How to wire your stratocaster, test pots, select capacitor and make tone control wiring decisions.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ต.ค. 2024
- A step by step demonstration of wiring your stratocaster pickups and controls. How to test audio pots, capacitor selection and tone control options.
I just subbed for ever that is a true how to video good execution of when where and why now I can do it thanks bro
So glad it helped you out a bit! Appreciate the response!
Are you kidding me? 'Hope that was helpful'? I never attempted this until watching this video. Very very helpful. Thank you!
Thank you so much one of the best videos have come a cross explaining the procedure of wiring the Stratocaster guitar in a standard way and step by step which made it even a beginner to be encouraged as long knowing the basics of soldering . This is what I can call it the A B C for a standard Stratocaster Guitar wiring. And please do accept our gratitude and appreciation for your spectacular educational video. And hope you share more topics as well because for sure a millions of people will enjoy and learn the A B C method in any subject. I salut you my friend and best greetings and regards from ENGLAND 🏴 UK 👍🎸👏
So glad it was helpful! Thanks so much for the comment!
This is the best video explanation I've seen for wiring a strat and I've researched a lot of them. You are a fantastic teacher and your camera angles are great! Thank you so much for taking the time to do this.
You're very welcome!
By far, the best explanation of this traditional wiring diagram than anything else out there anywhere!!! GLORIOUS!!!
Wow, thanks! So glad it was helpful!
Thank you for the awesome video. You have an amazing ability to talk and explain everything to the tiniest detail. I’m building a partscaster and just finished the body/neck work. After watching your video I’m pretty sure I’ll do a good job wiring the new electronics.
Great information! Really helped out in figuring out a wiring problem with a bridge pickup I was having.
Only criticism is on the soldering in the video... that's how you get cold joints easily. Dab of flux, tin and heat both components to join; 'scooping' solder onto cold metal, and not using flux on top of that almost guarantees a poor or bad joint. Especially on vintage/oxidized parts.
Ps. I took notes and made multiple diagrams until I was sure I knew exactly what you were explaining so finitely!
So glad it was helpful!
Thank you so much for doing this! You're a terrific instructor! Very grateful for this video!
Thorough, Quick and Easy --- Great explanation on the switch Legs..
So glad it could help you out!
Because I did'nt have a .047uf cap for my Strat I had to use a .1uf Jensen ( yellow+blue) from an old radio. I could not believe how it changed the tone even when the tone pot was on 10, I really liked it because the tone pot (CTS 250k Linear) became extra sensitive, just 1 notch down and the tone kicked in. I found a .033uf "Admiral" cap UK made and put that in later and it works beautifully but that old Jensen was amazing. I changed it because it was just too big but I learned that I prefer physically larger caps for the middle and bridge on a Strat. The fun is (as the man said) in trying various designs and values. If you can find the "WIMA" rectangular caps try them, for some reason the red .047uf adds extra springyness to a Strat.
Thank you Roy Cox for an excellently clear and detailed instruction ..! .. Merci Roy Cox pour une instruction extrêmement claire et détaillée ..! 🥇👑🙂🎶
On most guitars they run a ground wire to each pot, which is not necessary if the pick guard is shielded (Strat pick guards should be shielded) because the pots are grounded by touching the shielding. Also, when checking the pickups with the switching I tap all pickups just to make sure I have sound where I should and no sound where I shouldn't. Same when checking tone. Great video. Thanks!
What happens if the pots are grounded together AND the pick guard is shielded.?
The best and clearest instructions on ow to wire your guitar
I learned more about wiring by the time I finished the first half of this video, than I have ever known. I feel confident now that I can probably do this myself. Soldering has always been my weak point, but watching you has shown me so much. Thank you for making this video and making me a more knowledgeable guitar geek. :)
JHPRS so glad it could help!!!
Exactly this. Thank you for this video!
i know Im randomly asking but does any of you know of a way to get back into an instagram account??
I was dumb lost the account password. I appreciate any tips you can give me.
@Jace Walker instablaster =)
@Sullivan Crosby I really appreciate your reply. I found the site on google and Im in the hacking process atm.
Seems to take quite some time so I will reply here later with my results.
Thank you, thank you!! Your video is very informative & confidence boosting. Your brief explanations on each components made this video top notch.
Dude! Awesome! I would've paid for this! You explained it perfect! Thank you!
Roy, thank you for making this video. You made it easy to understand and I'm confident now that I can do this.
Thanks man did put some cts in my strat today, it worked super.I was sodering for the first time in my life, and used lead free sodering wire xd cheers from LEAD FREE Croatia !
damn sir, you are very good. you explained it to the point with very clear voice and detail instructions. thank you very much! if you live near me i will buy you beers!
