(C) 2025 Hank Wallace
So I have had this Fender Stratocaster 50th anniversary model for over 20 years now. It’s a great guitar, with locking (that is, usable) tremolo, two single coils and and a humbucker. Fender SCN noiseless pickups came stock, but they sounded horrible, so I replaced them with a couple Suhr single coils, and I dewound the humbucker to get more high end. The guitar sounds great now in the five non-S1 pickup switch positions. See my article about that here.
However, the extra S1 positions (with the volume control center switch depressed) sound pretty bad. Fender set up the wiring to connect the pickups in this horribly muddy set of configurations, parallel and series/parallel. It appears that they appointed a humbucker fanatic to design the wiring, and the guitar loses all its character with the S1 switch activated.
After 20 years, I could stand it no more, so I searched for the schematic of the S1 switching arrangement online, without success. I finally removed the pick guard and traced out the wiring and drew a schematic. Here, for apparently the first time in the history of the entire Internet, is that schematic:
It took three trials of rewriting to come up with some interesting pickup combinations, and here is the modified schematic (changes in red):
The five positions of the pickup selector with the S1 switch UP are the typical Strat connections:
- Neck pickup
- Neck + Middle pickup
- Middle pickup
- One Humbucker Coil + Middle pickup
- Humbucker
I did not want to mess with the standard connections, so they are all the same.
With the S1 switch depressed, the rewiring produces this set of connections:
- 1/2 Humbucker + Neck pickup
- Neck + Middle pickup (same as non-S1)
- Middle + Neck + Humbucker pickup
- Humbucker + Middle pickup
- Humbucker + Neck pickup
Positions 1 and 5 have a very similar sound. They both have a lot of the throaty growl of the neck pickup, plus some of the treble spank of the bridge humbucker. They have less midrange and work for funk rhythm quite well. Position 1 has some of the Strat zing that is very interesting.
Position 2 is the same as the non-S1 setting, and I left it unchanged because no other pickup combinations sounded interesting.
Position 4 has a great Strat quack sound, but more powerful with the humbucker.
Here is a photo showing the labeling of the switches to match the schematic.
Perhaps this will help you squeeze more tonal options out of your S1 switching system Stratocaster!
DISCLAIMER!
This article describes the modifications to ONE guitar. I expect Fender S1 systems have gone through various evolutions over the years, and it is highly likely my schematic will not match other guitars. Any modifications you make to your guitars are at your own risk, and we assume no liability whatsoever for your actions or how you use this information.