H/S/S with “Auto Split Mod” Prewired Electronic Assembly for Stratocaster type guitars – Solderless

Description

A high quality electronic replacement / upgrade for Stratocaster style guitars with 1 humbucker and 2 single coil pickups.

The auto coil split mod is used if you have a humbucker pickup and want to split the coil when you are in the bridge and middle position (please make sure you have 4 wires coming from your humbucker and not 2) . There will be a solderless connector for your pickups and your output jack next to the switch.

Comes standard with a Karman Vintage Style 5 way switch, Full Sized Brass Shaft Potentiometers. Complete with all electronics soldered with vintage spec cloth wire, neatly wired up and installed on a rigid aluminum grounding plate (helps eliminate electrical noise at the same time)

All you need to do is disconnect your pickups and output jack from your old electronic assembly and fit this electronic assembly to your pickguard and reconnect the output jack and pickups to our solderless connector. It is easy to do, the connector is spring activated so you just press on the orange part with a screwdriver, insert the wire and release. All the ground wires go to the bottom terminals and each hot goes to top terminals. They will be colour coded so you know where to put the hot of each component:

Output jack hot gets connected to the white terminal

Neck pickup to the blue terminal
Middle pickup to the red terminal
Bridge pickup to the yellow terminal

Coil split wires below the bridge pickup terminal

Please note – You would need to add an extra 24 – 48 hours to the lead time when ordering our prewired pickguards or electronic assemblies as we make them specially for each order. Please order via our Valley Sound website in order to select from these customizable options (alternatively make your purchase then email us your options):

We recommend the following as a standard electronic assembly for HSS configuration without coil split (but you can choose your own specs):

Volume: A500k with Duncan Treble bleed
Tone 1: Neck and Middle: A250k with 0.047uf Capacitor
Tone 2: Bridge: A500k with 0.022uf Capacitor

See below other options:

Volume Potentiometer options:
– Linear (B250k / 500k)
– Audio Taper (A250k / 500k)

Most modern guitar manufacturers (or non Fender USA Standard guitars) use 250k Linear pots for volume, Standard / Vintage US Strats typically come with Audio Taper volume pots. Both work but linear has more even controll, Audio Taper has most of the controll between 7 – 10.

The values of pots determine how much high end (treble) is allowed, most Alnico Single coil pickups have a lot of treble / brightness already and a lower pot value (250k) is suitable as it only allows a certain amount of high end to pass through making it sound more balanced and not too tinny. Ceramic pickups tend to sound muddy especially in the neck position which is when 500k pots are preferred to provide more clarity in the tone. This is all personal preference and if your pickups sound too bright you can always take away some highs by rolling back your tone, you can’t add more highs if your pickups are too dark due to a low value pot. Humbucker pickups generally pair well with 500k Pots as they tend to lack brightness and clarity too.

Volume Treble Bleed options:
– Simple
– Kinman
– Duncan

A treble bleed is a circuit of capacitors and resistors of various values which help prevent treble loss as you roll back on the volume knob which prevents your tone from sounding muffled or muddy when lowering your volume. A “Simple” treble bleed has the most effect, some find it makes their tone too trebly when they roll down the volume. A “Duncan” treble bleed is a more subtle option but can affect the taper of the pot, which is not as noticeable when using Audio Taper, but for Linear Taper pots it is better to go for a “Kinman” treble bleed mod.

Tone Potentiometers options:
– Linear (B250k / 500k)
– Audio Taper (A250k / 500k)

Most guitars use Audio Taper pots for tone, Some people prefer a Linear pot for tone as it allows for more fine tuning of a “sweet spot”. 250k Tone pots are generally used for all single coil pickups and 500k tone pots for humbucker pickups but  this is also personal preference and choice. 250k is less bright than 500k.

Tone Capacitor Value options:
– 0.022uF (or 22nf)
– 0.047uF (or 47nf)

Single Coil pickups generally have a Tone Capacitor value of 0.047uF. This allows more highs to be cut when rolling back the tone pot, Humbucker pickups generally have a Tone Capacitor value of 0.022uF as this allows for less highs to be cut when rolling back the tone and prevents the humbuckers from becoming too dark too quickly. Our standard capacitors we use are the big yellow mallory style capacitors which we have specially made for us at Valley Sound according to our specs are requirements, these capacitors are very accurate and have a tolerance value of 5% within the voltage and temperature range. Our 0.047uf Cap can handle Voltage of up to 600VAC without the capacitance value changing more than 5% and our 0.022 Cap can handle Voltage up to 1200VAC white remaining within the 5% Tolerance. Each capacitor gets tested and the value will be printed on each Cap making sure it is within the tolerance range and passes our strict QC. Most capacitors on guitars have a tolerance range of between 10 – 20% meaning that value on the Capacitor might not be true to the actually reading within 20%.

1st Tone pot assigned controll options:
– Neck pickup
– Middle pickup

2nd Tone pot assigned controll options:
– Middle
– Bridge Pickup

Vintage Standard Fender Spec is Neck pickup on 1st Tone, Middle pickup on 2nd Tone and Bridge pickup without any tone controll. Modern Fender and most other guitars have Neck and Middle on 1st Tone Pot and Bridge on 2nd Tone pot. Since this is an auto-split mod there is no spare lug on the switch for bridging tone controlls to have 2 pickups on one tone controll, so you need to select which 2 out the the 3 pickups you want to have tone control on.

Switch tip colour options:
– Cream
– Black
– White

Potentiometer knobs are not included, please purchase them separately should you require.  

PLEASE NOTE: This assembly fits Fender USA/MEX layout pickguards, as well as most squier and some strat copies. We can not guarantee it will fit every guitar. It also fits the pickguards we sell at Valley Sound. The switch is slightly larger than cheap import switches, it requires a body cavity routing depth of 35mm.