Quick & Easy Bridge Pickup Add-in Wiring Mod

[duhvoodooman***]

Here's a very simple and quick modification that can be done on a 3-pickup guitar like a Strat or Nashville Tele to enable you to add the bridge p'up in parallel to any pickup combination selected through the main p'up selector switch. The diagram shown is one I put together for my Nashville Tele, which has fairly standard Strat-style wiring and the usual Strat 5-way selector switch. It requires adding a single switch to the guitar. The diagram shows a DPDT style switch, which is what most push/pull pots have. But, as you'll see, only a quarter of the switch is used, so a SPDT or even a SPST switch will work fine. While I'd recommend a push/pull pot to avoid changing the guitar's appearance, a simple toggle switch could also be used and mounted through the pickguard (Strat-style) or control plate (Tele-style).

In functional terms, making this modification gives you two new pickup combinations: (1) The neck-bridge combo, and (2) all three p'ups at once. I've always liked the neck-bridge combo on a Tele and didn't want to lose that with my Nashville model, so that was the motivation for doing this. Initially, I was looking at a cross-wired DPDT switch that, when activated, would switch the positions of the middle and bridge pickups on the 5-way selector switch. However, this solution only adds the neck-bridge combo as a new choice. Using the alternative shown in the diagram is not only a bit simpler to wire, but gives the additional all-three-at-once pickup selection option.

In physical terms, what the mod does is to splice the common (middle) connector of the switch into the "hot" wire from the bridge pickup and then wire one of the switchable connectors directly to the pickup selector switch's output connector to the volume pot. When the add-in switch is activated (mine is a push/pull that activates by pulling it up), it bypasses the pickup selector switch and runs the bridge p'up signal directly to the volume pot. When activated, this connection is then in parallel with any other pickup signals coming though the 5-way switch. So with the 5-way set at position 5 (neck), you get the neck and bridge in parallel (same as the middle position of a Tele selector switch), and at position 4, you get all three pickups in parallel. The remaining three p'up selector switch positions are redundant with choices already available with the stock wiring.

One note: Because most 3-pickup guitars have the middle pickup with reversed polarity vs. the neck and bridge, that means that the neck-bridge combo will not be hum cancelling, since both p'ups are the same polarity. The all-3 combo does have hum cancellation properties, though.