245S Pickup parallel wiring

[MattGuitarRoberts]

Hi. I have a recent stock SE Zach Myers semi. I'm interested in trying the neck humbucker coils wired parallel instead of series. I've read and heard I could expect that to brighten/thin the tone a little and also drop the output a bit, and that sounds good to me personally. It has the green and white wires from each humbucker paired together in the wiring cavity. Can anyone tell me exactly what to do with those to change the neck pickups coils to parallel?

 

[Black Plaid]

I can't tell you exactly what to do with that particular pickup as I do not seem to be able to find a diagram for the pickup.

The theory is:

1. Wire both positive sides of each coil together
2. Wire both negative sides of each coil together
3. Connect positive sides to switch
4. Connect negative sides to ground

 

[MattGuitarRoberts]

The best I could deduce from inspection and a multimeter test is:
The RED is North Start and hence the hot output (goes direct to Vol lug)
The thicker BLACK is South Start and shield together (goes to ground)
The GREEN and WHITE are taped together for series. Multimeter suggests:
GREEN is North Finish (measured 4.15k with the red)
WHITE is South Finish
The heat-shrink on green & white will just pull off, and with a bit of untwisting with small pliers they will likely be able to pull apart without any heat applied. I wired white to the vol lug where the red hot is also, and green to ground (vol pot casing). The result sounds like correct parallel to me, it's still hum cancelling but has less lows and extended high frequency response, lower output. I did some good reference recordings before mod / after mod / after mod with pickup height and poles adjustment. I'm yet to give it extensive comparison to other guitars thru an amp at decent level but it was definitely worth trying. Main issue I would say is that since the parallel mod reduces the DC resistance of the pickup to around 2k, it tends to dominate over the bridge pickup when both pickups are selected. I may try the bridge parallel also, so that they're equal (although it may end up too thin). Other possibilities are the Spin-o-split (adjustable partial split with mini trimpots in the cavity).

 

[MattGuitarRoberts]

Update. I parallel wired the bridge pickup as well. So far, I dig it! It allows a more balanced and distinct middle position sound (both pickups on) and whilst it thinned the bridge too, some of that comes back when you raise the pickup and lower the pole pieces. I can always back the tone off a little if I want that, but I've been doing all tone comparisons with a clean sound, and in my experience, as you increase gain you usually need more brightness so mission accomplished.
To me, before the mod both pickups sounded like they had a low pass filter on, putting a limit on the top end around 3-4kHz. Now they've opened up and breathe more.
It may not be the end of the journey with this guitar, but it was quick, didn't cost anything (no components required) and easily reversible too.