Super-7 with Phase Switches

[bacchus]

Hello folks, this is my first post here.

I found this website after having relied on 1728.com for some time and then panicking when it went down. A few google searches later and I ended up here.

I've been struggling for two weeks or so trying to sort out a guitar with two P-Rails.

Basically, I want to be able to choose between each coil on each pickup, to be able to combine each coil with it's partner in series/parallel as well as in/out of phase. I also want to be able to control how I put each pickup against the other in either series/parallel and in/out phase.

Oh, and I'm using stacked knobs so that I have control over the volume and tone on each pickup.

The main reason for wanting all this is that I'm a fan glitchy/boutique fuzzes and I relish the unexpected results that these pedals yield depending on what guitar is played through them.

I decided to use the Super-7 layout from 1728.com but with phase switches added. I have drawn up the following diagram as best I can. I have assembled, disassembled and reassembled the circuit several times now and I can't get it to work the way I expect to. One main problem that seems to keep coming back is that the DPDT on the neck pickup (which is supposed to control phase between the two coils of that pickup) seems to act like a master switch. The rest of the time, all I seem to get is some sort of undefined humbuckery mess, difficult to tell whether it's neck, bridge, P-90, rail or otherwise.

I'm willing to accept that there are problems with my solder work but before troubleshooting the actual work more (I've already spent hours) I would like to make sure that the diagram I have drawn up is sound.

I need to know:

1. Are the phase switches as they should be?
2. Are the pots as they should be?
3. Are there any other problems?

Thanks very much in advance.

[newey]

bacchus-

Hello and Welcome to G-Nutz2!

At first glance, your phase switches look OK on the diagram, but I need a chance to study the whole thing a bit more. One thing has me confused, though:

Oh, and I'm using stacked knobs so that I have control over the volume and tone on each pickup.

This implies one volume and one tone per pickup. So far, so good.

OK, so your inset diagram shows a V and T pot combination, with an "A" in and a "B" out. A yellow square around this V and T corresponds to the diagram, where I also see yellow squares, which are also labeled "A" and "B", again corresponding to the diagram.

But each pickup has 2 yellow squares, and 2 "A"s and 2 "B"s. This looks to me like 4 knobs per pickup, since the yellow box represents both V and T controls as shown.

[bacchus]

Thanks for your reply.

Ah, sorry, right you are. That should say that I want control over V and T on each coil rather than pickup.

[wolf]

Hello Bacchus
Just thought I'd say that 1728.com is my website but if you go there, you get redirected to China. That domain name was stolen from me and I'm really angry.
I am not sure if I'll ever get the name back but in the meantime, I'm rebuilding the website at www.1728.ORG (which I think you have already discovered).
Just thought I'd let you know what happened.
************************************************
EDITED TO ADD:
Sorry for not analyzing the graphic that you made.
There is no need for 2 phase switches and one switch is enough to give you every possible phase option that two switches will produce.

[bacchus]

Thanks for the reply. The reason for there being three phase switches is that I want to be able to put each coil against its partner in or out of phase, so that it is possible to have all four coils on but with one out of phase for instance. I've tried to repeat the Super-7's three banks of two switches but with a dpdt switch for phase at each bank.

Wolf: I hadn't actually found the new site. I'm pleased to hear that it's back online though. I wasn't sure if you were still active anywhere and was kicking myself for not making offline backups of everything on there. Thanks for the site and for your help! It's been really useful.

[newey]

I want control over V and T on each coil rather than pickup.

Ah, OK. Got it. In that case, you don't have the pots in the right place. They need to be wired "across" each coil before the switching.

On the coil with the phase switch, it can be either before or after the phase switch. But they need to be wired before the two coils are combined at the series/parallel switches.

If you're unsure how to do this, look at a wiring diagram fro a std Les Paul with 4 controls. Each pickup in yours gets wired like the 2 pickups in an LP.

Be aware that, in your series settings, there will be some wonkiness. Turning down either vol pot to "0", for instance, will kill all output when in series.

There may be a better way to do this; let's let others weigh in here.

[sumgai]

bacchus,

Hi, and to the NutzHouse!


newey is correct in that you need to move the Volume and Tone controls. To be more specific, I'd say that you should put them before any switching. In this way, you have uniformity - everywhere you look, you see the same arrangement.

Now, the controls themselves. A module like you've drawn is nice, but sadly, it won't cut any mustard when things are connected in series. By definition, when series is used, at least one pickup's "negative" lead is no longer grounded - instead it's connected to another pickup's "hot" lead. Placing a control (Volume or Tone) from that pickup's hot lead directly to ground causes amazing Tone Suck, because said control(s) is/are now in parallel with the remaining pickup - bad ju-ju, very bad.   By placing the controls directly between each coil's leads, you are assured that any series connection will not be putting a control in parallel with another coil/pickup.

While I have no idea if your pickup wire colors are correct, the rest of your circuit looks good to me. And in contrast to wolf, you do indeed require all three phase switches in order to obtain the maximum tonal pallette. So long as you feel comfortable trying to operate that space ship while on stage, in the middle of the wildest solo ever, then I've no issues with this arrangement.

