strat with load switch, bridge/neck position

[littlebigbangs]

is it possible to get the combo of neck and bridge out of phase (the quack) along with the normal strat pickup wiring? this is what i want. i imagined normal strat setup and then another switch that selects the neck and bridge together.

also i wanted to put in a load switch, which bypasses tone and volume.

also i wanted to put a pushbutton kill switch right before output.

this is my dream guitar. for reals. and i wish it was real.

oh yea i only have one tone knob, not two.

[4real]

Hmmm

There should be plenty of info about kill switch options around here...you are basically just shorting out the whole guitar.

Not sure the neck and bridge wired out of phase is really a 'quack' setting...I know albert lee uses this on a tele to get a rally thin sound and two of my guitars (strat and tele) can do this...but not exactly "quack"....that's more a strat with middle and neck or bridge.

However, the neck and bridge setting is a fantastic sound that I wired as standard in the middle position of my recent strat (and has a neck pup phase switch as well).

A good way to do this easily is to ahve a "neck on switch" that I think people like Gilmour use. Basically have a switch to turn on the neck pup regardless of setting..that means that with this on, the bridge setting is neck and bridge and teh M+B is now all three N+M+B. I am sure you could wire a tree way mini toggle to add in the neck either in or out of phase...well, I'm guessing so...though it might cause problems.

Never heard it called a "load switch" but that is do-able too...just a switch to wire the selector around the volumes and straight to the output...

My tele has a kill switch but on clean settings it crackles and pops and is more of a gimmick than anything...it's well hidden. Things like an over-ride switch...only makes a little bit of difference, perhaps wiring direct to see if it is worth drilling for this might be an idea.

There are lots of things you can do with a strat that could perhaps give you much of this and more if you have the nerve...but it's not that difficult a request I suppose and the N+B setting is a great sound (perhaps not so much out of phase...very pickup dependent and the kind of sound you are after, wouldn't call it 'quack' though)

[littlebigbangs]

i guess its not called quack, but it has a quacky sound i think. i think the newer strats have push-pull pots that select N+B. im not sure if it selects them in or out of phase. (im not actually sure which one is which, i just like when the neck and bridge are wired opposite so that it cancels the hum out.)

kill switch isn a big deal, the things i dont know how to wire up are the switch for selecting the n+b (hum cancel), and a switch that would go from the selector to out put. also im not sure which switches i would need. a on/on and a on/on/on perhaps?. maybe its too much too ask but diagrams are helpful.

[ashcatlt]

If you want the Middle pickup to be hum-cancelling with both Neck and Bridge, then you'll have to wire the neck out of phase with the bridge to get hum-cancelling.

I'm hearing you say you want a "POoP Override" switch. Whatever the 5-way is doing, flip (or pull) this switch and you get only the Neck and Bridge Parallel Out of Phase. Needs a 4PDT.

4real's idea of the 3 position switch (DPDT on-off-on) for a neck on/off(normal 5-way)/neck OoP works, except I think we'll end up with the Neck shorted and silent when we're in OoP and flip to the Neck position on the 5-way. More poles might could fix that.

[littlebigbangs]

would the middle still cancel the hum with the bridge? what is POoP override? also can this be done with the standard 5 way selector switch and adding two more switches? one for the bridge and neck (quack /out of phase), one for bypassing tone and volume. i think maybe im being confusing, but im trying to be as thorough as possible.

[littlebigbangs]

what if the bridge was wired to be reverse wound, then the mid and neck would be wired normal. wouldnt that give me the b+m hum cancel, AND the n+b hum cancel?

[ashcatlt]

Then you won't have the N+M hum-cancelling. Any way you slice it, you end up with two like coils and one opposite. Of the three possible two-coil combos, only two can be hum-cancelling.

POoP = Parallel Out of Phase. Override = overrides the 5-way switch.

Whatever the 5-way is doing, flip (or pull) this switch and you get only the Neck and Bridge Parallel Out of Phase.

[littlebigbangs]

i can do with out the n/m combo

[asmith]

LBB,

As Cynical1 said about ChrisK (a nut here well before I joined up),

I think the one thing that will always stay with me about Chris was that he was always willing to help you find your solution...but he wasn't going to give it away.

