soft nymph
Here is a recent rewire of one of my less-used guitars, my upgraded Pacifica EG-112. Having already installed new hardware from head to bridge (but the plastic nut remains!), I went back for a second round to correct the flaws my original wiring had.
In its earlier incarnation, this Pacifica had pickups in an SHS configuration with a black rail humbucker in the middle position and an overwound single-coil sized for the humbucker slot. Wired with a traditional five-way switch, the parallel, mixed positions were just too weak compared to those involving only with single pickup. So I wanted series, rather than parallel combinations of pickups, which produce a stronger, darker output.
As well, I’ve picked up a new philosophy of wiring since I did this guitar - one that rejects even the possibility of using pickup configurations that don’t hum cancel. The three middle positions were decently quiet, but why not all five?
With these requirements in mind - series connections of pickups which cancel hum - I replaced the traditional five-way switch with four-pole five-throw “super” switch (actually, one set of poles remains unused) providing as the five settings:
- bridge humbucker
- bridge rail & middle split
- middle humbucker
- neck & middle split
- bridge poles & neck
which each place two of the guitar’s five coils in series. Positions 1 - 4 essentially correspond to those of a traditional strat, but with series rather than parallel combinations. Position 5 gives the often-missed “tele” combination, putting both of the guitar’s poles-coils in series.
As I hoped, this rewiring has given me a guitar with five evenly-balanced and practically noiseless pickup settings. The 2 and 4 positions have that strat quack we know and love, but with no volume drop compared to the surrounding positions. The 5 “tele” position is a nice completely new sound for this guitar; I don’t miss the neck-only position - the middle pickup arguably makes for a better rhythm pickup.
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