Any of you have your strat wired to have the neck and bridge together?

i have a strat that's all-warmoth, except the p-ups, which has a blender pot for neck-bridge. it works perfectly, but i don't use it much. it's not a bad sound, but on my guitar it's just sort of an anonymous sound, to me. i'm so much about neck and bridge-middle on a strat that other stuff doesn't interest me much.

but it gives a decent, usable sound, probably worth having for most players.

 

It sounds........a lot like the middle pickup At least to me. Slightly different, but darn close.

 

3 of my 4 Strats are wired up so that I can run neck and bridge together. I really like the combo.

 

Yes.

 

Done it using a 3-way switch and a blend pot. The blend adds the middle pickup to the other combinations so I can still get the quack

It'll do N(+M), N+B(+M), M on it own, B(+M)

All the tones of a regular strat, plus N+B, plus all 3 on, with the middle on a blend. I'm using CS69s, and it was worth it just for the N+B combination. The others are a bonus. Plus you can't really miss the notch on the selector like you can on a 5-way.

 

Yes, I built a lockdown strat over the winter and decided on a blender knob instead of the duel tone controls. I really love it, but I'm not jumping between pickups anyway, I'm mostly just looking for sounds that work with a particular pedal and in a particular space. I don't miss the old wiring scheme. I don't generally roll off the tone knob on a Strat anyway so there was no real need for two tone knobs.

 

I have an American Standard with VN pickups wired with a mini toggle switch for 7 pickup selections. I use the bridge and neck most on that one. Following the suggestion of @charlie chitlin , I switched the middle and neck pickups of my FCS '69 Strat so position 1 is bridge, 2 is neck and bridge, and 3 is neck. This is like standard Telecaster switching. Tone 2 covers all those positions. Position 4 is neck and middle. I use that for a traditional jazz sound and for a more acoustic like tone for vocal accompaniment. Position 5 is middle. CS '69 pickups are underwound single coils. I use the middle pickup most but like the smooth, glassy sound of the neck and bridge. It's not Telecaster like which actually makes me like it more. Both mods are easy. A splice may be necessary with charlie chitlin's mod if the wires are cut short. The middle pickup won't move to the neck unless an inch or two is added to the black wire. I play clean and don't miss the Stratocaster position 2 quack at all. The VN pickups have their own tonal peculiarities. You either like them for what they are or hate them.

 

2 of my 3 Strats have this wiring--one with a neck-on push pull, and one with the middle and bridge pickup flip-flopped in the pickguard (trading neck/middle for neck/bridge). Useful tones for lots of things, and similar to Tele middle position.

 

I have a G&L asat Z-3 that does that with a push-pull pot. It makes for some very versatile options. I like it.

 

for me... if it doesn't cancel hum it's not worth it. Generally in a strat the bridge and neck won't cancel hum(both fwd wound), and you can get a partial cancel by swapping the wires... not really good enough for my humble tastes. Have toyed with the idea of swapping the bridge and neck physically as this would solve that particular issue but has the cost of losing the 2/4 positions I love so well. Have also played with wiring by adding dummy coils to the pickups to get rid of hum when combining neck/bridge. My fav so far has been actually putting 4 singles in a strat - two fwfp and two rwrp and getting lots of combos from that.

 

I've tried it but I've got a tele and the bridge and neck together on that are better.

 

Yes. I've got a push-pull setup where the bridge is on whenever the knob is pulled out so I can have neck/bridge or neck/bridge/middle in the 1st 2 positions. Makes for interesting options but I wouldn't make a point of doing it unless you're doing other stuff too.

 

For a while I had a strat with a push-pull volume pot that switched the neck pickup on no matter where the 5-way was. It was OK. I'm not much of a Strat fan under any circumstance, and that arrangement didn't make me like it any more. Or any less.

 

I have mine wired for:

N - NM - M - MB - B

NB - NMB - BN

It has: Master Volume - Master Tone - Master Blend, the 3 Pots.

Works well and I like it.

(BTW, I believe that the Bridge PU needs a tone control.)

 

If you mean have the neck and bridge pickups on at the same time, like the middle position of a tele, no, I don't. But I DO have my neck and bridge pickups sharing a tone control, with the other control just for the middle pup. I love this setup. I have individual tone control for each live pickup in any switch position. It might not work well in some live situations, but I haven't played out since I was much younger, and it's perfect for me...

-Ray

 

Yes. It's OK.. I do it to most of my strats. It does an approximation of the Tele sound, but it's still not quite there. I like it better than the bridge/mid sound, so I replace it with the B/N.

 

IMHO, a must-do mod for a strat, either via switch or blender pot. I prefer the latter, but if you really want to maximize the versatility of that dedicated knob, seriously consider a fat-o-caster or chroma-caster rotary switch from Deaf Eddie (http://deaf-eddie.net/). You can thank me later!!

 

Except not hum canceling!

Oh, wait.

 

What do you like about it?