the option to use the 2 inside pickups by themselves.

[yauckt]

Sounds interesting ArtieToo but i'm not planning to purchase push pull stuffs. Isn't it possible to transpose something (even with less feature with the 8 lugs 3 positions switch i still have unused, yeah i love it when it's full of switches on a guitar ). A thing i didn't specified is that i really enjoy parallel sounding for clean sound but i hate it used with distorsion. A good balance between parallel & serie is then required here because i want also to have outrageous output level with the serie combination. Do you think you can help me on this?

[ArtieToo]

Yeah, I can chew on that one too. Let me see what I can come up with.

[yauckt]

Here's a corrected version of my original idea :



I also have to think about the extra ground wires from the P90 and the tremolo connection.

[nalo1022]

Here is the diagram i said I'd draw up.

[nalo1022]

Just thought of a nifty update to the diagram I drew. As an added bonus it uses the switches you already have , so you don't need to purchase anything else.

[yauckt]

wow, looks sweet !

I see some nice ideas !

Thank you very much for this

[ArtieToo]

If SW2 is a slide switch, thats not the way it works. It works like this:

[yauckt]

I think you got point artietoo. The common stuffs are the 4 lugs from the middle. What's the benefit of 8 lugs instead of 6 ?

[nalo1022]

Derp sorry. I borrowed the drawing from some other notes I had and the Slide switch was setup like that.

I looked it over and will redraw the corrected scheme later

[yauckt]

For wiring the 8 lugs thingy, check out here how it is wired on a mustang.

ArtieToo, you told earlier it was possible to use the 3 way toggle to use 3 Pups in parallel. I have an untouched epiphone firebird with such a selector, any chance i can wire it to get a serial connection with both pups?

[yauckt]

I don't get how to wire the mustang slider. I'm comparing to some mustang wiring scheme but don't figure out how to implement what nalo1022 designed on it.

I redesigned what i was able to do on a new (definitive) configuration :
If anyone can complete what is missing... (I liked the idea for the 8 thingy slider used as Off/On serie/On serie out of phase)

[nalo1022]

here you go. Meant to post it last night but my son was fussy all evening.

[yauckt]

Thank you very much for your time ! I'll keep you posted with the results

[yauckt]

After months of patience/silence, my cyclone mod is finally over. (almost, need to fix one or two small things). The main goal was to make it cheap.

Here's the original baby :



Original mod idea :



Needed a cheap pickguard base... Abba double gold album will make it... (free)



Replaced the original fender saddles with the ones of a Cort. The strings digged the original saddles pretty badly. (Free mod)



Switches (around 9€)



Glitters (0.69€ x 5 = 3.45€)



3 of the pickups cover (free pickups)



After plenty layer of coat (nail coat : +/- 10€, spray coat : 5€)



Finished pickups covers :



I did some mistakes with the dremel, see at bridge & neck, it's too short



Well, it was a Abba double golden album so, there's two records in it. Let's use the second one to fix the mistakes.



Installing P90's in the cavity (gold bless swimming pool models).



Pickguard is now ready to go in the bling bling machine



Magic...



A lot of coat layers later...



The other side :



After soldering



Here's the final product !



As nothing is perfect, the neck pickup is out of phase with others (not a big deal, i just need to invert hot and ground wires). More boring, the bridge pickup is not working. Dunno if the pickup is damaged or if the soldering went wrong. It was so messy to screw the pickguard without having a wire going out of its way...