strat new push-pull vol, new tone pots, new switch

[Deleted]

Hi, i just finished with replacing all electronics minus pups in my aria strat (the one with the E-E width nut issue).
It has an original (japanese?) middle pup, for which i dont know the direction of wound with regard to the rest of pups, a dimarzio fast track 1 (mini rails humbucker) in the neck and a dimarzio fast track 2 (also mini rails humbucker measuring about 17KOhm - very powerful) in the bridge. Original i had added the dimarzios with the normal factory strat wiring, just replacing the neck and bridge pickups after putting them in full in-series humbucking wiring. That means i left the original pots, cap and the switch. Now, the pots and the switch were problematic since i bought it in 1984. So i had planned replacing all the pots (with new linear 500Kohm pots), the cap (went for a dimarzio 0.033 uf), the 5-way switch and also giving a go to a push-pull vol 500Kohm audio pot for splitting the bridge pup, and achieving this "quack" in position 2 (middle-bridge).
It sort of went well, but i have some slight issues and observations i would like to share :

- bridge-split-middle position 2 still hums, i am using the "neck"-side coil (rail) of the bridge rails (not the bridge side), so the one closer to the mid pup. Pups are surely in phase, they sound good but hum. Not a big problem, in itself, just an minor issue. Now to solve it i wired the middle pup reversing the polarity, and this solved the noise-hum issue but also brought the two pups out of phase, and the signal was considerably weak. So i guess my only chance here is go and grab one of the remaining original neck/bridge pups of this guitar which i suppose must have been RWRP in relation to the mid pup and try them out.

- the said bridge-split-middle position 2 sounds better, no complaints, but non split it sounds good as well. I was not exactly blown away by the split-mode quack as opposed to full-humbucking-bridge-mid quack i was used to all those years. split mode is better, but non-split worked good as well.

- most important, the 500Kohm linear tone pots, seem to only work in positions 1->3, positions 4->10 just sound the same, with no audible tone change... So i am considering maybe a should go to no-load 250Kohm linear pots? All use the same combinations with audio pots (250/500kohm)? Maybe the 0.033uf dimarzio capacitor has any effect on this? As i understand, the pots (CTS btw, this model EP-4986-000 guitarpartsresource.com/images/large/EP-4986-000.jpg) work quite good, i can do fast wah-wah effects, but still give little space for fine tuning as from 3 to 2 the tone changes dramatically. Will a audio tone pot behave better? i read about it being much worse actually, like ppl with this problem going to audio tone pots only to find that their pots now work from 0->1 only.

[newey]

So i guess my only chance here is go and grab one of the remaining original neck/bridge pups of this guitar which i suppose must have been RWRP in relation to the mid pup and try them out.

No, you just need to wire the bridge HB so as to use the other coil, which should then be hum-cancelling with the middle pickup.

The slight difference in position along the string probably won't make a bit of difference tonally, as these are mini-HBs. But if it bothers you to not have the coil closest to the middle as the one which is "split", then lengthen the wires (if needed) and rotate the bridge pickup 180 degrees.

Without knowing how you wired the coil split, I can't tell you how to wire it so as to get the other coil, but essentially, if you grounded one coil to silence it, move that ground wire to "hot" to silence to opposite coil.

Your tone control problem isn't an issue with the cap value, it's an issue with the pots. 250K might give you a bit more adjustment, but will darken the tone when at 10. A log taper (i.e., audio taper) may behave a bit better, but I haven't heard of all the adjustment being from 1-3, that's odd.

You might test your pots with a meter to be sure that they are actually 500K.

[ashcatlt]

What newey said, but...

Apr 3, 2013 6:09:08 GMT -5 newey said:

... move that ground wire to "hot" to silence to (sic) opposite coil.

I know what you meant, and you know what you meant:
Replace the ground wire on the switch with the pickup's "hot" wire going to the 5-way.

[Deleted]

Apr 3, 2013 6:09:08 GMT -5 newey said:

No, you just need to wire the bridge HB so as to use the other coil, which should then be hum-cancelling with the middle pickup.

Thanx newey.

Apr 3, 2013 6:09:08 GMT -5 newey said:

The slight difference in position along the string probably won't make a bit of difference tonally, as these are mini-HBs. But if it bothers you to not have the coil closest to the middle as the one which is "split", then lengthen the wires (if needed) and rotate the bridge pickup 180 degrees.

Without knowing how you wired the coil split, I can't tell you how to wire it so as to get the other coil, but essentially, if you grounded one coil to silence it, move that ground wire to "hot" to silence to opposite coil.

Very clever ideas, thanx. However the dimarzios have really thick tough cables (and pretty long too) and they way they leave the pup from the direction towards to bridge makes it hard to rotate the pup 180 degrees, plus the cable i got (some speaker cable, it was sunday and all the stores closed) is not very solder friendly + i am afraid the over twisting might damage the pins in the dimarzios , so i would prefer to leave the existing components as they are and maybe try to swap the mid pup only. However i might just buy the correct guitar wire and redo the whole thing having in mind your useful suggestions.

Apr 3, 2013 6:09:08 GMT -5 newey said:

Your tone control problem isn't an issue with the cap value, it's an issue with the pots. 250K might give you a bit more adjustment, but will darken the tone when at 10. A log taper (i.e., audio taper) may behave a bit better, but I haven't heard of all the adjustment being from 1-3, that's odd.

You might test your pots with a meter to be sure that they are actually 500K.

