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Post by Teleblooz on May 29, 2009 16:35:41 GMT -5
Sorry if this has been covered elsewhere, but I looked and didn't find it - not exactly anyway. I just reconfigured an old Squier Bullet Strat from this...  single humbucker, volume control only - to this...  HSS with single tone control (not 2 tone pots like regular strat). The 3rd hole contains a coil splitter switch for the humbucker. Being a one-pickup guitar, it basically had two settings, OFF and RAWK! Not particularly versatile. In an earlier effort to give it a little more flexibility, I'd wired in a tone control using a 500k pot I had lying around. A little better, but not much. At that point it became a wall decoration. It has a really nice neck and I love the color, or I probably would have sold it to some aspiring young shredder by now. Then I hit on this conversion idea. Anyhoo, when I got it all bolted together, it sounded beautiful - except if I turned the tone control up past the halfway mark. The top end would clean teeth at 20 yards. At that point I slapped my forehead, "Duh - 250k pots for single-coils, dummy!". I did find one 250k pot in my parts bin and replaced the tone pot. It made a noticeable improvement, and I expect to get another 250k pot & replace the volume control as well. The problem is, while the 250k pot brought the tone of the single-coils down out of the dogs-ears-only range, it also noticeably darkened the humbucker. I'm afraid that when I drop the other pot in there it'll turn the 'bucker to mush. What can I do about this? Do I need to go to a standard Strat wiring scheme and put in the second tone control using a 500k pot? And what happens when I split the coils? I noticed on the standard Squier HSS (http://www.squierguitars.com/pdf/current/Strat/Standard HSS Strat- Service.pdf) they use three 500k pots. Why doesn't this guitar have the same problem? |
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Post by sumgai on May 29, 2009 16:57:09 GMT -5
tb, As you're finding out, not all pickups are created equal. There is a solution that's thankfully quite easy to implement. Instead of hanging the Master Tone directly off the Master Volume, as is the usual case, you can use the pickup selector switch's unused pole to cut it out of the circuit for the HB, and in the circuit for either of the SC positions. This will work for probably all types of 5-way selector switches, even the oldies found in the original Strat design. However, there is a sort-of-drawback in that the Middle+Bridge position will have the tone control affecting the HB as well. This may be acceptable, or it may not, but to get around it, you'll need a later model 5-way selector switch that has a solder tab (a terminal) for each position. That way, in the Middle+Bridge position, you could arrange it such that the Master Tone is not connected to either pup. To go further and have the two pups together, yet the Tone working only on the SC, would require some pretty serious modifications, I'm sorry to say. You've been here awhile, so I'm assuming you can figure it out from my description, but just in case, I'll ask anyways..... Do you need a diagram of that?  HTH sumgai |
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Post by JohnH on May 29, 2009 17:07:09 GMT -5
A couple of things to consider:
The tonal effect of dropping from a 250k to 500k volume pot can be closely matched just by turning down the tone pot, to somewhere in the range 5 to 10. So you could keep the higher pot values and adjust with the tone.
However, if this would lead to an inconvenient need to keep changing the tone control, you could either:
Wire the one tone control that you have so that it only acts on the single coil pups, so no tone control on the bridge, keeping the bridge HB at full brightness. No tone control on the bridge pup is a standard Strat feature, even with two tone controls.
Or, use the higher value pots to suit the HB, and wire fixed resistors across the leads of the single coil pups. eg, supposing you decide that the HB sounded best with both pots at 500k, but the SCs sound best with both at 250k, then the right value to add is another 250k (or 270k which is the nearest common value). Or, instead of adding a resistor to both SCs, you could more cleverly, wire just one and use the unused half of the Strat 5-way to connect it to the SC settings only. That way, you keep from overloading the N+M setting with two resistors.
