I posted about this before, but I didn't really get any response, so I'm going to try again here.

About a year and a half ago, I put a set of Fender "Mod Shop" Samarium Cobalt Noiseless Strat pickups into my Stratocaster. They've proven to be an awesome set, and truly live up to their name as being noiseless. The only downside to them is that the pole pieces are non-adjustable, and the bottom 3 for the bass end are at varying heights. They are also sealed, so you can't remove the covers, and any attempt to do so will crack or wreck the casing. This is apparently because they are overwound, and ordinary covers won't fit on them. I believe this, because the neck p/u is very, very hot, and delivers a very nice warm sound.

However, there's a mystery here, because each pickup has 3 wires leaving the casing: a black one, a green one, and a different coloured one. The exact colours, as mentioned in the previous thread, are as follows:

Neck: Black, Green, White

Middle: Black, Green, Yellow

Bridge: Black, Green, Red

In most electronics, a green wire indicates the ground. However as most of us know, in guitar wiring, black is usually the ground. Following the wiring diagram provided with the pickup set, I connected each green wire alongside the black one, so they all go to the same pots.

Fender has absolutely noting on their website regarding these "mod shop" pickups, even though they make four different varieties (strat, tele, jazz bass, & p-bass), and I don't even know if the tele ones have three wires each. They're authentic American-made Fender parts, but there's no resources. Even worse, I can't find a contact email address on Fender's website (anybody got this?).

I don't think Fender really intended for anyone to experiment with the wiring on these SCN's, hence the sealed casing and rudimentary wiring diagram, but I can't help but wonder if these green wires are indeed coil taps. If so, wouldn't it be awesome to wire them up as such (as shown here)? My strat already has a phase reversal switch for the middle p/u, so would having that, plus a coil tap for each one, result in having twenty-one different tones?

I also got a master volume kill switch on my strat currently, but it's a stupid little DPDT from a dynamic mic that I want to replace with a proper mini toggle switch. In fact, I want to replace all of the electronics inside my strat that I havn't already done. Switch out the gritty Alpha pots with good CTS ones, new 5-way switch, new mini-toggles, and if I can, put in three more mini toggles for this proposed coil split mod. I may have to take a Dremel tool to some of the wood to make room for these, but I'm okey with that, as long as it won't affect the body tone too much. I have to get a new white pickguard this year anyways, as my previous mods resulted in a few cracks in the old Squier one (an Allparts replacement pickguard here is $40).

Need advice here, the coil tap question is really bugging me. Also, does anybody know the email address for Fender, so I can send them a modified version of this post and get my answers straight from the source.

Thanks

__________________
'09 Gibson Raw Power SG Special "Plain Jane"
'01 Squier/Warmoth Strat "Saskatchocaster"
Generic P-Bass clone "Rebel Bass"
Norman B-20 (6) Acoustic

Boss AB-2 -> Boss CS-3 -> ISP Decimator -> Boss DS-2 (with footswitch) -> Marshall Bluesbreaker II -> Boss FBM-1 -> Ernie Ball VPJR -> DigiTech RP-300

Roland Jazz Chorus 90 (2x10)
Fender Chorus DSP (2x10)

Maybe black is negative and green is ground? Or the other way around. I would imagine you'd need 4 wires for tapping at your chamber door.

__________________
crew

Selling BOSS FW-3. I live in Brazil, mind you, so prepare yourself for $30-ish for shipping and waiting. Local pickup available, along with beautiful beaches and cheap bitches.

Just sent Fender Consumer Relations an email, not so much emphasizing the modding, but just trying to clarify what these wires are. I hope they will indulge me with the information.

For future reference, you can reach Fender at:
consumerrelations@fender.com

If I actually do decide to do a coil tap mod, then there's going to be quite a few switches on this strat's pickguard, possibly up to 5 DPDT mini-toggles, plus the two Tone pots, the Volume pot, and the 5-way switch.

Here's all the mods I've done so far:

-Tone for Bridge Pickup, so that I have full tone control for all three P/U's.
-Treble Bleed mod, so the tone does not get muddy when I turn the volume down.
-Phase Reversal Switch for the middle P/U, so I can get 7 tones instead of 5, and that nasally, out-of-phase position 2 and 4 sound you get from late 60's Strats.
-Kill Switch mod, for the obvious, Tom Morello-style on/off. I might move this up to the horn of the guitar so it's out of the way, and change it to a true mini-toggle.

and finally, I would be adding this Coil Tap Mod for all three P/U's.

I know this seems like an awful lot of switches for a cheap, old Squier Strat, but I've been getting good performance out of the thick Warmoth neck I put on it, and the only thing holding me back from using it more is it's tuning instability (I will probably switch out the bridge for a more stable one, or do what I can to make it as stable as possible). I want to make it as versatile as possible for both studio and stage, because the new neck resonates very well with the body, and it's in a unique colour.

