Billy Corgan strat wiring help

[SlingeroGuitaro]

I got the wiring diagram and parts list sent to me by fender. its an interesting little beast. the diagram is not all that detailed, so let me try to explain this the best that I can.

the guitar incorporates 3 SC sized humbuckers and uses a super switch. the switching is as follows:

1: full bridge
2: full middle inside bridge
3: full middle
4: full middle outside neck
5. full neck

the tone controls are only for the neck and bridge pickups.

the part I'm having trouble deciphering from the diagram is the cap/resistor wiring for the tone controls. the parts list says it uses both .02mfd and .100uf caps, and 4.7k 1/4w resistors.

these appear to all be on the tone pots. both pots are wired the same, just leading to different terminals on the super switch. the third terminal  is wired to the switch as well as a cap jumping to the 2nd terminal, however it makes no distinction to which cap this is. the first terminal then appears to have a cap then soldered to a resistor, then to ground. is this a common practice and what is the purpose of this?


i hope this was even remotely clear. i can include a picture of the diagram if you need it. any help would be awesome. thanks!

 

[smjenkins]

Could you share the parts list and wiring diagram?  The BC strat model info isn't listed on Fender's site with the rest of their technical information.

 

[SlingeroGuitaro]

yeah i emailed them directly on a whim. they sent a PDF the next day. here are the first two pages of it- third page just shows the switching. sorry for the large size. i'm working this from my iPhone

 

[Dan025]

very weird, i wonder if fender has a reason for using two cap or if they copied the wireing from mods that billies guitar tech came up with. running caps in series makes a smaller cap but the caps differ in size enough that it should sound similar to the smaller of the two caps alone.
the math says .0167uf  but that doesnt sound that different from .022uf or .02mfd, oh and uf and mfd are the same measurment both meaning micro farad. there may be a subtle change in taper or something but i doubt if anyone other than billy could tell the difference
you could also use a .01 uf in parallel with a .0063uf even a .0047 would be close enough.

also this wireing can be done with a standard switch and along with what im thinking about the tone should be acheiveable with many fewer components, so the question is do you want a replica? or something that works with less trouble. i feel that the american standard switches are better quality than the super switches so i only use super switches if i absolutely need them. i need to know what pickups they are for exact details though.

 

[SlingeroGuitaro]

My plan is to build an electronic replica. Going to use a transparent green alder body and a satin maple/maple neck. I wired an old guitar with a regular 5 way in what should have been this set with these same pickups (bc-1 neck, chopper middle, bc-2 bridge) but the 2nd and 4th positions came out very wimpy compared to his signature model. I 've been  kind of obsessed with this project since I can't figure it out 

 

[SlingeroGuitaro]

Also dimarzio is selling presided pickguards of his. I'm not sure How the switching works on them but they Also use a standard 5way.

 

[Alfang]

not that it makes a diferance to this thread      I thought it went like this ( I know it goes like this)  m=mili, u=micro, n=nano, p=pico

so milifarad is not the same as microfarad


Tera, Giga, Mega, Kilo, mili, micro, nano, pico

 

[Dan025]

well you could be right, i googled it and they showed uF and MFD as micro i thought that was strange but it is also strange that the format is different. MFD was shown capitalized and uF has the prefix in lower case. i figure it is two different standards and the one rating includes the letter D to avoid confusion.

ok so now it begs the question if they meant micro or  milli, im gonna go with micro as milli would be huge and the other cap is already large.

 

[Dan025]

back to the diagram, the caps should still work if you screw up the location, i'd predict a subtle difference in taper but im just guessing, i cant figure out why they wire it this way. now my best guess is that the larger cap in appearance on the drawing is the .1uF cap as it is larger in size assuming im right about what MFD means.

well good luck getting your desired tone.

 

[SlingeroGuitaro]

That's what I was assuming, Dan. Glad to know the cobwebs in my head haven't taken everything over.


Now how about wha looks like the resistor attached to the .022uf cap?

 

[Finch]

those pickups will sound great no matter how you wire them haha. I have them in my strat, with the exception of the Cruiser in the middle and not the Chopper. Sounds especially good through the high gain amp models on my Floor Pod Plus.

 

[Dan025]

That's what I was assuming, Dan. Glad to know the cobwebs in my head haven't taken everything over.


Now how about wha looks like the resistor attached to the .022uf cap?

well i thought that was self explanatory. just wire the cap and resistor in series. the resistor goes to ground and the cap goes to the lug on the pot.. it just limits the range some. probably keeps it from getting muddy.