John
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Post by Teleblooz on May 29, 2009 18:31:26 GMT -5
Instead of hanging the Master Tone directly off the Master Volume, as is the usual case, you can use the pickup selector switch's unused pole to cut it out of the circuit for the HB, and in the circuit for either of the SC positions. This will work for probably all types of 5-way selector switches, even the oldies found in the original Strat design. However, there is a sort-of-drawback in that the Middle+Bridge position will have the tone control affecting the HB as well. If I'm understanding you correctly, you're describing the "front" tone control in a conventional Strat circuit. Is that right? You've been here awhile, so I'm assuming you can figure it out from my description, but just in case, I'll ask anyways..... Do you need a diagram of that? Just in case - yes, thanks. I don't necessarily trust my ability to follow verbal directions.  |
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Post by Teleblooz on May 29, 2009 18:50:18 GMT -5
Instead of hanging the Master Tone directly off the Master Volume, as is the usual case, you can use the pickup selector switch's unused pole to cut it out of the circuit for the HB, and in the circuit for either of the SC positions. This will work for probably all types of 5-way selector switches, even the oldies found in the original Strat design. However, there is a sort-of-drawback in that the Middle+Bridge position will have the tone control affecting the HB as well. If I'm understanding you correctly, you're describing the "front" tone control in a conventional Strat circuit. Is that right? My bad - I just looked at the standard wiring again. The front tone is ONLY the neck; the back tone is ONLY the middle. So yes, please post a diagram. I'm using a standard Fender-style 5-way switch from Allparts. And I'm still wondering - why doesn't the standard HSS Strat exhibit this disparity between the pickups? |
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Post by ChrisK on May 29, 2009 20:39:34 GMT -5
Maybe your pickup contingent is different. Is it a linear pot or an audio taper pot? A linear pot will be at 250K at "5" while an audio taper one will be down to 250K at about "7.5". And besides, what's wrong with clean teeth? I thinks that what JohnH is proposing is best. Switch in a parallel fixed resistor in the positions for the single coils. Keep the volume and tone at 500K each for the humbucker. I don't know where you got that link, but you should be ashamed of it. www.squierguitars.com/pdf/current/Strat/Standard%20HSS%20Strat-%20Service.pdfAnyway, the selector switch usually selects a tone pot for the neck pickup (in the neck and neck+middle positions) and for the middle pickup (in the neck+middle, middle, and middle+bridge positions). This has the disadvantage of selecting both tone pots in the neck+middle position. As JohnH describes; If you connected a common 250K tone pot to both the switch terminal for the neck pickup tone pot AND to the switch terminal for the middle pickup tone pot, the same tone pot would be selected in neck, neck+middle, middle, and middle+bridge, but not in bridge only. Conversely, you could wire in the 500K tone as a master tone and you could connect a fixed resistor to the switch tone pot terminals and to ground, which would result in it being in parallel with the pickups selected in the neck, neck+middle, middle, and middle+bridge positions, but not in the bridge only position. In the bridge only position, the 500K tone pot would preserve the bridge pickups response. In both cases I'd use a 500K volume pot. |
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Post by newey on May 29, 2009 20:40:20 GMT -5
JohnH noted that:
You said:
Your Bullet (as wired) has a master tone control which is affecting the HB as well as the SCs.
That's the problem you are trying to solve, and also the reason that a "regular" HSS doesn't have the mud on the HB.
Additionally, the way in which the HB is wound can affect how it sounds with a particular value of tone pot. We don't know that yours are equivalent to those of the hypothetical HSS with which we are comparing yours.
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Post by ashcatlt on May 29, 2009 22:28:19 GMT -5
Or, use the higher value pots to suit the HB, and wire fixed resistors across the leads of the single coil pups. eg, supposing you decide that the HB sounded best with both pots at 500k, but the SCs sound best with both at 250k, then the right value to add is another 250k (or 270k which is the nearest common value). Or, instead of adding a resistor to both SCs, you could more cleverly, wire just one and use the unused half of the Strat 5-way to connect it to the SC settings only. That way, you keep from overloading the N+M setting with two resistors. John This was my idea as well, but I wonder why you've chose 250K for the fixed resistor.(?) By my calculations, if we're shooting for 250K overall, we'd want 500K in parallel with the 500K tone pot. 250K || 500K comes out to 166K, which might be a bit low. Am I missing something? |
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Post by ChrisK on May 29, 2009 22:32:24 GMT -5
I think that JohnH was alluding to the effect of two 250k pots for the single coils. One would have to parallel 250K across the parallel combination of two 500K pots to effect the final 125K effect of such. |
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Post by JohnH on May 29, 2009 22:37:22 GMT -5
Yup - what Chris said!
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Post by ashcatlt on May 30, 2009 0:43:26 GMT -5
Well, somebody's gotta ask the really tough questions.  |
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Post by sumgai on May 30, 2009 13:38:50 GMT -5
ash was right to question John's proposed arithmetic. The combo of two 500K pots in parallel never really occurs, due to the capacitor in series with one of those pots. At various frequencies, the tone pot will effectuate a different ohmage than if the cap weren't present at all (which of course would obviate the control, but that's not what we're discussing). More to the point, adding a single resistor across the pickup leads in an attempt to reduce the overall ohmage of the two controls sets up a very skewed taper for each control. As they are rotated individually, each will exhibit a different response curve, possibly smooth but shifted to a new point on the knob's numbers, or more likely, very sharply curved - the majority of the action occuring over a very small physical range. And of course, this will be frequency dependent, which is not a fun thing to try to anticipate as one is flailing away...... Sorry, I can't advocate for this mod, for two reasons: it changes the response curves of the controls, and it requires an outlay of cash (for the resistors). But that's just me, who is an old skinflint if there ever was one. sumgai |
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Post by Teleblooz on May 31, 2009 13:16:01 GMT -5
Ka-ching! Problem solved. I disconnected the tone pot from the volume pot and wired it to the unused neck and middle lugs on the other side of the 5-way switch. Now it's only active on the two single-coil pups, and the neck 'bucker screams unobstructed, the way God and St. Leo intended. I kept the 500k volume pot, as ChrisK suggested. Now this thing sounds just like I wanted it to. Thanks to all for your advice.  |
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