Here's some pictures from the last modding session (summer 2010):


Image001_2 by GTubman, on Flickr


Image000_1 by GTubman, on Flickr


020_18A by GTubman, on Flickr

__________________
'09 Gibson Raw Power SG Special "Plain Jane"
'01 Squier/Warmoth Strat "Saskatchocaster"
Generic P-Bass clone "Rebel Bass"
Norman B-20 (6) Acoustic

Boss AB-2 -> Boss CS-3 -> ISP Decimator -> Boss DS-2 (with footswitch) -> Marshall Bluesbreaker II -> Boss FBM-1 -> Ernie Ball VPJR -> DigiTech RP-300

Roland Jazz Chorus 90 (2x10)
Fender Chorus DSP (2x10)

So, having not heard back from Fender yet, I decided to do a little more research.

These SCN pickups wire designed by the legendary Bill Lawrence (no introduction needed on this forum, I'm sure). Through Wikipedia, I found a link to his website, which had more thank just a little information on the SCN, it had the entire patent!

As you can see from the photos above, there are three wires leading from each pickup. The green wire has a square terminal connection, the black one has a triangle, and the white or coloured one has a circle. The bottoms of these pickups are actually a circuit board. The patent says the following:

So that settles one issue: The ground is the Green wire in this case, straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak. Having seen this, I now believe that these SCN single coils cannot be coil split, due to their design. HOWEVER, it does look like I might be able to do some fancy series/parallel wiring (see this diagram), even though they're not humbuckers. I honestly don't know too much about series/parallel wiring, or its advantages, so I may just leave it for now.

I've been thinking about getting rid of the kill switch anyways; there's hardly any room for playing around with switches when I've got the Phase Reversal switch there anyways, and moving it up to the horn of the guitar, like I was thinking, would just mean more loops of wire between the volume pot, the switch, and the output jack. I hardly use the damn thing anyways, and would rather have it more streamlined.

Also, in case anyone is wondering why I used aluminum foil tape for the cavity instead of copper tape: it was all I could find at the time! It seems to do a pretty good job, in any case. The guitar operates silently, with no hum at all. The only problems with it are the stock bridge, which goes out of tune constantly (either the way it's mounted, or the tuning pegs).

Hope this helped clear some things up. I know it did for me. IF anyone knows about wiring up single coils in series or parallel with a switch to pick between them, feel free to post here.

__________________
'09 Gibson Raw Power SG Special "Plain Jane"
'01 Squier/Warmoth Strat "Saskatchocaster"
Generic P-Bass clone "Rebel Bass"
Norman B-20 (6) Acoustic

Boss AB-2 -> Boss CS-3 -> ISP Decimator -> Boss DS-2 (with footswitch) -> Marshall Bluesbreaker II -> Boss FBM-1 -> Ernie Ball VPJR -> DigiTech RP-300

Roland Jazz Chorus 90 (2x10)
Fender Chorus DSP (2x10)

Just got this sad email from Fender:

Guess I won't be putting any more SCN's in any more guitars.

__________________
'09 Gibson Raw Power SG Special "Plain Jane"
'01 Squier/Warmoth Strat "Saskatchocaster"
Generic P-Bass clone "Rebel Bass"
Norman B-20 (6) Acoustic

Boss AB-2 -> Boss CS-3 -> ISP Decimator -> Boss DS-2 (with footswitch) -> Marshall Bluesbreaker II -> Boss FBM-1 -> Ernie Ball VPJR -> DigiTech RP-300

Roland Jazz Chorus 90 (2x10)
Fender Chorus DSP (2x10)

This makes me terribly sad as I have SCNs in my tele and LOVE them. I understand why they didn't take off, but for someone who is regularly gigging, they are perfect. I personally can't stand single coil hiss, and never got along with it. These fixed that problem while keeping intact a great tele tone. I also wired up a no-load tone pot with them and completely recommend that.

Although guitar tone has always been a "Your Mileage May Vary" situation. For the indie rock kinda of tones I play these were perfect; for authentic bluesy tones, I probably would have chosen something else.

I never really noticed any single coil hum with the original Squier pickups that were in this strat, but back then I was only playing it through the practice amp that came with the guitar (a Champ 50 15w with a 5" speaker).

I don't know about the "No Load" tone pot, but I've been strongly thinking about doing the Greasebucket tone mod. This comes stock on some strats now, and I'd like to give it a shot, especially if I can get the resistors and capacitors as cheaply as I got the .22 µF and .022 µF. The pursuit for crystal clear Strat tone never ends. Like I mentioned, I gotta change out the gritty, old, stock Alpha 500kΩ pots with some new ones, hopefully CTS ones if I can get them. Haven't decided if I'm going to use 250kΩ or 500kΩ for the tone pots, but I am probably going to go with 1mΩ for the volume.

In any case, I've kind of given up on coil tapping or series/parallel switching for this strat. I'm going to keep it in traditional Strat wiring, with traditional 5-way switching (and the phase reversal for middle pickup switch).

__________________
'09 Gibson Raw Power SG Special "Plain Jane"
'01 Squier/Warmoth Strat "Saskatchocaster"
Generic P-Bass clone "Rebel Bass"
Norman B-20 (6) Acoustic

Boss AB-2 -> Boss CS-3 -> ISP Decimator -> Boss DS-2 (with footswitch) -> Marshall Bluesbreaker II -> Boss FBM-1 -> Ernie Ball VPJR -> DigiTech RP-300

Roland Jazz Chorus 90 (2x10)
Fender Chorus DSP (2x10)

My guess is that 1 Meg pots would be too bright, especially if playing through a clean amp like the JC-90.