I’m trying this myself now thanks nice video
Thank you so much for this roy I wouldnt even dreamed of attempting to do this myself but after watching you I succesfully installed a dimarzio crunch into my strat and it sounds incredible and as a bonus eliminated a tiny bit of hum i had. thanks again
Will finally try and set up my strat without taking it to a tech, thank you so much this is really helpful.
Brilliant. Straight and to the point, just how I like it. Thanks.
excellent info. thanks so much for the uncluttered direction.
The best demonstration I've seen. Helped me out a lot!..thanks!
Thank you! I finally know which legs are which and the proper direction that switch goes. (They don't mark their stuff...) Now to build a Nashville-ish Telly with S, P90, Gold Foil... Oh yeah!
I'd have paid real money for that. Thank you. A thousand times, thank you.
great video. if you wire the capacitor as shown in the video your neck tone pot will act like a volume pot.
That’s actually incorrect. The exact wiring I show in this video sets volume as your first pot nearest the bridge, then your two tone pots. This is how all of my strats and my customers strats are wired. Believe me I wouldn’t make a video that I wasn’t sure was 100 percent correct. Check the details again you may have accidentally missed something along the way.
@@roycox4415 Great video. But I ended up with that very issue. The fix was to connect one leg of the cap to both pots via lugs, and the other leg to the back of the neck/middle pot for ground. Then it all worked. I dont know enough to know why, but that was the fix on mine.
Just watched the whole thing 👍🏻 a Nice little late night crash course 😃
thanks for a clear explanation on the switch it realy helped
Thank You Roy. This is the best video to me, I have seen, on soldering in the pickups, pots, and switch.. Very Good. I am getting ready to do my first guitar.
Thank you so much for this detailed video!! I learned a lot and it's a pleasure to hear you sharing your knowledge. Best from Berlin, Jesper
Cheers mate that was the only thing on youtube that wasnt some hipster show rushing through shit and not explaining it
true... and a hipster with irrelevant, obnoxious shred way too loud in the background. :-)
Who hurt you?
Dude, I cannot begin to explain how much your explanation and demonstration has given me the confidence in my Jaguar project. Thank you so much
That’s what I want to hear! Get it!
Great video explaining clear and precise thanks
You're welcome!
Very helpful, thank you very much!
Excellent Video! Thank you!
Thanks for the lesson. Very clear and useful.
Wow, I know this corny but you just taught me something that’s very important to me. I’ve been putting this off for some long because electronics are the one and only thing I’ve never got my hands on... and of course, it was super easy.
You just helped me build my first custom guitar. Thank you very much.
hey folks this video does not show the ground wire being placed! I approached this from the "I want to change out my pups" and the guitar already had the ground wire in place. To be clear and more helpful, you DO want a ground wire in place on a strat or strat copy wire configuration. You want a wire soldered to the trem claw and then ran through the cavity to the cavity ground screw, if there is one. If you do NOT have a ground screw in or around the controls cavity, you can run the wire from the trem claw through the cavity ground wire hole (a small hole that goes from the trem claw through the side of the control cavity) to the top of the volume pot. You then want to run a small ground wire from the side of the volume pot to the middle pot and then to the side of the bridge tone pot or 3rd pot. This is typical grounding for a strat. If you have any questions about this please ask in the comments section and Id be happy to help the best I can!
The wire (usually black) that goes to ground (-ve) that is the COMMON wire throughout any circuit. A battery has a *+* and *-* where the " - " is connected to ground for example.
most circuits have to a have a ground to work....Just run a black wire from the tremolo claw to the top of the volume pot with the other ground wires like where the negative pick up wires are...
Thanks man! Helped me out great :)
I have a fixed hardtail bridge do I stick the ground wire under it ?
Yeah, I've seen guitar's with only 1 white wire on the input/output & wondered why just the 1, when others have both, a white & black wire.
thank you so much sir! I'm doing my first pickup swap, and watching someone skilled at it explain the process was priceless.
You’re more than welcome! So glad it could help!
Thank you, you are _the_ perfect teacher!
This is by far and away the best instructional video on this subject I’ve come across. I’ve watched countless vids when I started doing my own work on my guitars. You sir, can solder
Right? SAME!!!
Bravo! This should be the number one video offered by TH-cam when someone searches for "strat" wiring.
For once the input jack wires are long enough. I fail to understand why usually they’re so short you can barely access the underside of the pickguard for working on it. Great video! Thanks
Great point!
Perfect how to video.
