Silhouette Special Wiring - Do You Know?

[dfung]

Rewiring my EBMM Silhouette Special, but wanted to better understand how things are wired with the stock super switch. There are 4 individual circuits (poles) each with 5 contacts and a common.

1. Any folks able to tell me the signal path for switch in #3 position? I see that the Neck and Humbucker are active in setting #3 (lower left and lower right bank or circuits), but I don't understand what is going on with the upper left circuit, where the neck and humbucker's neg wires re tied together. The com for that upper left bank is then tied to the white and black in position #2 of the lower right bank. I believe Red (north single coil in the humbucker stays active), while the remaining wires of the humbucker get shorted together, effectively disabling the south coil of the humbucker.

2. How does #2 work out? Is it that Black and white now on the lower right bank of #2 is hot, red is not active, and green is grounded, just leaving the south coil active with the middle pickup?

I'd like to put in a toggle to split the humbucker in position #5. But I have yet to figure out how I'd do that given the current wiring....

 

[harmaes]

You can run a wire from lug 2 (bottom left where black and white both are connected) to the toggle switch one side and from the middle lug of the toggle switch to lug 1 top left. That leaves the south coil active. AFAIKT there's no option to wire it to the north coil. You can always run from lug 2 (bottom left) to the switch to ground or hot but then you have an issue that in some position you short the complete humbucker (depending on which coil you split with the toggle of course).

I think you mean split the bridge humbucker only in position #1? #5 is the neck position where the bridge isn't active.

From what I quickly checked from the current wiring is that in position #3 one coil of the bridge is wired to the neck pickup. The humbucker (inner) north coil should be active in #3.
You can ignore those and only connect the wire as I mentioned.

In #2 there's an auto split that leaves the (outer) south coil of the bridge humbucker.

In general for the humbucker: Black+white to ground leaves the north coil, to hot leaves the south coil active.

 

[harmaes]

Without checking this diagram first it seems I was correct about the wiring

 

[harmaes]

Does this help?

 

[beej]

Hi there-

1. Any folks able to tell me the signal path for switch in #3 position?

There are a few things going on in position #3.

- The neck pickup is selected (bottom left).
- And the bridge pickup is also selected, in parallel (bottom right), since those two sections of the switch are connected.
- To split the bridge pickup, the point where the coils meet (black/white) is being grounded by means of wiring them to the Silent Circuit's blue wire, so they're grounded without any hum (top left).
- However the Silent Circuit isn't actually needed here, since the combinations of coils is already humbucking. So, the Silent Circuit is being grounded via the yellow wire, so its output is grounded. (Affecting the above step.) Makes the whole thing noiseless.

2. How does #2 work out?

You have the middle pickup in parallel with the lower coil of the bridge pickup (green=ground, white=hot). And again, the Silent Circuit is grounded, since it's not needed for noiseless operation in this configuration.

I'd like to put in a toggle to split the humbucker in position #5

You mean position #1? There are a couple of ways to do this.

Normally people use the top coil for the split. Since you already have the Silent Circuit, you might as well use it so the split is noiseless.

Easiest way is probably to build off the top left portion of the switch. Wire the toggle between position #3 and position #1. (So when you throw the toggle, it'll only work in position #1 and not mess anything else up.)

Hope that helps, and I haven't made a glaring error!