HH Cubed

[Runewalker]

I debated on putting this in the "Truely Nutzoid" Section. But after looking at some of the designs, and noting that the simple Pup Selector Map documents at least 30 combos, I decided ... what the hay. If OoP were added, which could be done, then the multipliers rocket the possible number of combos. Besides, it was maybe 90% as difficult to wire up as the HBD, which is in this section.... I mean, check out the spaghetti bowl in the wiring design....

HH³ (HH cubed)

HH: 2 Vol. 2 Tone.
Local Parallel/Single/Series and System Parallel/Series

AKD: the OverLord of Music (see threads that follow) OM

The 1st subtitle emphasizes a key feature of this design:

A DPDT on-on-on Switch selects one of Local Parallel/Single/Series options for each humbucker in an HH configuration --- 3 Local settings for each Humbucker. That 3 way option suggests the name of the Design: HH³, or HH Cubed, or 2H³, etc.

A cascade of options are subsequently available in the Neck/Bridge pickups’ combos.

The other key feature in the design is a System Series switch that, when engaged, irrespective of where the Pickup selector is, places the Neck and Bridge pickups in System Series. I presume an OoP switch could be added but in the Single/Single combo you would get AC hum. It would work fine in the humbucker combinations. I had no room in the specific installation for an OoP switch.

(I know engineer/mathematic types will quibble on whether the H times H times H is really manifest here as a power of 3 equation, and of course you are right. Allow a little artistic license opposed to a precise formula here. You could claim that with the variable tone capabilities available with mixing the levels of each pup when in Neck/Bridge combos you get logarithmic level tone variables, but indulge me as I try not to overthink it.)


Schematic

If this is preferred I will have to beg for help.

Credit

As usual with design ideas I have proposed, John [Led]Hewitt, has come to my rescue. I went down the path of trying the wiring layout and it was pathetically wrong. John set me straight and gave me a draft. As always, thank you John.

The wiring Diagram:

John asked that I notate that the pickup wire colors are Seymour Duncan referenced, but the start/finish and polarity of the wires are labeled as well.


Pickup Selection Map




Local Parallel/Single/Series Humbucker switching is a familiar option that is documented on many sites for years, for example Seymore Duncan and Guitar Electronics. Here is a link to a Guitar Electronics design post that is similar but it requires that the Pickup selector be in the Neck Position to access system Parallel/Series.:
Guitar Electronics version

This design sprang from one of my first Mods. It was Mod conducted before I found the folks on this knowledgeable and generous Forum. I pieced together a modular wiring scheme from different places on the web (the link above was unavailable at the time). It worked but the OoP part of the scheme was extremely noisy, and I did not know enough to ensure that System Single arrays were humcancelling. I discovered later through discussions here why the OoP had those problems

It was time to re-do it. The design discussion is here:

A hopefully small request: HH-design

The discussion in the thread gets pretty random (not that tangential thinking ever occurs in this forum...), but it finally resolves to the design. Eventually the first application I used this design it on was not one of my HHs in the work-stream. Instead it is built into a travel guitar. That chassis had a very small cavity and minor alterations had to be instated.

Here is a picture of the cavity stuffed to the gills. I believed I tested the limits of how many options could be shoved into a small space. .



The ruler does not show up well in the pix, but the plate cover is about 5 inches and the actual cavity is about 4.25" by maybe an inch and a quarter. Really tight to shove all that stuff in and took some dremel work in the cavity.

I say "believe" above because I am relatively certain that the Nutz could find more stuff to do. Trust me though there is no more room for another DPDT switch and a 4PDT will not fit... (Now if I could find a concentric pot with a DPDT .... Yes I know there are some from Europe - MEC duplos. The ones that are 500K are exceeding hard to find and whoo boy get ready to fork it over. Wtih shipping that one switch/pot combo would cost half again as much as I paid for the entire chassis. Violates design principles. Eventually switches have to be replaced, and then good luck finding it again.)

What is the conceptual design?

