Cutlass HSS Single Coil Swap - keeping Silent Circuit with 2-wire pickups

[Altmondo]

This question is sorta floating around, but I haven't been able to exactly decipher how to swap the stock single coils (3 wires) with 2-wire single coils, and keep the silent circuit.

I have seen beej mention that the silent circuit goes to the ground on the pickups - I'm just not exactly sure how to physically wire that up.
The green and grey wires both go to the circuit board, and the red hots go to the switch.

Thank You!
JB

 

[DrKev]

The old style silent circuit on (before the Cutlass came out) had the pickups grounded through the silent ciruit unit. There is no need to worry about that here and the pickups will just go to the circuit board. I would assume that if you have a standard 2-wire pickup it connects simply to the switch and to the appropriate "G" terminals on the circuit board.

BUT...

I don't know how the third wire on the stock pickups was involved in the silent circuit and buffer circuit, so I cannot tell you what to expect. I would contact Customer Service for details.

 

[beej]

I assume the third wire is shielding for the pickup, which would normally go to ground (not the Silent Circuit).

If you're replacing with unshielded, 2-wire pickups, just omit that wire.

 

[Altmondo]

That worked perfectly!

I dropped in a TV Jones HSS set I never wound up using on a different project.
Dead Silent!

I really have to hand it to EB - I’d say the TVJ setup does have a different sound, mostly the FilterTron. The Singles have a slightly different sonic profile, maybe slightly more ‘open’ sounding, but it’s not strikingly different.

That being said, I personally would NOT spend the dough on this swap if I didn’t already have the set sitting around.

In comparison, when I’ve swapped pickups on a run of the mill S-style guitar it was a major difference.

 

[Altmondo]

 

[DrKev]

Awesome! Great job!

 

[beej]

Nice!