Help with modding Guitar

Hi, this is my first post here, so I hope it is in the correct place. I recently decided to upgrade all the electrical components of my old squire strat. I started looking at parts, and decided I wanted a volume control, and a humbucker near the bridge. I started looking for wiring scematics, and couldnt find any for what i needed, so i decided id ask here. I have a picture of standard wiring, and was wondering if anyone could tweak it so it was the proper wiring and setup for what i needed.

Here you go...

http://www.fender.com/support/diagrams/pdfs/STDFATSTRAT/SD0134700CPg2.pdf

If you're thinking about upgrading a Squire you might just want to think about getting a new guitar... In the long run it'll be a better investment... I'm sure others will agree with me on this... This has been discussed numerous times on this forum...

thanks for that pdf file, it is easier to read than the image I was using. I guess more specificly what I am trying to ask is can I put a single humbucker in my guitar with no tone, and just a volume switch?

Sorry for the double post, but i found the perfect schematic for what I am trying to do.



All i need is a bit of help with what exacly it says, because wires seem to go nowere. :)

Originally Posted by: djblingbling1All i need is a bit of help with what exacly it says, because wires seem to go nowere. :)

If I understand your posts...all the wires marked as an earth in the Guitar electronics schematic..that is the wires that end in three shortening parallel lines perpendicular to the 'wire'...should meet a common point. Relate that to the first diagram & that is the back of the volume pot shown.

It is widely recommended to screw a brass washer or the like to a point inside the control cavity and solder all those loose ends to it.

There is a body of opinion that regards this as unnecessary & all the loose ends can be soldered to the back of a pot as in the first diagram.

Try Guitar Nuts web site : http://www.guitarnuts.com/index.php
& books like the Guitar Handbook.

Good luck and have fun.

Originally Posted by: RobSm

It is widely recommended to screw a brass washer or the like to a point inside the control cavity and solder all those loose ends to it.

There is a body of opinion that regards this as unnecessary & all the loose ends can be soldered to the back of a pot as in the first diagram.

So its better to solder the loose wires to a washer instead of the back of the pot? This is all just to ground it correct? Sorry if this sounds dumb but i have an extremly vauge knowledge of electronicd. :)

I think most people agree that it's better to do that.

I know it seems 'black magic' at first, but once you've done it & reflected a bit it's not so scary.

Shield all your cavities. Copper foil with an adhesive back & conductive paint are widely used & freely available. The foil can be a pain to work with, but you can solder to it eg to connect all your cavities. You need to use a number of coats of paint if you use that.

Don't forget the earth from the bridge or tailpiece.

If I had to recommend any one thing it would be to relax a bit do a deal of reading & practice & then do the job when you're happy about things.

alright, thanks alot.....erm what do you mean by earth is that a typo or a slang term i just dont get...sorry :confused:

Maybe you guys call it 'ground'. If you read a bit on pots etc

eg try starting here: http://www.stewmac.com/freeinfo/I-4000.html

I'm sure it will be explained better than I can do :D

If everything was grounded into the pot, andf then grounded from there to a washer, would that be ok? Just seems like with my wiring that would be easy but i dunno if itll work. :o

Originally Posted by: djblingbling1If everything was grounded into the pot, andf then grounded from there to a washer, would that be ok? Just seems like with my wiring that would be easy but i dunno if itll work. :o

Only ground to the pot where it shows on the schematic... you never want to have any uneccessary wires running to your pots.

K. IS it necessary to have an extra grounding wire from a humbuck to the tremolo, or not? Cause I just got a new humbucker and its not gonna be easy to open up to solder a wire in with the rest of them, unless of course the grounding wire can be soldered on to the bottom of the humbucker.

The manufacturer's blurb should say which wire is the ground wire.

Also the braided shielding around all the pickup wires might need to be grounded depending on the manufacturer.

Here's a link that might be helpful:
http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/how_to_install_a_pu.shtml and

http://www.stewmac.com/cgi-bin/hazel.cgi?action=SERVE&sku=I-4000&PG=2&s1=Free_info_sheets&item=freeinfo/fi.html

AFAIK the tremolo or bridge/tailpiece ground wire goes straight to the common ground whether you use a washer in the cavity or the back of the volume pot.

Don't forget to post us some pics.

The reason that using the back of a pot for a ground connection is frowned upon, is that the threaded mount of the pot creates a connection between the pot shell and any shielding used in the control cavity. This creates multiple paths for current to flow to the ground connection at the jack. When you have multiple ground paths, each of those paths has a slightly different impedance, and that means that current flow will cause a slightly different voltage to appear across each of these paths. For the same reason, different signals should not share a common ground wire, because this will cause interference between the two signals. These voltage differences cause noise, fluctuating frequency response, and sometimes result in wierd things like having the audio portion of radio or TV signals come out of your speakers.

Grounded shielding is most effective when there is no current flowing in it. So the copper foil or conductive paint should not be connected to any signal path, except at one point, usually the jack. All ground points on pups, switches, and controls should be connected to the jack ground by individual wires that are not shared with any other part of the circuit.

That schematic in Post #4 shows the bridge ground wire connecting to the humbucker shield wire, and a ground connection from this common point. Not good. The humbucker shield wire, the bridge shield wire, and the ground connection to the Volume pot should all be separate wires connected to the shell of the jack.