One of my all-time favorite pickup tricks: wiring a 5-way Strat pickup selector switch to provide instant coil-cutting to humbuckers. I've always liked to combine humbuckers with single-coils on a Strat-type guitar, but have never liked cluttering it with extra switches for cutting coils. Here's the concept: On a guitar with a single/single humbucker or a humbucker/single/humbucker configuration, most players want a Strat-like tone in the combination settings--the classic "out of phase" positions. These players also want a full humbucking sound when using `buckers' alone. With this wiring scheme, the humbucker is automatically converted to a single-coil when the 5-way is switched to the neck/middle or middle/bridge position. This produces an excellent Strat tone that can only be surpassed by two identical Strat-type single-coils.

Our 5-way coil-cut wiring uses only two controls: master volume and master tone. One side of the switch makes the pickup selections and connects the resulting output to the volume and tone pots. The switch's opposite side is used for the coil-cut wires, which short to ground in the appropriate positions.

Note: The red and green wires in the diagram refer specifically to DiMarzio pickups. Other manufacturers use different colors for these two "series link" wires. Seymour Duncan uses white and red, Bill Lawrence and Gibson use white and green, etc. The series link can be either the "starts" or "finishes" of the windings. While this affects overall pickup phase, it's only important when matching the humbuckers' phase with the single coil or if the `buckers' are different makes.