Those with good memories (well, a couple of weeks), might remember I asked a few questions about changing a bridge humbucker and adding a split-coil switch. Well, for my next trick I've been thinking about fitting rails in the neck and making the thing into an HSH. Now the obvious thing is that the neck pickup can be coil-tapped. However it's also an opportunity to add some extra tricks, and I was thinking of allowing switching between strat 1-2-3-4-5 positions and LP-like neck+bridge. I'm also hoping to avoid messing about with the scratchplate, so the switching be done as a second DTDP switch (a push-pull on the tone control).
What I'm thinking is all 'mixed' positions in parallel, it's possible to set it up so in 'LP' mode 1&2 = H-S, 3 = H-H, 4&5 = S-H, the idea being that all the switch positions are similar between strat and LP modes and switching is smooth on the 5-way. Or I could put in an ultimate switch instead of the current five-way and that way be able to have positions 1 & 5 full neck or bridge h/b. Which isn't really necessary, since that's still possible by flipping the switch back to strat.
So that's two switches: split coil (turns both H to S) and LP/St which changes between:
1 H--, 2 HS-, 3 -S-, 4 -SH, 5 --H
1 H-S, 2 H-S, 3 H-H, 4 S-H, 5 S-H
... or with the 'ultimate' switch have just the 'H' in all 1 and 5 positions, which I don't think gains much.
I've already asked on another forum, but they aren't as opiniated as people here...
(I did get one suggestion, which is separate coil tap switches for bridge and neck and normal strat combinations except for 3 which becomes N+B in series, rather than parallel).
Does that make sense? Are there more useful set-ups that can be done with two switches and a five-way? Are super-switches any less reliable than regular blades? Is having those extra combinations any use anyway? Should I spend more time practising rather than worrying about this stuff? (Almost certainly, but I'm counting it as a sub-hobby.)