I already checked the tone pots with the multimeter and they measure 500kohm dialed to 10, and also 250Kohm dialed to 5, so i guess they are ok. Also the same effect is true for the mid SC pup, so its not a dimarzio fast track thing. Unfortunately this guitar had problematic pots since the day i bought it, so i cant compare to how it was.

If i turned to some other brand (Alpha), or to 250Kohm no-load pots?

Also, according to your experience, what would be the impact of the pot being log instead of linear for tone usage? Would it make the problem worse or better?

Again thanx a lot!

[Deleted]

Apr 3, 2013 9:51:49 GMT -5 ashcatlt said:

What newey said, but...

Apr 3, 2013 6:09:08 GMT -5 newey said:

... move that ground wire to "hot" to silence to (sic) opposite coil.

I know what you meant, and you know what you meant:
Replace the ground wire on the switch with the pickup's "hot" wire going to the 5-way.

thanx , its ok, i guess we all understood what newey wanted to say.

[Deleted]

Hello, just an update from the last mod session. I re-opened the guitar and while the primal aim was to fix the split bridge-middle position hum issues, i saw something horrible. I'll open up a thread with this, in the lutherie section : guitarnuts2.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=repair&thread=6844&page=1

So, electrically i changed the mid pup with one i thought was RWRP with regards to the previous SC, but hotter, being ex-bridge in the original setup. The second mod i did was that coil-split the neck pup dimarzio fast track 1 using the remaining pins of the push/pull pot, and the 3rd mod was to connect bridge pup to the middle tone control, using the dummy connection way.

Impressions : the pup change made a nice impact on the quak department. Quak gets better and clearer IMO if the two pups are of same output. Coil-splitting the neck did not yield any impressive new sounds. Adding the bridge tone control resulted in a sort of sane result when in SC mode. When in humbucking mode it is just bad. Bleeds so much treble-mid than the signal is barely heard. Next move i will try the above small capacitor mod as explained in the original GN site ( ). Another thing i noticed is that bridge tone control starts to make effect sooner than other pups, so that 500k could justified for this. Also judging by the operation of the current setup, i will go for no load 250k pots, since i found out that in both middle neck pups having 500k tone linear pots kills the smoothness of the control, since it is completely absent in the first 250k range and comes into life later which means only after the knob is turned to 3-2.5. Not very usable. Thats it for now. I will update when i do those two next mods.

[Deleted]

did the additional capacitor mod as explained in the above post. I connected a 0.022 uF capacitor in bridge-middle pins of the 5-way switch. My already existing cap in the tone circuit was a dimarzio 0.033uF. The final total maximum capacitance for the bridge pup now is 0.013 uF. In SC coil-split mode even at tone turned to 1 the sound is still clear and retaining all the highs to make it audible and sweet. I can even play a whole song in this setup. In humbucking mode it sounds rather OK compared to bare dummy connection in the previous arrangement where most of the tone was lost. Now it sounds good but in split mode it sounds even better with tone turned to 1. With tone to 10, it sounds as expected. No audible unwanted treble loss in 10. 500k pots pay off in this sector.

So now i have total bridge capacitance .0.013uF while retaining the rest of characteristics the same regarding tone control. So i have tone control in all positions + coil splitting of bridge/neck.

Overall, now i have a very versatile instrument thanx to GN and GN2

PS
update regarding hum canceling in positions 2, 4, my trick didn't work, the new pup i tried was not rwrp with regards to the previous one. But the quak is better.

[Deleted]

Just an update, wrote an email to dimarzio asking about the true velvet middle, and the whole wiring hum canceling thing i was trying to attempt in 2-4 positions and i was pleasantly surprised by dimrazio's prompt answer !!!

Dear Sirs,

good morning from Greece.

I am in a search for a middle pickup for an application involving a Fast Track 1 neck, Fast Track 2 bridge

with already implemented coil-splitting in both neck and bridge,

wired with default wiring (black-white soldered and connected to push-pull pot, red hot,
green/bare ground for both bridge/neck). My aim is that while in
coil-split mode to have hum free 2-4 positions (aka quack).
As i have the guitar now, it has good sounds minus the hum in 2-4, cause the middle i have is not
RWRP with regards to the fast tracks with default wiring as explained above.

I dont want to reverse the position of either of the fast stracks 180 degrees as the

cables would be stressed, and risk a damage.

Also I'd like to use neck side coil of the bridge pup and bridge side coil of the neck pup in coil split,
so the quack gets better



I'll do some experiments today to see if in coil split mode indeed i have the aforementioned coils

in action.

1) Reversing the direction of the pickups makes little or no tonal difference, because the coils are so close together.

2) If your current wiring does not cancel hum in positions 2 and 4 with the current middle pickup, you should be able to correct this by wiring the split white hot, black ground, red and green soldered to the push/pull.

3) The bridge side coils of both pickups will be on in split mode with this wiring.

Thanx SO much for the prompt response.
Now i can certainly try your solution and have hum free 2-4 positions.
I would consider tho the true velvet middle. Would you recommend that?

Yes, depending on the specific sound you want in the middle. If you get this pickup, you should use your original wiring on the neck and bridge pickups (red hot, green ground), and the True Velvet will be black hot and white ground.

[newey]

2) If your current wiring does not cancel hum in positions 2 and 4 with the current middle pickup, you should be able to correct this by wiring the split white hot, black ground, red and green soldered to the push/pull.

3) The bridge side coils of both pickups will be on in split mode with this wiring.

Exactly what I said in reply #1 above . . .

[Deleted]

^^ sure, i just wanted to show how professional, compact and precise their answer was. And prompt as well. I am thinking of scrapping the existing mid pup for a true velvet. +1 to dimarzio for this.