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Here's another little trick to getting some more sparkle out of a humbucker with adjustable pole pieces. I raise the 3 bass string pole pieces on the bridge side and lower the ones on the neck side. This picture highlights the neck pickup, but you can also see how high they are on the bridge pickup. This emphasises the treble more. I did the opposite on the unwound strings, but not to the same extent.
(Yellow = higher, blue = lower)

The pole piece adjustment is pretty subtle though. The bass roll off will be much more significant, and variable.

OK. So I have just sat down and designed a wiring scheme, that involves all the stuff I use or think I would use, and nothing that I don't.

Basically, it's a normal HSS Strat, with an auto coil tap on the 2 position, for quacky goodness.
The singles see an impedance of 250k. The hum sees an impedance of 500K.
Instead of two tones, I'm putting a traditional Strat tone control on the neck PUP, and the Reverend Bass Contour control on the humbucker.

I think this should give me what I need. The 500K should open up the treble on the bucker, bass contour will let me match the low end to where I want it. I never use a tone control on the mid pickup so I don't need one, and I don't extra switches and stuff to do the coil tap.

Now lets hope my electronics nerdery is correct and the whole shebarcle works

Sounds ideal. I'd be interested to see if which you like better out of the coil split and the hummy with the bass rolled off. Also I would connect the neck tone to the middle as well, personally.

bbrunskill wrote:OK. So I have just sat down and designed a wiring scheme, that involves all the stuff I use or think I would use, and nothing that I don't.

Basically, it's a normal HSS Strat, with an auto coil tap on the 2 position, for quacky goodness.
The singles see an impedance of 250k. The hum sees an impedance of 500K.
Instead of two tones, I'm putting a traditional Strat tone control on the neck PUP, and the Reverend Bass Contour control on the humbucker.

I think this should give me what I need. The 500K should open up the treble on the bucker, bass contour will let me match the low end to where I want it. I never use a tone control on the mid pickup so I don't need one, and I don't extra switches and stuff to do the coil tap.

Now lets hope my electronics nerdery is correct and the whole shebarcle works

This is very close to what I have done with my gigging HSS Strat - though I've added a couple extra little fun bits.

- Neck/mid singles see 250k vol and 250k tone
- Humbucker sees 500k vol and no tone control
- Position 3 is Neck and Bridge in series (GREAT tone)
- Second tone control is actually a spin-a-split for the humbucker.

The humbucker I LOVE in a Alder bodied Strat is a DiMarzio Norton.
Fantastic sounding pickup - and then when split can sound deceptively like a Tele bridge pickup.

I haven't tried neck and bridge in series, but mine has neck and bridge in parallel which I use quite a lot.

Great success! My schematic which was pulled together from various ideas on the web works. And almost worked first time, I had two wires around backwards.

Big improvement. The humbucker has some shimmery high end at last, the singles sound the same. The bass contour is cool on the HB, I like it just knocked back slightly, but it seems to add bass back in to the position 2 and kills the quack, so I'm not sure if A) It's working as it should, or B) if I just don't like it.
I tried a couple of values of cap on the neck tone pot and found one that isn't so dark, which is nice.
The humbucker is still a little bit on the nasal side for me, but it will do. Looking forward to my gig next weekend so I can give it a thrash

Adds bass back? That doesn't sound right? Explain more?

It cuts bass as it should when on the bridge humbucker. But somehow it makes the number 2 position really dark and fat. I think because the humbucker has less bass, it doesn't phase out the bass from the middle single like it should. I'm going to try think up a way that I can get around it

bbrunskill wrote:It cuts bass as it should when on the bridge humbucker. But somehow it makes the number 2 position really dark and fat. I think because the humbucker has less bass, it doesn't phase out the bass from the middle single like it should. I'm going to try think up a way that I can get around it

That might just need a simple polarity swap on the bucker. Worth a shot.

Nope, I don't think that will work . . pre bass contour I installed the pickup according to the SD diagram, and the 2 position was awful, super thin. So I've already swapped polarity on the bucker, don't want to go back to that tone . . .

bbrunskill wrote:It cuts bass as it should when on the bridge humbucker. But somehow it makes the number 2 position really dark and fat. I think because the humbucker has less bass, it doesn't phase out the bass from the middle single like it should. I'm going to try think up a way that I can get around it

I can't imagine that this is due to the bass contour, as a capacitor doesn't add bass frequencies, it blocks them, so adding a cap shouldn't make anything darker unless it's going to ground. Seems unlikely, but is it possible you somehow have the bridge and middle in series? It's just that that sounds like what you're describing.

Anything is possible with my level of foolery.

I keep looking for the like button

Single coil wrote:I keep looking for the like button