Music man Silhouette wiring question

[dvdlei]

Hi all,

About 20 years ago I bought a Music Man Silhouette (SSS) which I later modded. The bridge single-coil was replaced with a Seymour Duncan Hot Rails, wired through an ON-ON-ON mini-switch for series / single-coil / parallel. I also added a tone knob that allows the neck pickup to be engaged regardless of the superswitch position.

I clearly remember that I originally found the full wiring diagram for this rather unusual setup on this forum. Over time, the internal wiring has become messy and a few connections have come loose, and I no longer have the original schematic to reference while restoring it.

Because some switch positions interact with the Silent Circuit and others do not, the wiring is now a bit too complex for me to confidently reconstruct from scratch.

Would anyone happen to still have, or recognize, this wiring scheme or be able to point me to the original diagram or thread? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

 

[dvdlei]

friendly bump

 

[DrKev]

With a standard 5-way switch, and standard switching the simplest option is to wire the neck and middle singles to the silent circuit as they were from the factory and leave the Hot Rails as is. It's already gonna be hum canceling in series and parallel positions, just live with the noise when it's in single coil mode.

The whole series/single/parallel switching with the silent circuit is the kind of thing I usually love to figure out but just makes my brain hurt way too much. I've already spent 30 minutes here rewriting this post numerous times, so I'm gonna stop now.

 

[beej]

I don't know how you have it wired up exactly, but there are a number of things that could be going on.

Basically it's three wiring schemes in one. As Kev says, I'd wire the Neck & Middle grounds directly to the Silent Circuit (Neck ground to Blue, Middle ground to Vioet), and use any stock SSS wiring scheme for the lever. Neck hot to position 4/5 on one side of the switch, Middle hot to position 2/3/4 on the other. (I'm assuming there's no autosplit of the humbucker in position 2 since you have a separate toggle switch that controls the coils.)

The Bridge is a little different. There are a ton of diagrams out there for series/split/parallel - make sure you follow the SD wiring colours. Like so:
SD On/On/On Switch Wiring

Finally, the hot output from the toggle goes to the lever switch, position 1/2, on the same side of the switch as the neck wires.

The Silent Circuit will only function for the Neck & Middle pickups. If you wanted to have a Silent Circuit on the Bridge split, you'd have to eliminate the parallel wiring.

As for the "add Neck" wiring on the tone pot, there are a few ways to do this. Not sure what you currently have wired up. Likely you have another wire from the Neck hot (where it's wired to the toggle) to a switch/pot, with the other side wired to the output of the lever switch.

Personally, if it were me, I'd simplify it. Ditch the "add Neck" and Bridge parallel options. Wire it up as a standard SSS guitar and use the toggle to split the Bridge in position 1 only, using the Silent Circuit to ground one coil so it's still hum cancelling. But it's your guitar, so it has to work for you.

Hope that helps.