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Seymour Duncan P-Rails

mwbjr13

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Does anyone know if you can auto split a p-rail. Im thinking about a H-S-H set up with a p-rail in the neck and bridge and a S.D. duckbucker in the middle. I'd like to be able to to use a 5-way and auto split to the rail coil in the 2 and 4 position and then have a push/pull to go between the p90 and the humbucker.
 
It's wired exaclty like a four-conductor humbucker so anything you can do with one of those, you can do with a P-Rails.

The only difference is, when you get set of P-Rails, the neck and bridge are wired so that both p-90 coils together will hum cancel, and both rail coils together will cancel. On normal humbuckers, the screw coil of one will cancel with the slug coil of the other.

This won't affect your ability to auto-split though. It'll be fine. I think you might need a super switch.
 
no super switch needed and with a single tone it is pretty easy, two tones can also be used with a standard 5-way but the schematic needs to be done a specific way and similar to the stock fender setup atleast one pickup won't get a tone unless you use one tone as a master for the whole guitar and the other on a specific pickup which is just weird to be honest. if a single cap is used like fender does it you get some weirdness too. not that a second cap would be a big problem.

doing an auto split to the rail side and making it humcancelling to the middle p/up would need a little research on magnet orientation and winding direction relative to the color code but since you want to go both ways with it then it's not a problem. also the middle being a rails type the magnetic polarity is not a problem either, you cant get humcancelling unless you split the duckbucker as well, but that actually does need a super switch. the super switch will also give you more options with the tone control layout.
 
Just for my own benifit now. In order to have humcanceling in 2 and 4 the duckbucker needs to be split? And with that if i only have one volume and one tone can one of those be used to split the neck and the bridge to a p90?
 
Never mind that last question, I just answered it myself. But here's one. I know nothing about super switches, so what kind of fun could I have with one DanO?
 
It basically means you can have any combination you can think of on any switch position. Personally though I would go for this:

1- bridge
2- bridge and mid
3- bridge and neck
4- neck and mid
5- neck

And then I would use two push pulls as in this diagram to control both p-rails at the same time

http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/wiring-diagrams/schematics.php?schematic=2_prails_1v_1t_tspp

I'd also recommend never splitting the duckbucker, as a split duckbucker only picks up sound from three strings.
 
ooh, sorry jumble jumble is right  :-\ you can't split a duckbucker i forgot about that. so that option is out.

well the 2 push pull pots option shown above is a great one and can be used with a normal selector switch. but it negates auto splits because the parallel options would likely leave you with a kill switch in some positions (though i don't know if that's all bad but probably better to negate the auto split and take advantage of the extra options). you'd have many more options though. depends on what you really want. also the parallel option, though it is supposed to sound similar to a paf with scooped out mids may just give you that quack being that the inductance must be low, it should have all the presence needed to get that quack if it's mixed with the middle and stay will low loise.

i dunno the auto splits option is very easy to wire and can be made rails/p-90 switchable with a single push-pull, it can be made auto split-on/off switchable with a second and will feel much like a stock stratocaster with little thinking involved. but the twin push/pull without auto splits is not difficult to follow and offers more options. i think you are best sticking to one of these layouts which may not require a super switch. i personally think the fender american standard switch is better made and has a better feel.

one thing you might want to do with a super switch is change the middle pickup option to neck/bridge, or you can exchange one of the 2/4 "quack" positions for neck/bridge. really it's hard to decide with 3 pickups especially if they have such different coils. it's much easier to get really creative with 2 pickups because it doesn't mean losing usable traditional options. with 3 pickups exchanging the logical options for new ones might just leave you with controls only you understand and possibly sounds you don't find useful. the truth is that the complexities are nearly endless of what you can do especially with some external switches but you kinda need some rationale behind the designs. for example you could assign a pair of coils to each of the 5 positions then use a series/parallel/oop or series/parallel/split switch to control how the pair are used together (similar to the prs 513), or you could even use two super switches one that picks pairs of coils and one that combines them in series, parallel, split-north, split-south, parallel 1/3 oop (through a capacitor) then have a phase switch on one coil to get full oop in series and parallel and 2/3 out of parallel. other things you could do are have some unusual series or oop option in there.

not everything you can think of can be done with a 4 pole super switch (that's why custom makers have 6 pole versions as well) but i'll bet many things you can't think of are.
 
Thanks for the advice guys. I think what I might do is wire everything to a 3-way and then add an on/off switch for the middle duckbucker. Going through my collection I realized that I rarely use the 2 and 4 position of a strat anyways.

By the bye, this is what I'm planning on building.
http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en&sa=N&biw=1920&bih=997&tbm=isch&tbnid=lere1tFp6s9xmM:&imgrefurl=http://www.musiciansfriend.com/guitars/fender-custom-shop-custom-shop-strat-tele-hybrid-closet-classic&docid=7GVRi-EC25mGdM&imgurl=http://static.musiciansfriend.com/derivates/19/001/295/530/DV020_Jpg_Jumbo_517917.326_candy_apple.jpg&w=1450&h=1450&ei=T4YRUOuCC6O06wGf5IHoDQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=622&vpy=140&dur=405&hovh=225&hovw=225&tx=74&ty=138&sig=110666499088406651366&page=1&tbnh=150&tbnw=150&start=0&ndsp=52&ved=1t:429,r:3,s:0,i:84
 
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