Well, I'm still thinking about your problem. Let's start at the top. You have a Strat wiring--3 pickups--5 way switch--volume pot--two tone controls. Is that info all correct?
Second, they are three single coils, right? If so, the pots should all be 250k values.
Alright. I do believe you have a drawing of how its all supposed to go together. If not, Seymour Duncan has all the different diagrams on his site.
Lets just check the assembly first. Each pickup has two leads--a hot and a ground. The hot leads should be soldered to the switch. The ground terminals should be soldered to the volume pot.
Looking at the volume pot from the bottom, the left terminal should be connected to the switch's output. The middle terminal should be the connected to the wire that goes to the jack's hot terminal. Another wire should be soldered to your volume pot, which is the ground wire that goes to the jack's ground. The third lug of the pot should be bent over and soldered to the pot casing, thus going to ground also.
If this is all correct, the hot signal from the pickups will be transmitted to the tip of the guitar cord from the jack and the ground will connect to the sleeve of the guitar cord, and be sent on to your amp.
The whole thing makes up a circuit. The HOT and GROUND connections must never touch. ANY bad connction/faulty connection will kill the circuit. So check all the connections--even resolder them all. Could be a loose wire or a bad connection anywhere. Make sure none of the lugs carrying hot signal are touching the silver foil under all the pots (if you have that foil in your guitar). Replace the wires to the jack if necessary as they could be bad. I've seen it happen.
9 times out of 10, its just one little thing that causes all the havoc. A broken wire, a bad pot, a mess from a loose pot that twists all the wires together--I've seen all this before. Check all this stuff and let me know what you find out.
