Contemporary Jaguar Wiring

[nicheendeavors]

Hello friends!

I just got a Contemporary jaguar and love it. I bought the guitar to slap some pickups in it that I already have (Righteous Sound Pickups Holy Ground set). Does anyone have a wiring diagram for the contemporary jaguar? The switches have PCBs and quick connector things, which none of my other guitars I've swapped things out on have had. I'd just as well replace the switches while I'm doing this, but not sure what I need honestly. Want to keep both the series/parallel and coil split, BUT, I would be fine putting push pull pots in instead to split each individually.

Thank you!

[timtam]

There's no service manual/wiring diagram for the Squier Contemporary HH jag. And being a Squier there may never be one (few have been released). Add to that a degree of confusion in these parts as to exactly what each of its unusual switches actually does. So if you just want to swap the pickups but keep the same switching functionality, your best bet would be to trace just the wires from the existing pickups to the electronics, and splice your new pickups' wires to those (having figured out the mapping of old to new pickup wire colours). If you wanted to replace all the wiring but keep the functionality, you'd have to trace out the whole circuit (incl the PCB). Or do a complete custom wiring job.

Interestingly, the current top-of-the-line Ultra Luxe HH jag has a rather similar superficial switch layout, and I just saw its PCB switching for the upper controls as shown by Trogly on youtube. I wonder just how similar it is to the Squier ? But unfortunately there is no service manual for the Ultra Luxe either. Hopefully the PCBs are not a sign of what's to come, as that would make modding more difficult.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clc2ZNlTC-M

[bodhi]

While it's certainly easier to just replace the pickups with soldering individual leads in place, it's typically not rocket surgery to do new wiring. Looking at a video just now, it seems like the guitar has a three-way selector switch working in the typical way, and the upper horn switches are series/parallel switches for both pickups (eg. neck and bridge in series with each other, not individual coils) and then a coil tap. The coil tap at least is pretty evident, and I'm assuming the series/parallel switch is for both pickups instead of the individual coils because it was demoed only in the middle position.

With that in hand, if needed, I'm certain that all of the required parts are already available f.e. in the marathon wiring thread on this board, maybe even in that particular combination already. So redoing the wiring probably isn't really much of a problem.

[Futuron]

On mine, the other slide switch determines whether the 2 coils in the pickups are in series or parallel with each other. It affects all 3 positions.

So the 9 unique possibilities (3 others are duplicates) are:
Neck 2 coils in series
Neck single coil
Neck 2 coils in parallel
Bridge 2 coils in series
Bridge single coil
Bridge 2 coils in parallel
(Neck 2 coils in series) in parallel with (Bridge 2 coils in series)
(Neck single coil) in parallel with (Bridge single coil)
(Neck 2 coils in parallel) in parallel with (Bridge 2 coils in parallel)

[bodhi]

Ok, so if the other upper horn switches both pickups to series parallel, that might need a bit of a special switch which might be why they have used a circuit board.

Either case, keeping the existing wiring is probably best, but otherwise look for a Switchcraft 50212LX (4PDT slide switch) which should probably fit the hole and screw placement.

[mr.samsa]

I've had one of these for a while, and I love it, but I thought new pickups might liven it up. I read somewhere, that I can no longer find, that the pickups aren't the standard SD wire colours. Does anyone know what the wire colors correspond to on these SQR atomics?
Thanks.