When you have a RWRP pick in a strat lets say, does the RWRP make the pickups in series or are they still paralell just noise cancelling?
No, series wiring makes them in series, so unless you modify the circuit you'll have ordinary parallel wiring of all the pickups. Changing from parallel to series does not affect the noise canceling property, but it is a big difference in tone.
No there's more to it than that. Simply reversing the wires on one pickup will put them out of phase which gives a REALLY different sound with the two pickups combined (thin, weak, nasal, not a popular option; in fact it's almost never done on single coil pickups but has been done on the "Peter Green" modification for a Les Paul with humbuckers, in which case you might have to reverse the magnets instead of the wires but that's another story). Series wiring requires you to be able to disconnect the ground lead of one pickup where it usually goes to ground, and disconnect the hot lead of another pickup where it usually goes to the volume control, and shunt the two together. The signal path will be ground - ground wire of first pickup - hot wire of first pickup - ground wire of second pickup - hot wire of second pickup - hot output to the volume and tone controls. Instead of each pickup having it's own hot and ground connections in the usual "parallel" circuit, you have the two pickups connected one after the other in "series." I'd suggest some more reading; it's not rocket science but it's more than you can get from a few posts. Authors like Craig Anderton and Dan Erlewine won't steer you wrong.
Bob V thanks. Have settled on doing the Brian May wiring as an experiment. Have been reading and finally got it!!!
Well, I did the series wiring thing on my Strat ala May and am not sure yet if I like it.It is kinda dark but it does have it's pluses also.
I have the neck and bridge pickup on my Strat wired into a Telecaster 4-way switch that gives Series > Neck > Parallel > Bridge with the middle pickup on a blender pot that lets me dial in the quack. I love it. Best Strat mod I've found yet except maybe the Callaham bridge. Thanks again, Eddie, for the help figuring it out.