"two tone" HSH - Gibson, Strat, and Tele Tone.

[michaelcbell]

After my Ultimate Tone Monster, I decided it was time to develop a layout that was versatile, but very intuitive and quick switching. What I came up with was a system that can do both Gibson, Strat, and Tele sounds, all with what I would call intuitive switching. Let me know what you think...

This layout utilizes a super switch and 2 6PDT rotaries.





Have at!
-m

[edit]
Here's a schematic view as requested by ChrisK



[edit 4/18/07]
Here is an option to add phase switching. This addition to the above diagram would go just before the neck pickup, following the coloring conventions established in the old(er) diagram. Note that the 4PdT automatically selects the other pup in the neck humbucker (as suggested by JohnH) when OoP, so as to keep the humbucking characteristics.



and the truth table for when the OoP switch is on:

[UnklMickey]

hi Michaelcbell,

i haven't been around much, so i'm a bit off my game.

i'll look this over tomorrow or the day after, check for errors, and make recommendations on any possible variations.

at first glance, this looks worthy of the Schematics page.

perhaps Chris and John will vet it too.


cheers,

unk

[ChrisK]

Do you have it in schematic (not wire diagram) form?

[michaelcbell]

ChrisK,

I've altered my original drawing to schematic form and posted it above, although I'm not sure it's as clear as it could be still. I drew the original design half wire diagram, half schematic, so I wasn't sure which way to go. Thanks for your help in the 6PDT switches, BTW.

-mcb

[benjy304]

Where would one get those 6PDT switches? I've never seen or heard of anything like that before.

[michaelcbell]

You can order them through Digikey.com The ones I'm looking at are the electroswitch D-2 series, specifically D2D0602S-L30A01Y, which has a flatted shaft. Replace the Y with a B for a round shaft.

www.electro-nc.com/rotaryus/d2.pdf

[JohnH]

michael - I traced a few of the settings, and could not spot any problems, unkl may find something however.

Clever thinking to work all that out. Its a shame theres no 6-pole toggles that can be found - which would be my choice for the 2-position switches if they existed.

Despite all the wiring (which Im getting the impression is something you are not afraid of), it will be quite a practical axe to operate It has a very good ratio of switch positions v useable sounds, and if all is well, no bad positions. So you need to build this one!

You have the coils arranged so you can optimise your humcancelling in both Tele and Strat modes - but be careful to pick the right coil wires. I think I would swap the physical positions of coils 4 and 5 (without changing wiring), so the single coil bridge sound is the coil further from the bridge, and also in Gibson mode, you get inner/outer coil selection. On one of my guitars, the coils are as you have drawn them with front and back selections rather than inner/outer. I find the front/back options are very similar so inner/outer may be more use.

Just to gild the Lily, how about a phase switch?

John

[ChrisK]

Choosing which coil in a bridge humbucker is a common concern. I have heard that the coil closer to the bridge gives a more Tele-like sound and the coil farther from the bridge gives a more Strat-like sound.

Choosing either coil from the neck pickup to use is somewhat moot in that the positional ratio is much less significant that that of the bridge pickup.


Note that you will never get true single coil sounds from a side-by-side humbucker. Even though you only use one coil, the magnetic structure is still sensing the string at the same two focus points.


BTW, I may have found a military surplus 8P3T rotary switch that can be re-pinned to 8PDT. As I wended my way thru the military part numbering system I found that it is a Grayhill 09 series.
lgrws01.grayhill.com/web/images/ProductImages/8%20and%209%20rotary.pdf

I have some on order (among others) to try my variations on unk's Brian May theme.
guitarnuts2.proboards45.com/index.cgi?board=schem&action=display&thread=1168294514

[michaelcbell]

I can't tell you how much I want toggles for this, but they don't seem to make them.

I definitely wrestled with which orientation to put the bridge in, since I wanted 3p5 to be humbucking and strat-like. If what ChrisK says is true (and I have no reason to doubt it), then reversing 4 and 5 makes perfect sense. I think that WHEN i build this, I'll do it that way. If I don't like it, what's so hard about physically flipping a pup 180 degrees, right?

I am a bit upset about the not-quite single coil sounds, but since I wanted versatility, I didn't see much of another way. I also don't use my single coil sound that much right now, but most of that is due to noise (shielding is in the works), so I didn't want to give them up entirely. I also kept the single mid for the true single coil sound.

Phase.... I do want to see if I could figure something out with that, but the rear-route axe I'm planning on putting this into is going to be ordered from Warmoth, and they don't (as far as I know) do anything but standard strat or gibson control routes, and with a 5-way I need the strat route. That gives me one hole for concentric tone/volume, and two holes for the rotaries. I'd just put another hole in it myself, but I've never done that even on a pickguard, and putting a hole in a $650 body scares the pajesus out of me. Suggestions?

-m

[JohnH]

I really like the sound of my humbuckers cut to a single coil, particularly the neck pups. I tend to flick frm neck single-coil-cut to bridge Hb. As Chris says, the cut single coils aren't quite the same as real ones, but they have much of the same character and I think they are fine for playing 'single-coil' music.

On drilling - I can understand the fears. I am also short of woodworking gear, and drilling a hole is as far as I have gone. I have a small drill stand that I got for $15, that holds my electric drill and keeps it vertical as I lower it. I agonise for hours over excatly where to put a hole.

One thing I've realized with rear-routed bodies is that the shaft lengths of most pots and switches is too short. My LP copy in which I put a scheme with two volumes and two rotaries and a toggle (LP Maximiser - see schematics), is needing some new pots but i cant get the long-shaft ones from any shop I can find. it does take a standard toggle, just, but the front face is only about 1/4"

Another suggestion - how about buying a $100 ax off ebay to test your ideas on? - there are some very decent guitars for less than that.

cheers

John

[michaelcbell]

Thanks for the idea - Who doesn't want another guitar to play with anyway... If I were to wire up a phase switch, which pup do you think?

[JohnH]

michael - My favorite Out of phase (OoP) sounds on a single-coil SSS Strat are neck and bridge in series OoP and all 3 in series with neck OoP. The NB OoP is in that case, is the only humacancelling one. So to get those, I put the phase switch on the neck. That could apply to yours too, but you have more coils to consider.

On an HH guitar, I like to have the phase change coincide with changing which single coil cut is chosen, so that humcancelling polarity is maintained.

cheers

John

[michaelcbell]

John et.al.,

I've got a schematic update for your idea of neck OoP/coil select (4pDt - finally, somthing I can actually find easily!). I'll post it when I get home and can get past all the filters here at work. [edit]It's posted![/edit] I was looking at all of my switch suppliers and it looks like a 6p3t is just as easy to find/expensive as a 6pdt, so I thought of a 3rd set of tones (mostly combinations of the first two) and was wondering what everyone thought of the cost/benefit of said third set of tones:
1 - 1p3 or 1s3
2 - 1p4 or 1s4
3 - (1p5)p3 or (1p5)s3
4 - 4p5 or 4s5
5 - 3p5 or 3s5

-m