HhH part 2

[kurik]

Ok, I redid the treble bleed and TBX, but my main concern is in the switching.  I think the wire colors should be accurate for the actual pups. I went ahead and added a coil cut switch to the middle pup and now I'm worried about polarity. Any thoughts?

[newey]

First off, there's two potential issues. Phase is one issue. The second is whether your "split switch" for the middle pup is selecting its string-sensing coil or the bottom coil.

As to the second issue, I know we've had folks split these "stacked" HBs before, but I don't know that we've ever had someone report the results. If your switch selects the upper coil, the string-sensing coil, then you should get the single-coil sound that I assume you are after. If it selects the bottom coil, then you'll have some signal, but it will be weak (at least, that's my prediction.)

No way to know this without some testing, since we aren't told which coil is which for the middle pickups.

As to the phase issue, again, some testing is in order, unless you can find someone who has combined these particular pickups and knows which way around is correct for phasing. You might think that you could discern this by knowing which coils are N and S magnetically, coupled with knowing which wires are "North Start", "North Finish" etc. But the "start" and "finish" designations are arbitrary, and can vary from one manufacturer to another.

[4real]

I use stacked noiseless pickup quite a bit, but there is little point in splitting them. Perhaps with some very clever wiring, one might use the lower coil to noise cancel another split elsewhere, but that could be tricky. With most advanced 'stacked' pups (I am not familiar with the dimarzio) like the fender noiseless or SVn's, the bottom coil is farly isolated magnetically and so will not sense much at all, it's role is to cancel noise and get a fairly good approximation of the single coild sound, without the noise.

So, spliting and phasing and such 'trick wiring' is kind of reducndant on them and could possibly let in noise and defeat their purpose.

I'm sure if you are committed to more switches though, the nuts here could dream up something to play withon the HB's. Peraps some variation on the HB variable split thing I did where the HB is 'split' through a cap or that kind of weird 'trick' wiring...kill switch...though these days, simple is often better IMHO!

[kurik]

According to DiMarzio:

“Single-coil mode will produce a slightly brighter and louder sound
than series hum canceling mode, as long as the coil closest to
the strings (the one with red and black wires) remains on. Single coil
mode is not hum canceling. We do not recommend using the
bottom coil by itself under any circumstances, because the sound
will be extremely weak.”

So I think that part is wired correctly. I am really interested in having the "slightly brighter and louder sound" available in this position, but certainly not at the cost of an inadvertent out-of-phase problem.

My pups are on a UPS truck somewhere in the Midwest so I'll have to wait a few days to do any experimenting. I guess the real question is which coil is being split out on the GFS pups and what its polarity is relative to the DiMarzio pup's top coil. Correct?

[JohnH]

Id agree, so it seems that if you want that true single sound, your DiMarzio will be best wired as you have it. You'll have to check overall phase with the GFS's anyway, and also, you might as well get humcancelling when you split all of them and combine M with B or N.

Screwdriver pulloff tests will determine your overall phase, see reference section. If its not working out as drawn you can swap the wires of each GFS coil to reverse its phase.

To get humcancelling when all are coil cut, you need to select GFS coils that are opposite magnetically to the DiMarzio. Ie, place the Dimarzio face to face on the GFS and see which it is attracted to, and that is the one you want too. Once you have identified the coil, you then work out which way to wire it to get it in phase as well.

You can always solve that puzzle, no matter how its wound/wired. The only constraint out of all that is that you may end up with the screw coils of the GFS, or the slug coils, and you might consider if that matters. If they are open coil, Id say not much, if covered, I think the screw coils sound better.

Finally, having worked out coils and wires, you can choose which way round to mount them on the guitar, so your single coil selections are inner coils, or outer coils, or whatever you want. That last step does not mess with anything else.

J

[kurik]

Ok, I'll just have to wait for the parts and do some testing. Much obliged for all of the input. I agree that it might be more trouble than it's worth just to get a "slightly brighter and louder sound" from the middle pup, but I want to make the attempt anyway. I have to agree that simpler is usually better. As Scotty said on Star Trek III, "The more they overtake the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain."

[kurik]

Haha, the DiMarzio came today. It turns out that the black and white leads are only about an inch long. I have no intention of soldering an extension lead on it so that effectively eliminates the coil cut switch. One less thing.