Improved Jimmy Page Mod

[jhng]

Here is an improved version of the Jimmy Page mod. With one caveat which is that I'm not used to wiring LP's and am not sure how easy it is to route the signal to a push/pull between the Toggle and the Jack.

The four push/pulls are all shown in the down position and are colour-coded.

Local switches:

The Red switch when pulled gives Outer coils only
The Blue switch when pulled gives Inner coils only
Pulling both Red and Blue switches gives local parallel for each pup.

Global Switches:

The Orange switch reverses the phase of the Bridge pup
The Green switch bypasses the toggle and gives global series.

Both volumes are fully independent in parallel and series. Global series will be a bit a funny when the main toggle is in the middle position.

[thectrain]

Ok so here is my layout. Basically it is very messy and i'm sure there is better ways to wire it. And there is a good chance I missed something or got it all completly wrong. I split up the wiring of the pickups to switches, and the wiring of switches to the other switches, jack, and 3-way because it was so crowded and I was getting lost.

A few issues might be:
1) Might have gotten the + - wires on the pickups backwards. You will see what I mean. I assumed the outer wires were + and the inner wires were -.

2) When it explicitly had a ground coming off the volume pot I figured that meant coming off the second terminal with a ground always on the 3rd. Wrong?

3) I left off the capacitor on the tone pots to save space.

4) There is no color coding on the 2nd diagram I just tried to make no same color wires cross to make it slightly clearer(1 does but I drew a hitch in it to indicate that)

So take a look at it and tell what I did wrong so I can fix it, and if you have an suggestions on making it neater i'll take those as well.

And here it is:

* I removed the images till I can redraw them as to avoid confusion, and because they were slightly embarassing for me* ;D

[CheshireCat]

jhng said:

Here is an improved version of the Jimmy Page mod. With one caveat which is that I'm not used to wiring LP's and am not sure how easy it is to route the signal to a push/pull between the Toggle and the Jack.

The four push/pulls are all shown in the down position and are colour-coded.

Local switches:

The Red switch when pulled gives Outer coils only
The Blue switch when pulled gives Inner coils only
Pulling both Red and Blue switches gives local parallel for each pup.

Global Switches:

The Orange switch reverses the phase of the Bridge pup
The Green switch bypasses the toggle and gives global series.

Both volumes are fully independent in parallel and series. Global series will be a bit a funny when the main toggle is in the middle position.

That's weird . . . why wasn't the image showing up?

[jhng]

thectrain said:

A few issues might be:
1) Might have gotten the + - wires on the pickups backwards. You will see what I mean. I assumed the outer wires were + and the inner wires were -.

2) When it explicitly had a ground coming off the volume pot I figured that meant coming off the second terminal with a ground always on the 3rd. Wrong?

3) I left off the capacitor on the tone pots to save space.

4) There is no color coding on the 2nd diagram I just tried to make no same color wires cross to make it slightly clearer(1 does but I drew a hitch in it to indicate that)

So take a look at it and tell what I did wrong so I can fix it, and if you have an suggestions on making it neater i'll take those as well.

Ummm... Not quite. Your assumptions in (2) and (3) are, indeed, wrong. There are no implicit connections at all in my diagram.

The key is that the volume and tone controls are not wired "standard" but are integrated into the switching. This way the global series setting works much better.

Otherwise, it looks pretty good although there are some terminals where I would expect to see a connection which have remained empty so you seem to have missed out some stuff.

Have another go. If you try and make the wires squared off it will make the diagram easier to read. (Have a look at some of the other pictures on this board to get the idea).

In order to know which are the plus and minus wires for each coil you will need to check the manufacturers colour-codes.

Hastings

[JohnH]

Hi Hastings

This is a nice variation on the JP, particularly clever getting local parallel options as well as local series and single coil. My comments are:

1. Do you think there will be any significant noise picked up in outer single coil modes, due to the unused inner coils hanging with one end on hot?

2. The volume controls would indeed be a bit funky in toggle middle position, in series mode. At full volume, the neck pup is shorted via the toggle outer lugs, turning one volume down will increase the volume as the neck stops being shorted! All OK however as long as the toggle is to one side or the other, not in the middle. A three pole S/P switch allows that issue to be stopped, but its then a separate toggle instead of a push/pull.

3. The basic JP mod allows the single coils out-of phase setting to be hum canceling. This function is sacrificed here, as part of getting the local parallel modes to work.

4. That arrangement of independent series/parallel volume controls is pretty good. One issue with it is that, when setting mixes between pups (say with one pup on 10=full) the parallel blending happens at the top of the range, say 8 to 10, while the series blending happens much lower, 0-2 or 3.

5. I'm personally not a fan of reversed volume controls, since they are not so good for simply controlling volume. On my designs, I've reached a view that the best balance is to do two forwards wired volume controls, with treble bleeds, and accept the lack of independence in parallel mode, (or use separating resistors with an active buffer)

cheers

John

[jhng]

John, Thanks for your comments.

It's not a particularly original mod- the series/parallel volumes is ripped off from ChrisK's series/parallel blender, and the local series/split/parallel stuff is just an extrapolation of part of Dan Armstrong's three toggle mod. But I think it works quite neatly together and is probably more useful than the original JP mod.

Coils hanging from hot have never really bothered me much (and are an intrinsic part of a lot of mods (e.g. S-Tastic expanded). I can't see an efficient way of eliminating them. Do they add mcuh hum in your experience? I play a well shielded strat so any hum is usually standard single coil hum (or, more likely, dodgy wiring on my part).

I decided that dodgy volume controls in series mode middle position was better than having the dodgy switching in series mode that the original JP had!

It might be possible to preserve Hum cancelling in OOP mode, but I think it's more useful to maintain the distinction between inner and outer split coils for better variability.

Hastings

PS I am going to try and find time to put some of the other mods I have helped with or designed onto the board: do you think the schematic style used above is sufficiently clear and useful?

[JohnH]

Hastings - I find those schematics very usefull! in that I can follow the circuit much better than on a wiring diagram. Your drawings look fine to me.

The hanging issue is theoretical - but attach an aligator clip hanging to the tip of a guitar cord and hear it hum! Its nice to avoid it, but Im also looking for evidence as to whether it makes a practical difference or not in a guitar.

cheers

John