• Each humbucker has a mini-DPDT On-On-On switch to give Local Parallel/Single (cut coil)/Series
• There is a simple Gibson style Neck/Both/Bridge Pickup Selector. In this case because of the small space I used another DPDT on-on-on switch with a paddle handle to differentiate it from the ones with the bat handles.
• There is a System Parallel/Series switch. I used an unusual dual ganged (non-concentric) with a Push/Pull DPDT switch for this build [very cool component].
  
  In the travel guitar I had to opt for a ganged dual pot for the Tone Controls because of tight cavity real-estate.

[/b][/a]

[li]Finally there is a Volume control for each pup. (again due to space issues, I used a dual ganged concentric pot.) Depending on control cavity space there are separate Tone controls for each pup.[/li]
[/ul]
Below is the (nearly) finished chassis. The middle position DPDT, which is the Neck on-on-on had a little operator error slippage on the drilling and is subsequently not well centered. I planned on a small plate to cover the slot anyway and will fix alignment then. Also we want to dial in the frets a little better, but the action is not really anything to complain about. The pups are Duncan Designed versions of his JB/Jazz set. We have A/B-ed them aganist the USA versions and can not hear a difference, although you will hear others hew and cry about the 'cR_p that comes from the east. Same winding machines, same materials, same sound. works for me. $40 a set on Ebay instead of $140-$150? Works for me. - I have maybe $190 in this "thang." .... K-K-K-K-Tone!



Discussion

As I note this design notion has been around a while, so I don't claim to be plowing new ground here. It was the first one I ever tried to wire up back around 2005.

Pretty straightforward, but also very flexible. The independent Volume controls are important to me because in combo positions, control the mix of the Neck or Bridge volume pots acts as very effective Tone controls. I like that feature especially because conventional tone controls sound muffled to me. Controlling the mix of the pups allows a more full range adjustment of tone – at least to my ears.

I arrayed the Humbucker positions so that the inner coils are selected in cut coil mode. Certainly you could do it outer/outer for the Tele simulation --- personal preference. With inner/inner combos you [should] get fair to good quack in System Parallel, especially in a 24 fret guitar (where the pups are closer together – emulating the Strat spacing geometry of the Neck/Mid in parallel). In System Series the two singles emulate a Les Paul Custom middle position humbucker in its three humbucker configuration, with additional adjustments conveyed from the volume mix. The System Series switch adds some beef when required.

Two nice features are the way John set up the switching logic so that:

1. Regardless of whether the pup selector is located (neck/both/bridge), when the System Series switch is engaged both pups are auto-selected.

This allows easy adjustments during a song with one movement. For example, if you are in the Neck Single or Neck Local Parallel for a rhythm passage, a simple engagement of the System Series switch will kick in the Bridge/Neck combo in series. You can preset the Bridge into one of the Local Parallel/Single/Series for a bit of wind behind your back or a full gale force with the Bridge Local Series/Neck Selection/System Series combo.

2. The Neck and Bridge Single/Single combos are hum-cancelling.

You can arrange the physical orientation of the pups to Inner/Inner, Outer/Outer, Inner/Outer or Outer/Inner to reflect the tonalities you wish to emphasize.

I selected the Inner/Inner location under the theory that in a 24 fret guitar, which the travel guitar has, that there would be a higher likelihood of obtaining Strat “Quack”, with the spacing more similar to Strat Neck/Mid dimensions. Nice theory, but I do not get a great deal of hearable Quack in the travel guitar. May be the pups. May be the theory. I also wanted the Bridge single in the Inner position to avoid too much “ice pick” treble. That worked nicely as the Neck single on these pups is quite musical.

You could select Outer/Outer for more of a theoretical Tele Sound.

Again, space constraints prevented adding an OoP in this application, which I was fine with. However, unexpectedly I miss OoP capability in this build. If I could mix in just a tad of OoP I could achieve a more similar Strat sound. In single modes these pups do sound good, but would not be confused for a Strat. Oh well.

I may beg John to help with a variant with OoP. The original thread that developed this references a Franken-Iby-ESP that was the intended victim and it is already drilled for the OoP switch.

