Connecting neck and bridge pickup

[gorath23]

Hallo, can anyone kindly tell me an easy way to wire my strat so that the 4th position on the 5 way switch connects bridge and neck please. Assume the wiring currently is standard.
I have only recently started wiring my own guitars but have not ventured beyond the basic setup . I dont need a more complex wiring other than bridge/neck, preferably in 4th position. ( All are single coil).
All help gratefully received. many thanks, arthur.

[Philly Q]

So you just want neck/bridge in position 4 instead of neck/middle, with the other 4 positions standard?  That's exactly how I'm planning to wire my own Strat.  :)

I don't think there's any way of achieving it with an ordinary 5-way switch, but you can do it with a double-wafer "super" switch.  That's the way the Mexican Fender Classic Player '50s Strat is wired.  I don't think the diagram's listed on the Fender Support site, but they emailed me a pdf copy.  I could send you a copy if you like.

The other option is to use a push-pull or mini-switch to "add" the neck (or bridge) pickup to whatever's selected on the normal 5-way.  That gives 7 options, the usual 5 plus neck/bridge and all 3.

[plastercaster]

You could swop the bridge and middle connections to the switch- my strat is wired like this, giving me:
1 - neck
2 - neck and bridge
3 - bridge
4 - bridge and middle
5 - middle

position 2 is no longer hum cancelling, but oh well. something us stratters just have to live with.

[Philly Q]

You could swop the bridge and middle connections to the switch- my strat is wired like this, giving me:
1 - neck
2 - neck and bridge
3 - bridge
4 - bridge and middle
5 - middle

Clever!  Now why didn't I think of that?  :lol:  Must take a little while to get used to, but a very quick and neat way of achieving the desired effect.

position 2 is no longer hum cancelling, but oh well. something us stratters just have to live with.

You could swap the pickups around (physically, rather than electrically this time!) so the one that ends up in the bridge position is the RW/RP one.  Then it's still hum-cancelling in both 2 and 4 (with your wiring).  Only works if all 3 pickups are the same, though, and I guess you have a calibrated set with a hotter bridge.

[gorath23]

So you just want neck/bridge in position 4 instead of neck/middle, with the other 4 positions standard?  That's exactly how I'm planning to wire my own Strat.  :)

I don't think there's any way of achieving it with an ordinary 5-way switch, but you can do it with a double-wafer "super" switch.  That's the way the Mexican Fender Classic Player '50s Strat is wired.  I don't think the diagram's listed on the Fender Support site, but they emailed me a pdf copy.  I could send you a copy if you like.

The other option is to use a push-pull or mini-switch to "add" the neck (or bridge) pickup to whatever's selected on the normal 5-way.  That gives 7 options, the usual 5 plus neck/bridge and all 3.