My insane project needs some sound advice!!!

[ranchtooth]

Hey guys and gals, awesome forums.

I'm working on building my custom dream axe, and need some advice on how I should wire it. Im using 4 humbuckers.. a GFS Crusader in the bridge, followed by a Duncan JB humbucker and a Duncan Little '59, and finally a Duncan Hot Stack in the neck position. I also got a boost preamp, all in all, this should have loads of gain and sensitivity. I am going for a brian may style wiring setup, each pickup with its own on/off switch as well as a phase reversal switch.
What I need advice on is whether or not I should wire in series or paralell... I know series will give me a massively awesome output, but I've also heard it loses some of the highs and generally sounds less detailed. What do you guys think?

[UnklMickey]

ranchtooth said:

...Im using 4 humbuckers..

i guess you just couldn't fit 5.

(actually you might be able to fit 6 if they were all SC sized HBs, and i'll bet you even entertained that thought at one point in time.)

Ranchtooth, you must be one sick perverted maniac. welcome home.



unk

[ranchtooth]

You can never have too many pickups! Excessiveness is in the eye of the beholder.

[UnklMickey]

Ranchtooth,

that's just more proof i was on target with my first reply.

yer gonna fit right in here.



cheers,

unk

[JohnH]

Heres a design thought for you

What you describe sounds like youd end up with 8 mini toggles (or slide switches), being an on/off and a phase for each pup. Theres so many options with that many pups that you cant possibly do them all. Heres a suggestion, with one extra, ie 9 DPDT toggles:

• Wire them in series, a-la Brian May, but wire the on-off toggles so that each switched-off pup is completely cut out rather than just shunted. This is easy to do, and may avoid shunted (ie short circuited) coils generating internal currents that sap your sustain. This is an undeniable theoretical possibility. I have never noticed it occurring, but others have, and with four HB pups, your guitar, out of all those in the universe, is the most likely to have this problem.
• Four hbs in series will be WAY mellow, and all those phase switches will generate more out-of-phase combos than you can count. Instead, have a switch for each pup that turns them from local series wiring of the two coils, to local parallel. This cuts the inductance by a factor of four, and will make sense of the all in series combos, giving a clearer brighter sound. You will also, with two pups in series, each in local parallel, get the same sound as the traditional wiring of both in local series, combined in parallel, even though you don’t have overall system parallel wiring. (that’s a good idea – I’m giving myself a brownie point)
• The ninth switch, use to make an overall phase swap of two complete pups in the series chain, say the two nearest the bridge. That will allow four out-of-phase combos, each in local series or parallel, with the essential difference provided by pups close together or wide apart.

That’s it. Not crazy enough? Change the four local series/parallel switches to three position on-on-on, to get single coil options as well!

A bit boggling, but actually a simple design – could be drawn up.

Cheers

John

[CheshireCat]

ranchtooth said:

Hey guys and gals, awesome forums.

"Gals"!?! WHERE!?! (Why didn't anyone tell me about this!?!)

[vonFrenchie]

You could fit quite a few mini humbuckers in there aswell.

[ChrisK]

Yeah, and you don't need a guitar hanger.

Just stick it on the 'fridge like a big refrigerator magnet.

[jhng]

Gosh! Eigth coils... Insane but fun to wire!

How about the following arrangement:

One 4PDT mini-toggle that coil-splits all humbuckers simultaneously
Two Three Position switches for (say) the front two pups that do "On", "Off", "Out of Phase",
Two Three position switches for the other two which do "On in Series", "Off", "On in parallel".

Five switches in total! Loads of sounds. (And I'm pretty sure something along these lines is doable).

(You could add an extra 4PDT toggle to get local parallel options).

Or with six minitoggles you could wire for most global series/parallel options (except some of the hybird ones). And then have two mini-toggles for doing all the local series/split/parallel. Potentially giving the full range from eight coils in series to eight coils in parallel. All from eight toggles...

And then have eight mini-toggles to switch phase for each coil...

Do you have room for sixteen switches?

Hastings

[jhng]

Actually, I think we can go one better!

Six mini-toggles, 64 pup combinations, with no redundancy.

First we define three levels of organisation:

"Local" means the organisation within each pickup;
"Pair" means the organisation between pups within either the Bridge Pair or Neck Pair of pups;
"Global" means the organisation between the two "Pairs".

Here goes....

Two 4PDT mini-toggles are used to give: Series, Inside Coil, Outside Coil, Parallel within each pup at a Local level.

Two 4PDT mini-toggles are used to give Series, Inside Pup, Outside Pup, Parallel within each Pair.

Two DPDT mini-toggles are used to give Bridge Pair, Neck Pair, Both Pairs in Series, Both Pairs in Parallel at a Global level.

