Custom 24 with Seymour Duncan Pickups - Wiring Tonal difference?

[nleavitt]

I have a 2000 PRS Custom 24 that I recently refurbished with all new electronics and pickups. For electronics, I dropped in the PRS CU24 3-way switch conversion kit with a three way switch and tone push-pull (replacing the 5 way rotary). For pickups, I put in the SD Hot Rodded set (JB/Jazz) in place of the original HFS/Vintage Bass pickups, which were in bad shape physically. Now, I've seen other posts on wiring, mainly about matching wire colors, flipping the SD magnets, etc. My question is a bit different, not how to do it, but more about which wiring method to use. So, I can wire the pickups in two different ways:

1. PRS Scheme: Drop in the SD pickups, (flip one magnet), match the wires to PRS accordingly and leave the PRS wiring as-is.

2 SD Scheme: Leave the SD magnets as-is, use the PRS pots, 3-way switch, caps, but re-wire between the pots/switch, etc. exactly to match the corresponding Seymour Duncan wring diagram.

Question is, will there be a tonal difference between these wiring schemes or is it just two different ways to get to exactly the same place? Not trying to argue SD vs. PRS pickups, etc. that's another discussion entirely. More, the question is trying to determine if there is a component of the "PRS sound " associated with the wiring only. The same question could be reversed: If you took a core PRS guitar with original PRS pickups, etc., kept all original components but rewired in accordance with a SD or other standard or typical wiring diagram for the same configuration (flip magnet if needed), would there be a tonal difference?

Thoughts and suggestions are appreciated.

 

[garrett]

It's all about hum cancelling. I don't think you'll hear any difference aside from that. Not all PRS pickup sets are reverse polarity, btw.

The difference would be:
Original HFS/VB are hum cancelling if you combine slug/slug or screw/screw of the two pickups when split.
Stock SD are hum cancelling if you combine slug/screw of the two pickups when split
If you do the flip on one of the SD pickups, you get get the hum cancelling with slug/slug or screw/screw of the two pickups.

Note that the most commonly shared SD wiring gives you SLUG coil when split to ground. That can be easily adjusted, however.

 

[nleavitt]

Thanks for the info. I initially wired in the SD pickups using the PRS scheme and something wasn’t right. A bit muddy sounding. One weird thing I found when checking this out is that the packaged PRS drop in kit out of the package didn’t exactly match the wiring diagrams on the PRS website. Neither the pre nor post 2007 diagrams. It was a hybrid of the two. I took the wires off all the pots/switches and wired directly to the default SD diagram (except leaving the cap on the vol pot for tone bleed). It does a slug/slug split by default which like you said can be easily switched. SD says they do that because the slug side on their pickups is stronger than the screw side. Seems to work ok and sounds better than I had before. Still I want to see if PRS wiring provides an advantage. I don’t notice any noticeable hum yet.