This sounds mean. But it's true. I've drawn up a diagram of what I think you're looking for in your scheme, which is:

+ Strat with master volume and master tone
+ "Neck On and Out of Phase" switch, and your
+ "Load Switch," as well as a
+ Single Pole Double-Throw (SPDT) killswitch.

You can have either the neck out of phase in parallel with whatever is selected, or in series with the bridge - I think. I'm sure that the parallel one would work, but concerning the series wiring, you'd have to get confirmation from the people here who know more electrical theory and shiznit than I do.

If this isn't exactly what you're looking for, either skip the rest of my post, or read the bull I've written in some attempt to light a bulb above your head and figure the whole thing out yourself.

I'm not going to throw anybody in at the deep end, blow a raspberry and belittle 'em. I'm going to walk you through the basics and then you're going to make the last step. Is this arrogant? Yes. I'm just a dude on a geek message board. Is it going to help you understand what's going on in your guitar better? Yes. Is it going to help you design more stuff in the future? At a push, yes. When will the questions stop? Yes.

Start by looking at the standard Strat wiring, for a master volume and two tones. There are loads of diagrams to be found with a quick Google.

Then figure out that your five-way switch actually works like this:

Cheers to JohnH for a diagram that I chopped that off of.

That's two completely independent five-way switches stuck together. Whilst the switches only have three input terminals, positions two and four select two at a time. It might not seem completely relevant that you understand how the switch works, but trust me. Before I understood that - and that wasn't too long ago - I used to stare at diagrams supposed to be wondering what the hell was going on with the push/pull switches, all the while getting distracted by this big five-way switch smack bang in the middle of the diagram, that I didn't understand.

If any of this is obvious, forgive me - I'd rather it help as many people reading this as possible, than just you alone though mate.

You don't necessarily need to know how a volume or tone control works, but it can help. Here's a useful article on volume controls. Essentially (I might get shouted at for this), a tone control is just a volume control for a specific set of frequencies, determined by a capacitor, which only lets high-frequency electrical signals through - at least, with the type of electric current we're dealing with.

Next you know that Neck out of phase requires you to swap the positive and negative, or 'hot' and 'ground' wires of the neck pickup. Wolf has a good image of how to do this, and I hope he'll be OK with me hotlinking it.



A 'load,' or 'solo switch' requires two poles of a switch as well, so that the volume and tone control is completely bypassed. Wolf's got a whole web page dedicated to the Guitar Solo Switch, and it's a beaut. Wolf's page concerns bypassing the switch as well. However, all the principles of the switch are present on that page, and it should be easy learning to understand where the idea of the 'load' switch is coming from.

A killswitch goes just before the output, and is a Single-Throw Double-Pole switch. It basically short-circuits the entire guitar.

So the Neck On and Out-Of-Phase switch has to connect to at least both wires coming from the Neck Pickup, a 'load' switch has to cut out any connection from the 'hot' wires from the switch to the output jack of the guitar, and the killswitch goes just before that jack.

What I've done is be really nice and draw you up a diagram of your guitar, with the switches, without the switches connected to anything or wired up. Except for the killswitch; I've wired that up for you. I think it's probably easier and more educational if you just look at how that works, and then understand the theory behind it on your own.

I've represented the Double-Pole Double-Throw switches like this:

Presuming you're using push/pull switch potentiometers, that only have two positions (pushed, and pulled, pretty obviously) the switches direct the flow of current like this:


Once you reckon you understand all the stuff, have a go at wiring it up! Post your image on the thread - here's a helpful post about that - and we'll all have a look over it, and gently nudge you here and there in the right direction.

Good luck, and most of all enjoy yourself. You're making a few small steps on the start of a journey of figuring out neat little puzzles and getting a reward that's very satisfying. If you turn the volume up it gets even more satisfying.