How cool is that! It's almost worth building a four HB axe just to try it out...

One could add a couple of phase switches too. Possible one switch to swap Phase between Pairs, and one to swap Phase within just the Neck Pair.

Hastings

[ranchtooth]

Wow these are some awesome ideas guys... My mind is blown, BLOWN i tells ya! I'm learning a lot about electronics and wiring, but some of these ideas sound totally beyond my comprehension... I am going to try to draw up some on these wiring diagrams.. Ill post them on here and beg for you guys to look them over in case im making any huge glaring mistakes...

Such as this!!!
Each pickup has its own phase switch, on/off switch and series parallel switch. Does this make sense or am I making a horrible mistake?

[UnklMickey]

ranchtooth said:

...Does this make sense or am I making a horrible mistake?...

sorry Ranchtooth, it's a little of the first, and a lot of the second.

there are 2 big flaws with this design that i can see right away.

(i can spot them quickly, 'cause i considered doing something similar once.)


first -- if any pickup is off, but it's mode switch is in the parallel position it will short out everything -- no sound.

second -- unless ALL the mode switches are in the series position, you don't complete the series path. so you get no sound from anything that is assigned to series unless everything is assigned to series.

that doesn't mean that you can't get, say just 2 pickups in series.

you can, the others are assigned to series, but turned off.

but they can't be set to parallel.

if you are willing to accept these limitations (and possibly others i haven't spotted), okay.

but i would guess those limits are a deal-killer, eh?



there have been some pretty good ideas floated so far on this thread.

if you can enlist the help of one of these guys, you might be able to come up with something that does much of what you might want.


BTW, if you are fixed on the concept of the design you have shown, there is a way to "fix" it. use 4PDTs for the series/parallel switches and off switches for the parallel part of things only.



good luck,

unk

[ranchtooth]

Gat dangit.. back to the drawing board... hah.

[ranchtooth]

Alright I think this one addresses some of the issues of my previous scheme... excuse my sloppy half assed mspaint diagrams...



I actually shamelessy ripped this off from this site and just threw in 2 more switches.

www.treblebooster.com/brian_may_pickup_mod.htm

What do you cats think?

[UnklMickey]

well, it's certainly a lot closer.


the series/parallel switches put each pickup either in the series chain,

or from that pickup's point in the series chain, to ground, in parallel with anything to the left.

if all the pickups were on, and in the series mode, then the right most one was changed to parallel, you would end up with:

(1x2x3)+4


now let's look at what happens if the second from the right was in parallel with all the others in series:

[(1x2)+3]x4..................that is quite different from (1x2x4)+3

let's look at #2 and #4 in parallel with the #3 in series.

[(1+2)x3]+4 that is another very odd combo.

the position of each pickup in this configuration will affect how it combines in complex s/p combos.

the leftmost pickup is "at the mercy" of whatever configuration is selected to the right.

it must ALWAYS be in series, if any pickups to the right are in series.

none of this is necessarily a deal-killer, it just means the circuit has certain behaviors that should be noted.

as far as i can see the only series or only parallel combos should work as expected.

EDIT: i really missed the boat on this one!

for more details, see reply #53.

unk

[ranchtooth]

Wow dude you know your stuff! I think I might actually use this setup, the idea of having a bunch of "out there" pickup settings is actually rather appealing to me... even if it is tinny, high pitched nasal wailing, its my own signature tone! Thanks Unk and everyone else!

[UnklMickey]

ranchtooth said:

...the idea of having a bunch of "out there" pickup settings is actually rather appealing to me...

if one didn't guess that to be the case (from the fact that you're using 4 pickups), one look at your avatar would have suggested it.

slightly reminicent of the way fat guys would paint faces on their bellies.



be sure to let us know what it sounds like if/when you build it. (or anything else for that matter)

thanks,

unk

[sumgai]

RT,

Hi, and to the forums. As unklmickey said, it looks like you're gonna right in here. But just to be sure........

unk, should we see what happens when we tell him to project the Side-Slap-Strat into 8 coils? ;D

</meanie mode off>


sumgai

[sumgai]

unk,

........
slightly reminicent of the way fat guys would paint faces on their bellies.

From the tone of your response there, I take that I shouldn't be saying anything about www.fatguyshirts.com, right?

;D



sumgai

[UnklMickey]

eight blades!

yeah, even Schick and Gillette haven't gone there (yet).


no tone intended, just the artwork on the eyes and mouth had that same comical, painted-on look.


unk

[sumgai]

unk,

.......
no tone intended, just the artwork on the eyes and mouth had that same comical, painted-on look.


unk

'Sfunny, I had the same reaction when I first saw the quoted website! ;D


sumgai

[JohnH]

ranchtooth said:

Alright I think this one addresses some of the issues of my previous scheme... excuse my sloppy half assed mspaint diagrams...