If this works for you, then please enjoy.

Thank you again John. His name should be on this, not mine.

RW

[JohnH]

Its good, and thks for the tech credit.

I think this one may be the first recorded siting of the elusive 'dual-ganged push-pull pot'

Also congrats on getting it to work at all, because I fear that a rewired, post-troubleshooted, fixed-up version would have changed the neat appearance of two mouthfulls of well-organised spaghetti, from something that any dog would love to eat, to something that a dog had already eaten.

Better close up the back and never open it!

Cheers
J

[Runewalker]

John all of the thanks goes to you.

Also congrats on getting it to work at all, because I fear that a rewired, post-troubleshooted, fixed-up version would have changed the neat appearance of two mouthfulls of well-organised spaghetti, from something that any dog would love to eat, to something that a dog had already eaten. -JH

Yeah, I was pretty careful on the wire-up --- double and triple checked the wire flows, even shrunk-wrapped the soldered connections on the switch and taped any possible short exposures. But I was worried if I had to trouble shoot a problem. As I PMed you all settings worked out of the box, but there was some inexplicable hum in some settings. We screwed with that for a few hours, each separately. Finally I gave up the hopeful possibilities of bad connections to the bridge, etc. - and unscrewed the bushings to review the connections. Scared to death any manipulation was going to break a connection. Found nothing, shrugged and re-installed the harness into the body. Surprise. No hum. Fixed by the Hum Faries... wait a minute, that does not sound right... fixed charitably by the hum Ghosts, Spirits or Sprites... I really do not know what happened. Something was happening that stopped happening when I re-positioned the harness.

I think this one may be the first recorded siting of the elusive 'dual-ganged push-pull pot'" -JH

That was quite a find by Uncle Son'O. It is the dime sized pots rather than the full sized ones I prefer, but given the real estate challenges that was a better size. Work like a talisman --- found myself wishing for a dual concentric version. sigh... never satisfied.


Due to the monochromatic black-on-black color scheme of the chassis, it is easy to miss ---- but check out the "brand" of the bridge used on the K-Tone:

The "Overload of Music.".

I rather like the ominous pretension of that. It nicely supports the HH³ design.

RW

[newey]

The "Overload of Music.".

Overlord?

Anyway,the dual-gang with the push-pull is very cool. JohnH's right, it's a first around here. If the OOP was truly desired, a second such unit could make that happen, albeit at the cost of the individual volumes.

[Runewalker]

Mar 11, 2014 17:09:14 GMT -5 newey said:

The "Overload of Music.".

Overlord?

Anyway,the dual-gang with the push-pull is very cool. JohnH's right, it's a first around here. If the OOP was truly desired, a second such unit could make that happen, albeit at the cost of the individual volumes.

Here, let me enhance the engraved text:



a note in the main text I edited into it later:

"(Now if I could find a concentric pot with a DPDT .... Yes I know there are some from Europe - MEC duplos. The ones that are 500K are exceeding hard to find and whoo boy get ready to fork it over. Wtih shipping that one switch/pot combo would cost half again as much as I paid for the entire chassis. Violates design principles. Eventually switches have to be replaced, and then good luck finding it again.)"

Giving up individual volumes is a compromize I am unwilling to make because I opt to control tone with volume first and tone control as a last result. I can even use the System Series switch and the vols. to adjust tone.

That MEC switch is here, I think. Is that Swedish? My Swedish is a little weak.

MEC dual potmeter med DPDT

If KR is the Swedish Korona then that is $70.67 in today's (03.13.2014) exchange rate - before shipping and credit card cost if surcharged. I don't think so.

but it is a fun notion.

[sumgai]

Some shopping with my friend Google informed me that I could pay $85 USD, if I wanted to spend my money in Germany....

Or I could go to Israel (via the innerwebs) and get it for $57 USD.

Interestingly enough, some Warwick basses use them, but Soller Custom Guitars has a 100KΩ version that they use and sell, for 27,82 SKK (Slovak Koruna). What that means in real dollars, Google can't tell me. Either it's a buck and a quarter, or else it's $1,200 and change, Google can't make up it's mind.