[littlebigbangs]

would i have to replace my 5-way, for this? heres what i came up with <a href="http://s1109.photobucket.com/albums/h437/littlebigbangs/?action=view&current=littlebigbangstemplate.gif" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1109.photobucket.com/albums/h437/littlebigbangs/littlebigbangstemplate.gif" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>[/img]

s1109.photobucket.com/albums/h437/littlebigbangs/

[JFrankParnell]

this has most of what you're looking for:
guitarnuts2.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=wiring&action=display&thread=5006

N+B oop is (better) than N+M oop, but when you first turn either of them on, you'll be thinking, well, that's thin and crappy but after a while, you'll find things that it works on really well. (N)+B is supposedly what Brian May used on Bohemian solo. Distortion, as usual, is the special sauce.

[ashcatlt]

Well, you've got everything working except the neck switch. It's just a straight phase switch. It does not do the "neck on" thing. You need at least one more pole to accomplish that. Then you could even get B+M-N and M-N if you wanted.

If you can in fact live without N+M, and don't mind the 5-way being a little out of order, you could just shift the wires on the 5-way so the M is on the end, B in the middle, and N at the other end. You can either leave the neck phase switch as you have it now and have the option of N+B (humming) or N-B (humcancelling) or - if you're sure you're always gonna want the neck OoP, just wire it to the 5-way OoP to begin and leave that extra switch out altogether. Or if it's only noise that you're worried about, you could swap out the pickups so that the N and M are like coils and the bridge is the one that's RWRP.

Edit - ninja'd by jfrank! His diagram is exactly what I was talking about.

[asmith]

would i have to replace my 5-way, for this? heres what i came up with

s1109.photobucket.com/albums/h437/littlebigbangs/

Wehay! As ashcalt said, you got everything working but the neck being out of phase.

Here's how to get a Neck On and Out of Phase switch for parallel combos...

...and here's how to get the Neck On, Out of Phase and in series with the Bridge Pickup.

Nice one dude. My 'Load' switch might be wired a bit differently but it's exactly the same principle.

Ash and JFrank are right as well. Wiring the Neck out of phase in the first place or wiring the switch differently might be a good way forward. Just depends on which route you want to take, and what suits you best.

[littlebigbangs]

oh cool why didnt i think of that? i think im gunna wire the 5 way to be N,NB,B,BM,M. thats way simpler. thanks. this was really helpful. i think im gunna get a pushbutton kill switch

[JFrankParnell]

Jan 14, 2011 12:38:13 GMT -5 littlebigbangs said:

oh cool why didnt i think of that? i think im gunna wire the 5 way to be N,NB,B,BM,M. thats way simpler. thanks. this was really helpful. i think im gunna get a pushbutton kill switch

wul, then you lose N+M which, to me, is one of the coolest sounds a guitar can make. but, whatever, its cool.

here's a kill switch thread: guitarnuts2.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=wiring&action=display&thread=5090 I havent installed it yet, cuz i keep thinking it might be better in a foot switch. Have to really grease up your ankle, though ;D

[wolf]

Just thought I'd mention that when it comes to an "out of phase" wiring, most people think Neck and Bridge in series sounds much better than Neck and Bridge in parallel.

[4real]

That Malibu Mod is cool...I like that a 'blower' switch switches to a full on bridge pickup...danelectros 'blower' I think puts all three on a full blast but not such a useful sound.

Not sure I like the change in order but gets a solution with a standard switch...I can get all these options and more (other than the middle alone) with the MR modified scheme on my new strat wiring and if you were going to loose a selection it would be this over the classic N+M sound.

But again, the N+B is definitely a really useful and cool sound on a strat...very telecaster-ish...the N+M+B is also cool, a light sound suitable for strumming and such.

The series sounds are interesting...not really got into them as much as the more typical 'strat' parallel sounds...if you are getting into OoP things, there is something to using that on those settings which tend to be bassier and more powerful so that the OoP thing is a little less 'dramatic'. I rarely use the OoP thing as I play so clean in general, but being playing with some old overdrive pedals and as Brian May and Page showed...they certainly have their uses with high gain sounds and can be very effective in a kind of lo-fi way.

Clean, I tend to only really use it on 'funky' riffing (think 'superstition' clavicord sound)...there is a percussive 'chord melody' demo of the B+N with N OoP sound on my tele's sound demo however.

Really the effect can sound quite different depending on the pickup types used...on my tele the bridge pup is a big bright HB while on my strat an HB that splits to the coil closest to the bridge or neck or both and each is going to sound different with the neck OoP.