Thank u a thousand times thank you for this helpful video!!! :)
Daaamn.
In 1983-84 my parents bought me a Squire Strat. Black and rosewood.
That guitar was one of my constant companions for many many years.
I’ve never mastered the instrument but it’s my baby.
Until 20 years ago when I stopped playing and the guitar sat in a closet.
This Christmas I took it out it was a wreck.
I’d forgotten the drunken nights, the experiments (modded the switch and pots for some unfathomable reason) and the ridiculous strings.
I looked up the serial number and good lord - it’s a Japanese made squire that some knuckleheads buy for 2k.
Well - the body on mine has way to many nicks, character i call it to be worth anything like that.
But I love it.
So I fixed all that was wrong - truss , bridge etc.
except a mod gone wrong or maybe just a bad switch that muted the neck pickup- the one with the sweetest tone IMHO.
I just spent two hours using this tutorial and lo and behold - my baby works again.
THANK YOU!!!
My baby thanks you.
Great story and thanks so much for the comment. So glad it helped you get her fixed!
Thanks for this video. I can’t figure out why the vol pot is constant on. I did what you show in this video and I can’t figure it out. It’s just constant on. It’s just three connections far as I know the tab of the vol pot to the first tab of the switch jumped to last tab metal side of switch but I just can’t figure it out
I'm impressed! Your close up step by step instruction makes this wiring undertaking possible. You don't just point and talk, you solder it for us all to see. It just about brings me to tears, that you make this doable for me. Thanks.
Great video. Thank you.
Thank you very very much!
You are welcome!
did i see this right, the capacitor as soldered to the middle potentiometer is just shorting the first leg to body ground? this truly is a very unique setup as twenty other instruction videos and slide shows have the capacitor always between body ground and the leg of a potentiometer. seems very un “standard wiring” to me.
This is most likely due to the entire picture when it comes to your recording setup. For example, if you are running everything through high end cables and everything is as noise free as possible you may notice some step down in high end frequencies, overall quality, etc when you then run things through a patch bay with low quality connections but again even this scenario is negligible in most cases. If your setup sounds good then it doesn’t matter, go with it.
Really helpful, thank you!
Pots can be logarithmic A or linear B. which are in this?
Hi Roy. Any way you could do a video using a standard strat setup being 3 single coil, 1 volume, and 2 tone but replacing the standard 5 way blade switch with a 2 pole rotary switch? I've scoured the internet and cant find a single diagram for it. ;/ This is by far the most clear video on soldering guitar components that I've found.
After 5 years of collecting dust my axe does once again grindeth! Thankyou for the clear and accurate instructional, huge help. Now feel confident enough to try out some different wiring and capacitor configurations to see what kinda mojo is lurking within the spectrum.
WOW! You are a fabulous instructor. I thank you so very much. 💗 I'm going to be wiring a 10-way switch into an HSS as soon as the parts arrive. Your lesson was well received. I appreciate the pointers, tips, tricks, and reminders. I'm very 🙏 grateful. Thanks again in subscribed and all ears.
Really appreciate that and I’m glad the video was able to help you out a bit!
Great job
Thanks for the great video! Where did you get the shield plate?
thank you for uploading and showing us this step by step! best how to video on TH-cam tried the wiring diagrams and just confused me more.... thanks so much!
thanks so much for leaving such a nice comment. Im so glad it was useful to you!
Leo Gonzalez I agree. The diagrams online tell you what to do, but not why you're doing it. This explains what and why to do, and takes all the mystery out of it.
Great video, followed along great with it, but I have one problem and I can't figure it out. When I turn the volume control down, the sound doesn't get any quieter. I've double checked the locations of everything, and it seems to look good. Any idea what it could be?
Hold the iron in place to heat the joint and then apply a small amount of solder. Let it flow and then remove the iron. Don't move the joint until it cools. Don't poke the iron at the joint or move and scrape it around. It should be neat and tidy, and the solder should be shiny and not crazed, which will occur if you move the wires while the solder is cooling.
Agreed
if you used copper sheet metal for the mounting plate you could ground everything to the mounting plate
So if you dont want to press the leg of the volume pot against it like you have done, do you use a wire instead to ground it?
This is the best wiring video that I have ever seen. Thank you very much!
Man are you a great instructor - thank you very much for doing this!!!!!!
Thanks for the refresher. Great stuff. Do you have, or know of a video to wire a HSS configuration using a s1 Fender knob and pot type?
Great video. Say I want to install some new pickups, wich are humbuckers in single coil size, does anything about the wiring change? I know that when I want to install humbuckers, I need to install 500 k pots instead of 250 k pots, and I need a 0.022 compasitor, but does anything about the wire placement change?
