Will your switches work if my Strat has humbuckers?
Do you still have three pickups? then, in a word, yes…
But remember, the term “humbucker” applies to a lot of different pickups. From my point of view, there two major categories of humbuckers: full-sized “Gibson” style humbuckers, and single-coil-sized humbuckers – this later category includes “hot rails” and “stacked” and “juniors,” etc – whether the coils are side-by-side or one on top of the other, if they are single-coil sized (no mods to a stock Strat pickguard), then they fit into this second category.
If you have any of the single-coil sized humbuckers, I recommend that you just select from my “regular” Strat mods, and NOT the ones designed for full-sized humbuckers. The Chromie, FAT-O, V.2, V.3, and all the Memphis Mods are what you should be considering. If you want to try splitting these smaller humbuckers, I suggest you use a push/pull under the tone or volume, and I’ll be happy to draw it up for you when you purchase a rotary.
If you have full-sized humbuckers, there are two categories for those: traditional two-conductor models and modern four-conductor models.
If you have a traditional two-conductor pickup in your bridge position (the most common spot), especially one with a braided shield, you cannot just install any of my “normal” Strat mods (listed above). Almost all of those mods LIFT the negative (aka ground) lead of the bridge pup for the series and out of phase tones, and that is not an easy task with a pickup that has the ground conductor running the entire length of the braided-shield lead, exposed and un-insulated. But, do not despair…
If you have the two-conductor bridge humbucker, I DO have three schemes that will work for you: the FAT-HSS, the V.4 and the V.5.
The FAT-HSS is simply a new set of instructions for the Original FAT-O – the switch is the same, but the installation is slightly different for your HSS, rather than an SSS. It is a three-throw rotary that gives you (#1) the five stock tones, (#2 ) the “magnificent seven” tones (all possible parallel combos), and (#3) takes you into “Gibson-ish” territory with a mid-series-neck pseudo front humbucker that can be played as such, or combined in parallel with your bridge humbucker to simulate the “both pups on” middle throw of a Gibson 3-way toggle.
The V.4 and V.5 are four-throw rotaries, and will give you the tones from the (above) three notches PLUS an additional throw with some spicy out-of-phase combos.
If your bridge pickup is the modern four-conductor style, you could use any of those three, and simply add coil-shunt on a push/pull as I recommended for the smaller humbuckers - OR try the FAT-O for Fatties (aka F4F). This switch was designed to control the coil-shunting as well as the new combos, and gives you the best of both worlds – the traditional Strat single coil combos and the simulated Gibson-ish two-humbucker combos. It doesn’t have any of the out-of-phase combos, but you can easily add a push/pull (or two) to reverse the phase of one (or two) of the pickups to get all the funk you could possibly use…
Back to the Chromie and FAT-O page...