This diagram clearly illustrates Dirk Wacker's wiring mod for this month.

If you want the maximum tones out of an HSS-configured guitar, here’s how to wire the switching and eliminate two pet peeves from a basic auto-split wiring.

Welcome back to Mod Garage. This month we’ll have a deeper look into auto-splitting pickups on an HSS-configured Strat and similar guitars. We covered this a long time ago, exploring the basic version of this wiring in “Stratocaster Auto-Split Mod.” Today we’ll take it one step further with a pro version and discuss what can be done with it.

The HSS setup with a bridge humbucker plus two traditional single-coils is the perfect combination for many Strat players, but it’s not limited to Strats. With the bridge humbucker you have a powerful pickup for soloing and rocking the crowd, while the two single-coil pickups give you traditional sounds and everything in between. When you choose a bridge humbucker with 4-conductor wiring, you can even split it for more possible sounds and to also get the famous in-between “quack” tone with the bridge and the middle pickup together in parallel. That’s exactly where the auto-split wiring comes in when you want an easy-to-operate setup. Let’s have a look what can be done with such an HSS pickup configuration and a 5-way pickup selector switch.

Some players may not need the in-between pickup position with the bridge plus the middle pickup together in parallel. Maybe they can’t use this tone in their musical context, or they simply don’t like these slightly hollow tones with less output. Even Leo Fender himself never liked this tone that he called “out of phase” (which is technically incorrect). These players are fine with a standard 2-conductor bridge pickup and standard Stratocaster 5-way switching.

Please note: This is only possible with a humbucker sporting 4-conductor wiring. You can’t do this with a humbucker with traditional 2-conductor wiring!

Of course, there are players who don’t need all the gadgets. They simply want a powerful humbucker tone in the bridge position and the typical traditional Strat tones from all the other switching positions, including the in-between position of the bridge plus middle pickup. The auto-split wiring is perfect for these players because it’s a set-and-forget situation.

What will happen without the auto-split wiring when dialing in the bridge humbucker together with the middle single-coil pickup in parallel? You won’t hear a big difference in sound compared to the bridge humbucker alone, simply because usually the bridge humbucker is a lot louder compared to the single-coil and will dominate the tone by out-acting the single-coil. To combat this problem, the auto-split wiring will automatically (hence the name) split the humbucker into a single-coil by shutting down the other coil to ground for a traditional in-between sound of both pickups, like we all know from a regular SSS-configured Strat. The switching matrix of the auto-split wiring looks like this:

Deciding what coil of the humbucker will be sent to ground leaving the other active could easily be the subject of a whole column. Depending on the winding direction and polarity of both pickups, you usually don’t want to end up with an out-of-phase tone when both pickups are engaged and when your middle pickup is RWRP (reverse-wound, reverse-polarity), you also want to have the hum-cancelling function this switching position can provide. So … choose carefully!

While the basic version of this wiring works great, it has some peeves that some players complain about:

That’s where the pro version kicks in, replacing the standard 5-way switch with a “super switch” that has four individual switching stages instead of only two, eliminating the two peeves from the basic auto-split wiring.

The super switches are physically a lot larger compared to the standard version, so take care that they’ll fit into your guitar. Recently I had to upgrade an Ibanez HSS guitar with this wiring, and it was impossible to put a super switch in without extensive routing to make space for it. I had such problems before with Yamaha and Fender guitars. The PCB-based versions of this switch require less space, so often this is the way to go.

Often such extended auto-split wirings are trying to also handle what I like to call the “resistance paradigm.” Fender used 250k pots for their guitars with single-coil pickups in the early days, while Gibson used 500k pots for their humbucker-loaded guitars. I don’t think the resistance values were chosen for any tonal reasons. We’re talking about the 1940s and ’50s, when they simply didn’t have the choices we have today. Especially Fender used whatever was available in large quantities for a low price, and it’s likely that Gibson had a similar approach.

Today you can still find unfounded rumors all over the internet that single-coils sound best with 250k pots and humbuckers with 500k pots. While the basic idea behind this contains some truth (500k pots still leave some high-end with a humbucker while 250k pots prevent the single-coil from sounding too harsh), such rules are not set in stone and usually such debates totally neglect that we’re talking about a passive system.