Very helpful video for someone about to do this by their self for the first time! I don’t know if you mentioned, but what kind of solder is best for working on my guitar? Hopefully you will still reply after a few years! Lol
sorry i missed the comment. i use kester 80/20 solder for guitars
Thank you so much. Got me through it, I greatly appreciate it!
Great instructional. Many thanks!
hey roy,,,hows it going, thanks for the tips works good i can under stand what your are saying,,,,thanks alot,,,,
I learned SO much from this. Thank you!
You're a great instructor! You've demystified the whole process, from component choices, to soldering techniques, as well as signal flow! Thanks so much for all you do!
Mark Alexander thanks so much! That means a lot. I’m glad it helped you out!
Awesome video, thank you very much for explaining everything in detail!
I have watched this a few times. Excellent sir, I learn from you! Thank you.
So well done. I'm a lawyer who has all the electrical and soldering experience necessary to pass the Bar exam, so your detailed explanation of not just what to do, but why, is greatly appreciated.
Such a great video - really explains the process
I have done wiring and soldering in the past. I have 3 used working Fender American Standard pickups. All new pots, switches, wires, jack, .047UF Orange Capacitor and new (good)solder connections per your video. Used copper tape to ground the inside of the body cavity and the underside of the pick guard. All put together and I have the same loud hum I had before? Got any ideas?
Curious as to why Northwest Guitars UK video shows different soldering connections to Capacitor?
Very informative video, thanks man.
Thanks for the video, I am pretty versed on capacitors, treble bleeds etc, but I am not confident on the soldering. You video made see that I may actually be able to do this myself on my next project. What GG Cloth wire do you recommend ? Thanks for making this video !!
To see this video from you was very helpful and inspirational to me go dare and put my hands on my guitars and start to make them several mods and changes, making them a lot better than they used to be. So thank you so much for sharing your experience and greetings from Argentine!
Can one assume that wiring an electric bass guitar works the same way? Would the pot values or capacitor values be different?
Great work, Thank Roy.😊 I have a squier stratocaster from 2014 . 😢
I'm an electronics tech capacitors dry out with age they should be changed in all older guitars don't buy old ones they're junk use new
Well done Roy ,a very informative video, lm a beginner in all aspects of the guitar and this really helped me to understand things much better,regards Rory
Thank You! I have a wire grounding all the pots together. Also the middle pot has a capacitor (jc m3r.022K) on the inside post to ground. The rear pot is a double (tome knob is 0 in the middle). The wire from the rear double pot going to the 5 way switch comes off the lower middle post. The outside lower post connects to a diode and the center post on the upper pot, the diode goes to ground. A small capacitor (jc m3r.022K) connects to the upper outside post and goes to ground. Can you tell me if this is correct? Whoever installed this left a large pill of chicken poop looking solder on the front pot and it is burnt color like it was overheated. will this make it inoperable?
Great info here. It helped me getting the audio pots working again. Cold soldering...
Thanks Roy, this is the best video I've seen on the subject, now I can go fix my guitar!
Best educational video by miles! Thank you :)
Very informative and didatic video! thanks for sharing your experience; it helped a lot. Cheers!
Rockn rolly, Roy cox!👍
I just used this video to replace my strats pickup switch but now I kinda want to build a parts-caster
I can do it with the Orange drop 022uf capacitor minha guitarra é hss
Hi Roy, just found you. Greetings from the UK. What a fantastic video to help me with my pick up swap. Ive used this video ( wired directly as you suggest) and it works very well, except for one small thing. I've put a single coil size hot rail humbucker in the bridge of my 2019 Fender MIM Strat player SSS. I'm not looking at coil switching the HB, but want the new bridge HB to be controlled by the lower tone 2 control. So everything taps out ok, and the tone controls are as they should, except on switch position 2 (mid & bridge) . On this position, Tone 1 should control the mid and Tone 2 should control the bridge. They do but both tone controls have to be over the value of 5 before any change in tone. I have linked out on the switch the neck to mid connection. Ive used one cap across the two tones . Have I done something silly. Any help would be appreciated . Thank you
That could be a pot that isn’t working correctly. Can you swap the pot and try to rewire and test?
Thank you so much for sharing yer video and knowledge.
Awesome video, gives me confidence that I can do this myself. I can solder, But I was hesitant. I didn't want to destroy anything. So i practice on crappy stuff lol!! Ty Again awesome Vid!! Got ya another sub!!
So glad it helped!
Thank you very much for this video very clear and easy to follow, got my 1983 squire strat working again.