SE 245S pickups (wiring adventures with a ZM)

[MattGuitarRoberts]

The SE 245S set in my Zach Meyers always tended to make the neck pickup output much stronger than the bridge, even though the bridge is said to have considerably more winds. (FYI the general reason for this is that strings move a much greater distance back and forth at the neck and far smaller movement at the bridge). To even them up I had to sink the neck pickup way down below the mounting ring and the bridge up pretty high. My pickups have the 4 wires plus ground (I believe it’s red and green start and end of the North coil and black and white start and end of the South coil). They are traditionally wired series with the green and white wires bridged, so the red is HOT and the black goes to ground (the black wire is actually bound to the ground wire with an extra layer of insulation so it looks like one wire but since they terminate at the same place I guess it makes sense to have them together). I found that I wanted a brighter less heavy sound out of the neck pickup anyway so I wired it in parallel by taking the red and white wires to the volume pot and the green to ground. This worked great as the reduction in output balanced the volume of the two pickups better, and brighter sound good for blues and classic rock lower gain. The only problem now is that wiring a Humbucker in parallel lowers its overall DC resistance to about a quarter of the series wiring so we’re talking 2 ohms (don’t mistake this for a reflection of output level, the volume only goes down about 20%, output is about much more than DC resistance). So when the pickup switch is in middle position, since the neck pickup is the path of least resistance the sound is dominated by the neck pickup tone with very little bridge tone coming through. If I wind the neck volume pot back to 8.5 ish all of a sudden the bridge pickup tone comes in. I could just find that sweet spot every time I play and use it successfully, but that’s pretty touchy and I’m looking into installing a resistor somewhere to achieve the same result, maybe even having the switch combine the two pickups is series rather than parallel that could also work.
I’ll keep experimenting with this for a bit, but I think in the end I’ll be putting in a set of covered low output PAF style pickups for a vintage LP tone. I’m not a high gain guy and I like to be able to swap from a Strat or Tele to a Humbucker guitar without there being a big difference in gain structure.
Thoughts/experiences?

 

[chicagoslim]

Like you, I'm not a high gain guy. I mostly play on the edge of breakup. Besides for PRS, I also play Fender Strat's.

I installed core Starla pickups in my Zach Myers. I like it much better now, but the Starla pickups are pretty had to find. I actually prefer the sound of my S2 Custom 22's.


My main guitar is a S2 Custom 22, with a single volume and tone controls. Like you, I've lowered my neck pickup, in order to get a brighter, bridge dominant, middle position sound. I've even considered removing the split feature for the bridge pickup, so that only the neck pickup will split, when I pull the tone control.


For a different sound on my other S2 Custom 22, I installed a set of Porter Gatekeeper pickups. The neck pickup is a low wind, low output (6.8k) alnico 2, and the bridge is a low output (7.8k) alnico 5 pickup. Since these are lower output pickups, I didn't wire them to split. These pickups are inexpensive and give me a little warmer sound.

 

[MattGuitarRoberts]

Thanks chicagoslim, enjoyed the pics and how you’re chasing your sound with these guitars!