Rewired HH Sterling...

[Growler]

I took 4HH Sterling and decided to swap out the pickups for a pair of MM4.3 Nordstrands, which are Alnico instead of ceramic, as I've always like the sound of the Stingray over the Sterling, but I love the playability of the Sterling... So I ended up rewiring it as well...

I'm sure some of the Musicman purists will scoff at this, but I say, no guts no glory. As a side note, I had to router out a bit of the body cavity to fit the Nordstrands as they are a bit deeper than the stock pickups.

Anyhow with a 5-way selector switch to determine which of the four pickups you want on... so from the factory it was like this:

(Pickup layout neck towards the top, bridge towards the bottom)

A
B

C
D

Switch
Pos. 1: AB
Pos. 2: AD
Pos. 3: ABCD
Pos. 4: BC
Pos. 5: CD

I never really liked the 2nd and 4th positions, as I normally only played 1, 3 and 5, either I wanted the warmth of the all neck pickups (1) or the crunch of the bridge (5) or a bit of everything... (3).


So I rewired it to be this... Which in all honesty makes more sense to me.

Pos. 1: AB
Pos. 2: ABC
Pos. 3: ABCD
Pos. 4: BCD
Pos. 5: CD

So now the selector switch is a bit more of a blend, so I can dial in just the right about of neck or bridge that I want. The part that killed me for about two days is that I had one of the pickups wired out of phase so some positions would sound *dead* as if someone replaced my amp with a transistor radio.

 

[Gyoon]

Hey, good for you! I got an HH Stingray and I don't like positions of 2 and 4, either. Is it possible to adjust the wiring of the current Musicman pickups the same way? Are there the same leads for the Musicman pickups as the Nordies?

Glenn

 

[serein2j]

Well.... with your wiring, you don't get to have J/J.....?

 

[Darkstrike]

Wow, thats real cool!

 

[Growler]

Hey, good for you! I got an HH Stingray and I don't like positions of 2 and 4, either. Is it possible to adjust the wiring of the current Musicman pickups the same way? Are there the same leads for the Musicman pickups as the Nordies?
Glenn

I dunno about the Stingray, however, one thing that was a pain with the 4.3s is that there is actually three pickups in each unit. Two on top and one dead center underneath for a humbucking, which made wiring a bit interesting. However, I didn't realize that Nordy had a 4.4 in which there are FOUR pickups per unit, with two humbucking underneath, which might have made wiring a bit easier. But would have required a "bit" more routering.

As for the J/J sound, while I do like the sound of a J-bass, I never quite liked it on the Sterling. Now this might have been because of the Ceramic vs <whatever is in a J-bass>. But I've always liked the "oomph" of a stingay, but the width of the body always put my arm at an odd position when playing.

One thing you should realize with the Nordy's is that the MM4.3s are not *exactly* the same shape as the stock pickups (atleast on a 2007 Sterling) so there's a bit of a hole/gap between the pickup's screw holes. I'm sure I could send a trace to a pickguard shop and have them make a new one.

 

[mikeswals]

I never really liked the 2nd and 4th positions, as I normally only played 1, 3 and 5

I was the opposite...I mostly played my HH basses in either 2 or 4.

The 5way switch sure is easy to figure out. I made one of my SR4 HH's work so #2 was rear humbucker with front single coil, then #4 was J/J. Worked nice having all the popluar pickup options:

#1 rear H only
#2 rear H with front J
#3 HH
#4 JJ
#5 front H only