I actually shamelessy ripped this off from this site and just threw in 2 more switches.

www.treblebooster.com/brian_may_pickup_mod.htm

What do you cats think?

I had a look at this while sitting on the train. I believe there is a design principle here that is very good and could be applied to other multi-pup circuits. If you look at the key options of all series or all parallel, then the connections are very clean, there are no shorted or hanging coils - off coils are completely cut out. The system can be extended for as many pups as wanted.

Or - take one off, and think of it as a three-pup design. The two remaining series/para switches can be amalgamated into one 4PDT , and we have a 'ToneMonster' style circuit. Same switches as my ToneMonster2, but a different wiring with no coil shunts and maybe slightly easier connections for fabrication. (Not easy to incorporate a blender though).

Back to the four-pup version. I think the fact that it does anything in complex S/P combos is a bonus, at least it does not have nasty dead spots unexpectedly. Now if it were for me, I would want something to get some brighter options out of the pups. Also, you can get by with fewer phase switches. Even if you want all the phase options, you can still delete one switch. I think I'd do some coil cuts to single coil, maybe all on one 4PDT switch

John

[sumgai]

rt,

As anyone here will tell you, I hate switches! My motto is, you can never have too few switches.

I made up this "little modification" to reduce your switch count by 4/11th's. The phase switches now take on the duty of being on/off switches by virtue of a center throw that shorts the coil, as before (in your separate on/off switch).

EDIT The following diagram has "a few errors" - see Reply #30 for the updated version.



All in all, the total cost of parts should be cheaper, it should require less real estate both inside and on the face, require a bit less assembly time, and to my mind, it should be easier and faster to operate.

John, this looks like it gets all the possible combinations, any thoughts on that?


sumgai

[JohnH]

Sumgai - what kind of beastie are those enigmatic 8-lug jobbies?

John

[UnklMickey]

John,

you beat me to the punch on this one.

first thought the switches were just 4PDTs turned sideways.

then i saw they only had 8 lugs.


i couldn't figure out if i was missing something?

or did the glass of wine interact with Sumgai's meds?

or did Sumgai just do that on purpose because he wanted to see me write WTF? again.



so, Sumgai, what's up with that?



unk

[ranchtooth]

Heyy sumgai thats a pretty rad idea! now where can I find a center off 4pdt... I might be resigned to sticking with all 11 switches, as I already have them all.

EDIT: Waaaait a second... I'm joining the "What are those things!?!?!?" bandwagon...

[sumgai]

Gang,

Easy, they are DP3T switches. I admit that I forgot to include a more concise description of them in my previous post..... sorry 'bout that.

I'm pretty sure I've seen them in bat-handle toggle layout, but it's been awhile. The only real-world example I can think of right now is the slide switch found on Fender Mustangs (and a few others of that body style). Slide to Side 1, and something connects. Slide to Side 2, and the same thing connects, only in reverse phase. Center the switch, and nothing is connected.

The beauty here is, the switch is, by necessity, a 2 pole unit. And to physically accomodate the "center off" position, there are a total of 8 lugs (terminals), 4 for each pole. I dug up an illustration: (of the whole Mustang, why not?)



That should adequately illustrate my point, no? Now, all one has to do is find the same-format switch in the physical layout they desire. ;D


sumgai

[JohnH]

Sumgai - thanks, that helps. And I'm glad, because we were worried about you.

To help suss your diagram, which lugs are the poles?

Ive seen DP3T switchs, as sliders. The ones I saw in an electronics shop were not very sturdy looking, but I get what you mean.

If DP3T toggles are not available, there are 4PDT on-on-on's that can be wired to be equivalent

John

[sumgai]

John,

The poles are arranged vertically, just as in the Mustang diagram, above.

And once again, I have proven that I majored in "Speak too swiftly, speak wrongly 101" There is are two obvious errors in my diagram, they will show up after staring at it for a few seconds. I'm working now the corrections now...... be right back.


EDIT Done - see Reply #30 for the updated version. (Unk snuck in before I could get back here and delete this!)


sumgai

[UnklMickey]

johnh said:

...To help suss your diagram, which lugs are the poles?
...

John,

i don't know all that much about the Mustang switch, but if it is the same (electrically) as the rocker operated slide switch Ampeg used in the (original) SVT, it completely blurs the lines as to what is a pole, and what is a throw!

as the switch is moved from left to right:

as seen in the left position, 1 connects to 3.........1 connects to 4

in the center position, 3 connect to 5.............4 connects to 6

in the right position, 5 connects to 7..........6 connects to 8



an unusual switch indeed!

unk