ASK-HBS – 1987 Ibanez 540P Superstrat Wiring

Question

Hello,

I’m trying to rewire the guitar I bought when I was 14, a 1987 Ibanez 540P Superstrat.

The guitar now has a HSS setup with 1 500k volume knob, 1 500k tone knob, and 3 DPDT on/on/on 3-way microswitches.

I bought a Seymour Duncan Invader for the bridge and Hot Rails for the middle and neck.

What I wanted to do was set it up with the switches so I can run each of the 3 pickups in an off/full humbucker/coil-split.

Can you help me? One of your wiring diagrams would save my life.

Edwin

Answer

Hello Edwin, thank you very much for the great question! Unfortunately, the short answer is no. We change which pickups we use using the HOT wires (breaking the connection with the amp), while the pickup splitting modification uses an additional GROUND wire to prevent your signal from moving through the second coil. I recommend using three on-off switches to select which pickups are operating and having one push-pull pot split two of the humbuckers (neck, bridge) and the other pot split the remaining one (middle).

However, if you really want to try it, it is possible to select which pickups are operating by lifting the ground wires instead. In that case, you could use the on-on-on switch, and the top position would be off, the middle would be split, and the bottom would be a normal operating humbucker. The problem, and the reason we don’t do it, is that there will always be a direct connection from the amp to all three pickups. The result of this connection is that a lot of noise can be added to your signal, even when the pickup is off, touching it might result in noise in your amp. With this kind of wiring, you might also get a lot of RF noise and other types of noise in your amplifier. Therefore, I don’t recommend it, but you can give it a try and let me know how it turns out for you.

Fig  1

Thanks again for the great question. I hope you get it working the way you want. Let us know if you have any other questions, and thanks for reading Humbucker Soup!

Follow-Up Question

Name: Edwin Rivera

Message

Could I push my luck and ask for a diagram with 3 DPDT on/on microswitches and just use each switch as a simple on/off? 🙂

Answer

Hello Edwin, I think I found a solution if your three-way toggle switches have six lugs like the one in my diagram. I didn’t think of it before, but these are two stage switches, meaning two switches in one so we can use one side for the HOT wires and the other for the GROUND, which is what I did. If you don’t have six lugs on the switches, don’t want coil-splitting, or this doesn’t work, lol, just disconnect the wires on the left side of the switch but leave the wires from the pickups twisted together and switch to two-way switches, and you will have the standard wiring diagram you asked for.

Fig 2

Let us know how it works out or if you have any more questions.

Thanks again!

Follow-Up Question

Name: Edwin Rivera

Message

Thank you again Ed!!

I went ahead and just wired up the on/on DPDT as simple on/off switches.

I do have another 540P I might use as a guinea pig for this project.  The more I thought about it the more I was like “would I really ever be splitting 3 coils (or any combination of) on an old school MIJ shredder guitar”?

The answer could be “maybe” if I’m doing some chorusy reverby acousticy intros or outros like some classic Metallica stuff or some glammy 80s power ballads…

Man, I can’t thank you enough or tell you how much I appreciate you taking your time to respond to my emails with such detail and verbosity.

Thank you a million times over Ed!

-Edwin