Try moving those controls where we suggested, and I'll bet your crapola becomes Instant Mojo, Baby! ;D   Good luck!


HTH




sumgai

[bacchus]

A quick update to say that I've moved the pots now to the green and black wires straight from the pickups and am having slightly more luck. More of the positions now make sounds, and some of them sound definitely P-90ish or railish. In fact, the neck circuit sounds much like it should except the phase switch doesn't seem to do much. The circuit still isn't behaving as it should (no sound at all from the bridge pickup and now the middle phase switch is acting like a master sometimes).

I'm going to leave this for tonight and troubleshoot it again tomorrow night and report back. I suspect there have been errors in assembly.

I'm delighted that it seems to be going the right direction. Thanks again everybody.

[bassxtreme]

I did this mod to my 2 humbucker bass and Strat and they sound great! So many great tones. The key is to make sure you know which pickup coil wires are the positive and negative. I also took my time and spread out the soldering over 3 days for each instrument. You can also expand the design by adding another phase switch to an individual pickup. Then you can put the pickup out of phase with itself and combine the sound to the other pickup that's in phase.

[bacchus]

Still not having any luck, and I've troubleshot everything.

I think at this point, the next stage is to completely disassemble the harness and reassemble and see if that gets me anywhere. I know now that I'm definitely a lot more familiar with every wire and lug in this set up than I was when I started, so it stands to reason that I might do a better job of it this time.

Can't see any mistakes, though. I've checked the wire colours a few times, and I think they're correct.

I'll report back, but it might take a while. I'm thinking it might be sensible to plan to do this one small part at a time, so that I'm not working for more than half an hour or so and I can be certain that I'm getting each stage right.

I suppose the good news is that I'm getting a lot more soldering practice than I ever wanted to out of this. Silver linings and all that!

[sumgai]

Jun 5, 2011 10:44:11 GMT -5 bacchus said:

I'm thinking it might be sensible to plan to do this one small part at a time, so .... I can be certain that I'm getting each stage right.

This is the correct procedure to follow at this point.

Although some Nutz might advise you to Scan The Brains Through The Nostril (which might be kinda fun, depending on your proclivities), I think your current plan is the safest bet.



sumgai

[newey]

When you disassemble, check each component with your multimeter. Easy to do, and a bad pot or switch will make you crazy.

[bacchus]

Hello everyone. Sorry for resurrecting an ancient thread, but I'm still chipping away at this. I've neglected the guitar a bit in the last few months as I've been busy emigrating to the other side of the world! (hence the trying to build a superversatile guitar that covers all the sounds in the collection of guitars I left behind).

So, by way of troubleshooting, I've disassembled everything and checked it all. I had one dud switch, but the rest were sound. Two of the pots were dodgy too (seems I may have damaged them with heat? Apparently concentric Alphas are prone to this, bear in mind I'm not the most talented solderer in the world).

I've rewired the bridge pickup only, with just the three switches (and no pots) and it seems to work, but not completely as I expected. I'm wondering if this is as a result of a mistake during assembly, or whether it's because I was expecting the schematic to do something different to what it does. I'll describe its behaviour, and hopefully someone can tell me if it's as it should be.

The with the phase switch set to in phase, everything works as expected. I can get a parallel humbucker, series humbucker, P-90 and rail sound. They all sound great.

Now, with the phase switch set to out of phase, only the series humbucker makes any sound. Parallel humbucker makes a dull buzz, and either coil by itself gives no output. This surprised me. I expected parallel humbucker to have at least some output no matter how low, and expected either coil by itself to sound as normal, given that there's nothing for it to be out of phase with.

Is this behaviour what should be expected from my schematic or have I wired something wrong?

I'm not sure if that makes sense reading it back, but if people wanted, I could draw a schematic of what I've tried to do, take photos and do a sound recording if it helped people troubleshoot. It's late at night here now, so that would all have to wait before I could do it.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[bacchus]

Here's a schematic of what I've tried to wire this time. I'll do this for each pickup, then look at combining them, then add pots at the end. Is the behaviour described in my previous post what you would expect from this?

[reTrEaD]

Nov 28, 2011 6:03:17 GMT -5 bacchus said:

Is this behaviour what should be expected from my schematic or have I wired something wrong?

I think this behavior is because of design, not because of miswiring.

[bacchus]

That's what I'm worried about. But, on Wolf's site (where I got the Super-7 from in the first place) he shows a phase switch being put between the two pickups in the same way I have them between the coils here.

Now the question is, have I misread Wolf's site, misinterpreted and misused his switching pattern (I full admit to being pretty ignorant in all this, for all I know coils might not be able to combined in the same way), or have I made a wiring mistake?