Often 500k pots are used for an auto-split wiring, incorporating some additional resistors to “convert” them to 250k for the single-coil pickups. Good idea, but unfortunately the road to hell is paved with good resolutions. Digging deeper at this point is too much for this column but may be a good subject for a follow-up. My personal recommendation: Forget about it. In more than 20 years, I have tried every variation of such jack-of-all-trades wirings and not a single one really worked in a useable way. Here are my two cents regarding such a wiring:

The wiring layout seen in the diagram at the top of this page is what I recommend and that most players will be happy with, so here we go. I assume that the middle pickup will be a RWRP type, and as usual, I used the Seymour Duncan color code for the humbucker. If you have a humbucker from a different company, you’ll have to convert the shown color code with one of the converting charts online. The bare wire of the humbucker always goes to ground, no matter what type it is. I tried to keep the illustration as clean as possible by leaving out all ground wires, so, as usual, they’re shown with the international symbol for ground. Solder all these connections to the back of a pot of your choice.

That’s it. Next month we’ll build a cool and simple yet very effective diagnostic gadget for electric guitars and basses. I use it in my shop daily and you will love it for sure, so stay tuned!

Until then ... keep on modding!

Take it from Judas Priest and follow your dreams. Even if that includes golfing.

If you play guitar, you’re a musician. And if you also write your own music, you’re an artist. It doesn’t have anything to do with how much money you make or how famous you are. We live in a time that honors that title, which is a huge leap for our society. Since I was a kid, I’d heard tales of handwringing parents who, when confronted with their child’s desire to become an artist of any kind, advised against it—pleading with their children to get a “proper” education, or at least have a backup plan. Painters, poets, sculptors, and writers were often portrayed as starving, wretched outcasts who died penniless. The exceptions who succeeded financially were few, and not usually musicians.

So how did the perception of an artist’s life go from certain squalor to being a career path? My guess is that as the visibility and economics of artistry blossomed, artists took their careers more seriously, and the public’s perception of them shifted in kind.

The poet Arthur Rimbaud, admired by the likes of Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan, famously spoke of making himself a seer by breaking moral rules and societal norms, fostering a mental state in which he could create work that inspired his audience. This sort of idealized debauchery was a template for artists centuries before Charlie Parker or Hank Williams. Artists often say that they are driven to create, and of this I have no doubt. But there are those who live “the life” and those who also see art as a profession—and know the difference.

An illustration of this is the mythology of the heavy metal life. I first began working with the members of Judas Priest in the early 1980s. Despite more than a decade of playing music professionally and dealing with touring bands of all stripes, I approached my first meeting with them with some trepidation. Imagine my surprise when I was greeted by guitarists K.K. Downing and Glenn Tipton attired in full costume—golf shirts and pastel trousers. As if in a parallel universe, these monsters of rock asked politely if I could secure a tee time for them at a local golf club. Later, when designing guitars for their Fuel for Life tour, I met with the band along with their set and costume designers to coordinate the group’s stage look. We pored over colorful leather swatches and dozens of metal stud samples. This is not to say that the band didn’t love their music, but that they realized the first word in the phrase show business is … well, you get the picture.

Many great artists are not recognized or remunerated in their own lifetime. But today, enough creators have become wealthy and fawned upon by the media, helping to offset the images of Rimbaud, William Faulkner, or Jackson Pollock surrounded by empty whiskey bottles. Similarly, as painters, writers, and musicians have become more famous for their net worth than their alcohol and drug consumption, the artist’s career choice has taken its place besides professional athletes and business entrepreneurs. Of course, the modern-day image of sober and respectable musicians like Keith Richards and his writing partner, Sir Mick, hasn’t hurt the shift in attitudes towards musicians. It’s not rare to hear chefs, actors, and quarterbacks referred to as rock stars. It wasn’t that long ago that athletes and musicians were in opposite political and lifestyle corners.

The push to legalize cannabis in America is another sign that previously taboo behaviors are now acceptably mainstream. Coded drug references used to be the musician’s bailiwick, but that too has gone mainstream. In 1968, Steppenwolf’s John Kay sang “the dealer is a man with the love grass in his hand,” but now you can just walk into the dispensary and use your Apple Pay. This takes the edge off a wide swath of the outlaw lyric pool.

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