Neck, Series, Bridge Wiring

[minions]

If I wanted you use a toggle switch to get:
1 Neck
2 N x B (Series)
3 Bridge

Would this work?



The toggle would be ON-ON-ON.

[sumgai]

minnie,

Yes, what you show will work fine. However, the switch must be an on-OFF-on type SPDT (or more properly, an SP3T) toggle. On-on-on will simply short the system to ground in the center position.

Pretty Nutzy of you, +1.



sumgai

[minions]

Thanks sumgai!

[wolf]

Just thought I'd redraw that diagram a bit:

[newey]

This should go into "Modules". I'll leave it to minions or wolf to do so. It probably should be retitled so as to be more descriptive.

[asmith]

Wouldn't "hanging" the Neck pickup "from hot" in position one be a noise issue? Or am I wrong. Just seems that - whilst electronically the circuit will work fine - the consensus I've picked up so far is that it's generally best practice to make sure things are grounded at all times.

You could do that with a DPDT on-off-on toggle, connecting the ground wire of the neck pickup to the second pole, which is also wired to connect on to the first pole (set up how S1 is at the moment), with one of the lugs grounded.

Here's an indication of what that would look like.

Signed
asmith, Devil's Advocate.

[newey]

Wouldn't "hanging" the Neck pickup "from hot" in position one be a noise issue?

Minion's design doesn't leave the neck coil hanging. At position #1 (per his chart numbering), the neck pickup is operational. The diagram shows the switch set to position #3; the bridge is operational and the neck coil is shorted to itself.

Whether shorting of coils has any tonal effect has been debated, and the consensus seems to be "no", so no worries there. But it is not hanging from hot in any event.

"Hanging from hot" implies that the pup is connected at the hot end but disconnected at the ground end. This might act as an antenna, connected at one end like that. Or, perhaps not, but best practice is indeed to avoid it if possible.

And SP "Center off" switches are cheap and easy to find, so why use a double throw switch?

[wolf]

asmith
Good point about having a pickup "hanging from hot".
Some people do consider that to be quite significant whereas other people (such as myself) think that it doesn't make that much of a difference.
Also, Seymour Duncan (in their wiring of Triple Shots) has a "hanging from hot" condition in one of the coil cut positions:
guitarnuts2.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=modules&action=display&thread=5244
(Look at reply #1)
Those sell for $30 each and it seems that the "hanging from hot" aspect isn't hurting sales.
(Then again, maybe there aren't that many people aware of this).

[asmith]

So I was wrong. Understood.

Those damn positions again! I'm going to buy me a wallchart with those position numberings on for Christmas, and repeat it like multiplication tables to myself before bed.

I'm all for shorting pickups, I wasn't sure if it wasn't good practice to have something that wasn't connected to the ground lug of the input jack - hence my self-casting as the devil's advocate. Or, if the "hanging from hot" definition included shorted pickups that were also connected to the jack's hot lug - which I now know they don't.

I have learnt something. Get me the President!

And minions, apologies for getting dangerously close to hijacking your thread.

[newey]

as-

apologies for getting dangerously close to hijacking your thread.

Not close to that at all, we're still discussing minion's mod.

These things are posted for discussion; "3 or 4 heads are better than 1 or 2" is the philosophy. Often, several people will give a particular design their blessing, only to have the 4th or 5th person find a flaw.

And finding a supposed flaw which is really not flawed is also part of that same corrective process. Your post led me to check it again, which is another set of eyeballs. . . . In this way, we try to ensure that everything is copacetic before the soldering iron is heated.

This often takes some time.

Where we have a problem, it's with the person (and there have been a few) who wants to do a major mod 3 days before he or she absolutely has to have the guitar for the "big gig". That person runs off to start soldering the minute a diagram for them is posted, and then whines when it doesn't work as intended.

Rule #1: Have a spare guitar.
Rule #2: If you don't have a spare, don't tear your only working axe apart 3 days before you need it!

OK, rant over. Wolf has redrawn (with his usual superb skills) a neat little module per minion's design, and has posted it in the "design modules" section for future reference.

Members should feel free to post appropriately-vetted modules in the "Design Modules" section, the goal being to bolster the collection of modules so that the wheel need not be constantly reinvented around here.