Further digging reveals that several bass players on www.basstalk.com have no issue buying these things at full-bore, usually from Germany (several sources). And right now on eBay there's an asshelmet located in Mankato, MN that's hawking them for $75.99 and shipping.


Amazing what one can learn these days, no?

HTH





sumgai

[sonosonny]

Just one more thing....yeah right.
I just completed the HH Cubed successfully.
Neck Volume, Bridge Volume, and the Dual Ganged P/P for the Tones.
I have the Bridge Volume Push/Pull that is not being utilized....
Need a bit of direction on wiring the Bridge HB OUT of Phase with the Neck Pup, per the BR Vol P/P.
The OOP should function whether the BR HB is in Local Series, Local Parallel, or SC AND of course in System Series.
Going NUTZ in Austin.
Rune sends his most sincere regards as well.

SON O Sonny

[newey]

Son-O:

Welcome back! The phase switch will be placed "across" the bridge pickup, before being wired to any of the switching. Think: pickup>>>phase switch>>>>bridge volume>>>other stuff.

As for a phase switch wiring diagram, we should have had a basic one in the "modules" section- we did, but the link is old and no longer works. So I'm reposting one there, and here as well:

[sonosonny]

Newey-
I am wiring a 4 wire Humbucker Bridge with a 4 wire HB neck. Are there still only the two Bridge HB wires going to the OOP, then to the On On On for local HB Series/HB Parallel/SC ?
Wiring the HH Cubed with an OOP enhancement. I am assuming that the Hot and Ground wires of the Bridge HB to OOP are used such as if the HB was wired in standalone HB mode (North Start/South End)
Appreciate your guidance.

Son-O

[JohnH]

May 1, 2015 14:21:43 GMT -5 sonosonny said:

Newey-
I am wiring a 4 wire Humbucker Bridge with a 4 wire HB neck. Are there still only the two Bridge HB wires going to the OOP, then to the On On On for local HB Series/HB Parallel/SC ?
Wiring the HH Cubed with an OOP enhancement. I am assuming that the Hot and Ground wires of the Bridge HB to OOP are used such as if the HB was wired in standalone HB mode (North Start/South End)
Appreciate your guidance.

Son-O

Hi sono

I reckon the diagram that newey posted can be applied, but it needs to fit into the right place in this more complex circuit, ie after the local series/single/parallel switches. I would suggest adding it to the neck pickup, after S2, so take the green and dark grey wires coming out of the top lugs of s2, and insert the phase switch in those, as if they were the wires In the Ooop diagram above.

[newey]

JohnH's right, it needs to go after the series/parallel/single switch. I hadn't thought through the single coil option, that won't "play nice" with the phase switch if the phase comes first.

[austrianjohn]

In the "Key" in the main diagram, should blue be "Local Parallel" rather than "Local Series"?

[newey]

AJ-

It looks like you are correct, I'm surprised it was not noted before. If Son-O or Runewalker stop back in soon, I'll have one of them make the change.

[Runewalker]

I just saw this. Pure serendipity because I have a couple of days off. I have traveled crazy this year... 148 planes, 40 weeks away from home. Crazy.

Good catch. I have many time thought of putting bogus info in these write ups assume it will never be caught.... because no one reads them.

However, this proves that wrong.

I will have to go to deep archives to find that file. Let me get through XMas and see how successful I am.

I am grateful you read this. I use this scheme more than I thought I would and while not as expansive as some of the designs, it is tremendous fun and has tones of musical tones. May be a little "switchy" sometimes, but I was shocked at how much I could get into a small space, like the "OverLord of Music" cheapo Steinberger.

I hope you build it and if so let us know of your evaluation


RW

[Runewalker]

Dec 23, 2015 14:51:59 GMT -5 newey said:

AJ-

It looks like you are correct, I'm surprised it was not noted before. If Son-O or Runewalker stop back in soon, I'll have one of them make the change.

Thank you --- looks like I loaded an old diagram. Reloaded the correct one.

RW