Operation was a success! It looks like the coil-split wires (red/white) were not connected together. It looked like they were but it was because the wire insulation was melted together, but the actual exposed wires were not touching.
Anyway, I stripped the red and white wires a little better and soldered them to the mini-toggle and all is perfect now! All switch positions sound "normal" and the coil split works.
Quick test on the following hardware at home:
Amp 1: JetCity JCA22H
Cabinet: Jet City JCA12S
Amp 2: The little Hotone Heart Attack
Same cabinet as above since it is all I have.
The JetCity amp doesn't have a good reputation for cleans, but I actually love the cleans on it despite having very little headroom. The "new" Suhr ML neck pickup has a sparkle that is more defined than the original ED pickup when playing the usual major chords at the upper frets. It seems to be higher output than the original ED pickup because the JetCity breaks up easier at the same settings. When I play in the middle of the guitar, the neck pickup loses the "sparkly-ness" a little but becomes more defined and smooth.
When I use both the neck and middle (ED) pickup together, the sparkle is completely gone and the sound is much creamier. I really like this position much more now than the original setup.
On the JetCity, using almost any neck pickup with some distortion/crunch sounds dark and muddy/flubby. Or at least all of my "low-cost" (i.e. cheap) guitars do. Despite the Suhr ML being brighter than the original ED pickup, it still sounds muddy.
Switching to the Suhr SSV humbucker, it has much more definition than the ED HB. However it is lower output, so at the same gain levels it doesn't have as much "chugga-chugga" sound as before. The SSV has a more "hard rock" tone that seems to have more "attack" if that makes sense. At first I was hoping for more, but when I compared it to my Squier CV Strat (SSS), the SSV HB definitely sounded more "rock" than the Squier. Although the ED guitar is "strat like", the cleans are very different than the Squier, which I prefer otherwise I would have 2 guitars that are too similar
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The Hotone Heart Attack, basically has a "hard rock" channel only without any cleans unless you bring the gain to 0, and your volume knob to 0.1.
The SSV HB sounds great with this little amp for an almost perfect classic rock sound. The gain of the little amp is enough to get by for metal, but not with the lower output of the SSV HB though. So no Megadeth emulation with this combination
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All-in-all, for $120 for the guitar, and $70 for the pickups, I have a very different guitar and sound compared to all of my other cheapy guitars. It does not sound or feel cheap at all. I also learned just about every way to wire, and not wire a coil-split setup!
And I know I can flip over the pickguard without having to remove/replace the strings. Thankfully this is the case or I would have used about 8 packs of strings hehe.
Thanks for the support and the wiring diagrams! I can confirm that they work after this little adventure! Now the question is, what do I modify next??? Will it ever end?
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