Forever guitar - for now

[zguitar71]

Wow! That is a beauty. I love the spruce top. 

[rockabilly69]

Great looking guitar congrats on that one!!!

For another opinion. If I were you, I would dump the HRW pickup, install one very good sounding low output PAF style pickup, (Throbak MXV-101, Wolfetone Legend, etc) and forget the switching. The reason being is that with a good pickup, and some quality 500K pots, there should be enough variation in tone to get all you need out of that beautiful guitar. And I've never liked the sound of any split coil, and parallel wiring in humbuckers sounds anemic to me, and yes, I have tried it too many times to count. I also think with a good amplifier there will be plenty of tonal options. That guitar is a beautiful example of simplicity, I would keep it that way. Where I would spend my money is the pickup.  

[Plentine]

Good evening Rockabilly.  Thanks for your suggestion about the change of pickups for the guitar.  I will consider it when starting the project. Thank you! 

[Gitfiddler]

Just to add a slightly dissenting opinion, HRW's sound great with archtops.  I have one in my H575 and love it.  YMMV.

[rockabilly69]

1 hour ago, Gitfiddler said:

Just to add a slightly dissenting opinion, HRW's sound great with archtops.  I have one in my H575 and love it.  YMMV.

We're just keepin' him coming and going Tim  

[Plentine]

I have HRW pickups on my other Heritage guitars and love the sound they produce.  I appreciate the recommendations to try other pickups and will look into them.  Most likely gonna stay with the HRW's.  Just looking for a way to get another tone out of the single pickup with the installation of the Triple Shot ring.  I am putting in a new wiring harness with new 500k pots so might as well do some inexpensive modification of the pickup at the same time.  Now to determine where the green and yellow wires from the HRW pickup go on the circuit board of the Triple Shot ring.  Any ideas on that would be appreciated.  Thanks and have a great week!

[bobmeyrick]

20 hours ago, Plentine said:

Good morning Bob!  Thanks for your message.  I'm going with the Triple Shot Ring for my HRW pickup.  The wire color code for the HRW pickups are Brown is hot, White is ground,   Green and Yellow are tied together for use with a push pull pot. 

For the circuit board on the Triple Shot ring pictured below, the HRW pickup brown wire (hot) probably goes to the R (hot) on the circuit board, the White (ground) would go to G (gound) on the circuit board, the bare wire goes to the GND (Ground) spot to the right of the W spot.  I'm not sure where the green and yellow wires go on the Triple Shot ring circuit board in the picture below.  Any thoughts on that would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you.

Be careful, the circuit board is set up for Seymour Duncan pickups, which have black (B) as the 'hot' wire and green (G) as 'ground'.

There are a few websites which list the pickup wire colours for different makers, some of which seem to contradict each other. Since HRWs are modified Schallers, I assume the wiring is the same. Looking at this chart, the equivalent wires are SD Red = Schaller White, SD Black = Schaller Yellow, SD Green = Schaller Green, SD White = Schaller Brown.

Stewmac has the wiring for Schaller pickups here.

For normal humbucking mode with the SD pickups, the black wire is 'hot', the green wire is 'ground', red and white are joined.

For normal humbucking mode with the Schaller pickups, the yellow wire is 'hot', the green wire is 'ground', brown and white are joined.

However, when I looked at Schaller pickups I've taken out of my Heritages, they were wired brown wire is 'hot', the white wire is 'ground', green and yellow are joined - see attached photo. It looks like the functions of brown/yellow and green/white were reversed. This would seem to be the case with the HRW also.

So, what to do? I'd start with green - R, brown - B, white - G and yellow - W. If that works, fine. If not, try swapping brown/yellow and green/white, i.e. white - R, yellow - B, green - G and brown - W. Bare wire to Gnd in each case.

Hope that helps. Thoughts from anyone else are welcome!

[Plentine]

Thanks Bob.  The HRW pickup has a brown wire (hot) probably goes to the R (hot) on the circuit board, the White (ground) would go to G (gound) on the circuit board, the bare wire goes to the GND (Ground) spot to the right of the W spot.  I'm not sure where the green and yellow wires go on the Triple Shot ring circuit board and will look into that a little more.  Thanks for your suggestion!

[TalismanRich]

You should be able to determine which wires are associated with which coil with a simple multimeter.   If you know which wires were wired to the legs of the pot (that's going to be the hot) then you've got everything you need.

[bobmeyrick]

20 hours ago, Plentine said:

Thanks Bob.  The HRW pickup has a brown wire (hot) probably goes to the R (hot) on the circuit board, the White (ground) would go to G (gound) on the circuit board, the bare wire goes to the GND (Ground) spot to the right of the W spot.  I'm not sure where the green and yellow wires go on the Triple Shot ring circuit board and will look into that a little more.  Thanks for your suggestion!

As I said, SD pickups have black as the hot wire, not red. I know that's a bit counterintuitive as in other situations we'd associate 'red' with 'hot'. I'd agree that white should go to G.

 

12 hours ago, TalismanRich said:

You should be able to determine which wires are associated with which coil with a simple multimeter.

Good idea. I did this to confirm what the charts say, so I unsoldered the green and yellow wires in the picture. The 'hot' coil is brown/yellow, the 'ground' coil is green/white. The equivalent for SD pickups is 'hot' coil is black/white, the 'ground' coil is red/green.

Based on that, go with with green - R, brown - B, white - G and yellow - W.

I've attached an image cropped from the site I linked to in my previous post. Duncan Designed pickups have the same colours as regular Seymour Duncan pickups. Note that the way Heritage wired the Schaller pickups was to use 'north finish' (brown) as hot and 'south finish' (white) as ground.

Lindy Fralin has an interesting article on humbucker wiring here.

[Plentine]

Just now, bobmeyrick said:

As I said, SD pickups have black as the hot wire, not red. I know that's a bit counterintuitive as in other situations we'd associate 'red' with 'hot'. I'd agree that white should go to G.

 

Good idea. I did this to confirm what the charts say, so I unsoldered the green and yellow wires in the picture. The 'hot' coil is brown/yellow, the 'ground' coil is green/white. The equivalent for SD pickups is 'hot' coil is black/white, the 'ground' coil is red/green.

Based on that, go with with green - R, brown - B, white - G and yellow - W.

I've attached an image cropped from the site I linked to in my previous post. Duncan Designed pickups have the same colours as regular Seymour Duncan pickups. Note that the way Heritage wired the Schaller pickups was to use 'north finish' (brown) as hot and 'south finish' (white) as ground.

Lindy Fralin has an interesting article on humbucker wiring here.

Good morning Bob.  Thanks for taking the time to test the wires to identify and  determine their placement on the circuit board on the Triple Shot ring.  Always grateful for the response from this community.  Thank you!

[bobmeyrick]

18 minutes ago, Plentine said:

Good morning Bob.  Thanks for taking the time to test the wires to identify and  determine their placement on the circuit board on the Triple Shot ring.  Always grateful for the response from this community.  Thank you!

You're welcome. Keep us informed of how it goes!