Understanding wiring SE Custom 24 7-string pickups

[MrTail]

Hi, I'm about to start upgrading the default pickups of my PRS SE Custom 24 7-string Amethyst (2014). The factory default pickups are the PRS SE HFS Treble and PRS SE Vintage Bass. This guitar features a volume control, tone control with coil splitting push/pull and a 3-way blade switch.

I ordered the Mark Holcomb signature Seymour Duncan set (Alpha/Omega) to replace the original pickups.

The last few days I did some research, trying to understanding the Seymour Duncan wiring scheme, but also removed the guitar's back place to understand the existing wiring. That's where some confusion started.

Hope that some of you can give me a proper explanation on this. (Partly, I just want to understand, but I also want to make sure I will correctly connect the Seymour Duncan pickups.)

1. 3-way Blade switch
I had a hard time looking for official wiring schemes. As I understand right now: This blade switch has 8 pins... 12345678 .... the outer ones are skipped/not connected and the inner ones are connected together in pairs like this: x11OO22x ... basically pin 2+3 are input for pickup 1, pin 6+7 input for pickup 2 and pin 4+5 are output (that goes to the volume pot).

So I would expect that the hot wires (red) from the pickups will be soldered to 1 and 2. This way the switch can either select neck, bridge, or both.

Interestingly enough, one pickup's hot wire (red) is connected to switch input 1 (pin 2/3), but the other hot (red) is connected to the ground of the switch. (Pretty sure it's ground as a lot of other wires are connected to this basically connecting all grounds of all components.).

Instead, the ground is connected to the switch input 2 (ping 6/7). (Although, this is not entirely true, see next part, it's more indirectly connected through the push/pull switch)

Not sure if the terminology is right, but it seems that one of the pickups has its polarity switched.

2. Tone control push/pull
The push-pull control has 6 pins, or as I understand, 2x3 pins, basically connecting pin 1-2 when the tone button is pushed down, and connecting pin 2-3 when the tone button is pulled up.

In Seymour Duncan's example, you basically would solder it in such a way that the two extra pickup wires (white/green) are connected to ground when the tone is pulled up, effectively eliminating one of the coils, nence the humbucker becomes a single coil pickup.

In this PRS SE it looks a bit more complicated to me:
- One pickup (the one that has hot correctly connected to blade switch input 1) has implemented the coil splitting as SD would do... green/white is connected to pin 3, ground is connected to pin 2.
- The other pickup (the one that has ground connected to blade switch input 2) instead connects the ground of the pickup to pin 1, green/white to pin 3, and pin 2 (that selects 1 or 2 based on the push/pull) then is wired with a blue cable to the blade switch input 2.

I'm just trying to understand the reason for this. If I understand it correctly, basically one of the pickup's polarity has switched, by connecting it the other way around, and this rewiring via the push pull seems to select the other coil.

Secondly, based on this .. do I need to wire the SD pickups in a similar way, or should I just use their proposed (and more simplified wiring). I then could get rid of this blue wire and just connect both hot pickup wires to their designated blade inputs, ground the rest and wire both middle wires to the push/pull for coil splitting purposes.

Hopefully this story/question is clear, not sure if I can post pictures, this is just my first post. Thanks in advance for any clarifications here!

Kind regards,
Remko

 

[garrett]

You are correct, the HFS and VB are reverse polarity from each other, which is why the wiring is different for each pickup. You get the regular three humbucker tones, of course. Then when you pull the tone pot, it splits both pickups to screw coil and you have hum cancelling in the middle position.

Being reverse polarity, they have to be wired opposite of each other to be in phase.

HFS - Red is hot, black is ground
VB - Black is hot, red is ground

So, like you noticed, the HFS is the usual-looking split wiring. Hot to blade switch, series link to push/pull. Pull on the knob and it "moves the ground" as PRS used to say, which cancels the slug coil.

For the VB, hot goes to the bottom lug of the p/p, and the series link goes to the top lug of the p/p. Then there is a wire going from the middle lug of the p/p to the blade switch. Push/pull down, regular humbucker signal goes to the blade. Pull up and it "moves the hot" and cancels the slug coil.


You can plug the Duncans straight into this setup. Since they are NOT reverse polarity, black is hot and green is ground for both pickups. What you will get is the regular three humbucker sounds and where it differs a little is the splits.

Pull up on the p/p and you will have active the SCREW coil of neck and SLUG coil of bridge. It will still be hum cancelling in the middle position. A lot of people like it this way because the bridge in split mode sounds a little bit fuller.

 

[MrTail]

Sounds great! I now feel like having plenty of confidence to swap these pickups myself. Is going to be a fun project. Also purchased a set of locking tuners (+1, was unable to find a set for 7-string ) so this guitar is going to get a nice upgrade!

Thank you very much for your explanation.

 

[alantig]

Yep, it's a pretty easy conversion. I did exactly that swap on my SE CU24-7 (minus locking tuners, add US pots). Had to ream one hole (did a little ding that's covered by the knob), but that was it. It all went smoothly, and the Holcomb pups sound great in it. Good enough that I haven't considered swapping back even though I have a Holcomb 7 w/the same pups.

 

[kipkohl]

HFS - Red is hot, black is ground
VB - Black is hot, red is ground

Man, this wiring stuff is killing me! So on my SE stand. 24 the HFS is wired with the black hot and VB red is hot. Does it matter?

 

[garrett]

Man, this wiring stuff is killing me! So on my SE stand. 24 the HFS is wired with the black hot and VB red is hot. Does it matter?

Doesn't matter.

 

[kipkohl]

Thanks