[reTrEaD]

the mistake you made was in the choice of wires going to the phase switch. the phase switch needs to exchange the connection of two wires from the same coil. for Seymour Duncan, the pairs are black and white (slug coil) or red and green (screw coil)

[deaththeorist]

So I found this thread and am slightly less ambitious than OP, in that i'm fine with just a master tone and volume as per the original one by wolf.
I'd still like the two additional phase switches as OP did, and also one more SOLO switch (to bypass the pots). 
 
all ideas from 1728.org

i emailed wolf for advice and he sent me back an edited version of his original super seven switching, including for me the phase switch for the neck pickup.
From there i tried to add in the one for the bridge, and the solo switch.(pretty obvious where my edits were >.<)

I'd like to confirm if i have them in the right place! and also, is this the ultimate switching scheme for two humbucker set up (sans the blend pots and such)? or is there a way to add MORE TONES!

obligatory: FIRST POST!



Edit: using the table from www.1728.org/guitar6.htm and assuming that for each time a series/parallel appears on it own on a row, with this mod i get one more tone, and when series/parallel appears for both pickups on a row i get 3 addition tones, i calculated an additional 84 tones.

total distinct tones that this mod should give appears to be 156 (?) at least to my cursory calculations

[newey]

DT-

Hello and welcome to G-Nutz2!

Sorry for being delinquent in responding to your first post. Your phase switch placement is fine and the solo switch is also good to go.

As for the total number of combos, I won't dispute your numbers. I "hit the wall" in math classes right around the time we studied permutations and combinations.

As for whether additional tones are possible, of course they are. Various types of blending schemes are one example, bypassing one coil in a combo by a capacitor is another route.

Understand, however, that the pursuit of the "all everything" guitar is, in the end, more satisfying as a technical exercise than it is as a playable guitar. Many of the tones will not be distinctively different from one another, so you end up with a lot of overlap. And the switching quickly becomes unwieldy for actual playing; it becomes too hard to remember how to get to that one sound you really want at a particular moment..

I can't speak for everyone, of course, but I think a consensus of opinion hereabouts would be that one should build the all-everything axe if one wishes to do so, but then find the 8 or 10 tones you really use, and incorporate those into a guitar you will actually play.

[deaththeorist]

Aug 13, 2014 20:57:35 GMT -5 newey said:

DT-

Hello and welcome to G-Nutz2!

Sorry for being delinquent in responding to your first post. Your phase switch placement is fine and the solo switch is also good to go.

As for the total number of combos, I won't dispute your numbers. I "hit the wall" in math classes right around the time we studied permutations and combinations.

As for whether additional tones are possible, of course they are. Various types of blending schemes are one example, bypassing one coil in a combo by a capacitor is another route.

Understand, however, that the pursuit of the "all everything" guitar is, in the end, more satisfying as a technical exercise than it is as a playable guitar. Many of the tones will not be distinctively different from one another, so you end up with a lot of overlap. And the switching quickly becomes unwieldy for actual playing; it becomes too hard to remember how to get to that one sound you really want at a particular moment..

I can't speak for everyone, of course, but I think a consensus of opinion hereabouts would be that one should build the all-everything axe if one wishes to do so, but then find the 8 or 10 tones you really use, and incorporate those into a guitar you will actually play.

Hey hey! i dont think there's any delinquency at all though :/


yea i understand that such "nutzoid" set ups are completely impractical. more of a proof of concept, academic exercise i suppose. mostly just for fun hahaha
i mean.... isn't it cool to just think about it?? =X

thanks for verifying the diagram! blending schemes can get complicated quickly right? can u blend both types of switches in my diagram? or does it work with dpdt only? (or maybe something totally different is going on about blending >.< ) also, whats this bypassing one coil in a combo by a capacitor? a quick search pointed me nowhere close anywhere i could check out these more? hehe


good day~

[newey]

Blending does become more complicated when one has both series and parallel arrangements. A switch can be used to swap the blend control mode from series to parallel.

ChrisK's series/parallel blending w/ DPDT switch

Another option is to simply bypass the blender when in series, leaving it to only operate when in parallel, or vice versa.

As for using caps, we have often called the arrangement "Half out of phase" ("HOOP"), when used in conjunction with phase switching:

"Half out of phase"

Confusingly, the "HOOP" terminology has also been used when two coils are not OOP, but where one coil is partially bypassed by a cap.  JohnH is a big fan of this, and has several LP-style schemes which use this.  If you do a search for "Half out of phase" or "HOOP" you should get a bunch of hits.

Or, one can use a cap bypass in conjunction with a solo switch, as I did for my single-pickup travel guitar. This is probably one of the oldest ideas in guitar wiring, as it more or less mimics the three-way switching Leo used on the original Esquire model. With the cap switched in, it gives a fixed bass tone. The cap value dictates how extreme the treble cut will be. It's sort of like flicking a switch to instantly go to "0" on one's tone knob.:

3-way solo switch

Or, one can switch caps for one's tone control:

ChrisK's "free woman tone"

We are, however, rapidly going far off topic for this thread, which is about wolf's "Super 7" switching. So, if you have other questions or wish to explore these ideas further, it is best to start a new thread in the general Guitar Wiring area.

[deaththeorist]

got it!! thanks!

[deaththeorist]

hah! just found out about the music man game changer. seems like the super 7 with phase switching is the game changer system for a H-H guitar

EDIT: oh its not... we cant change the order of the pickups when in series

[newey]

oh its not... we cant change the order of the pickups when in series

There's no difference in tone with a different order in series. B X N = N X B