Need some help with a diagram

[brianloco]

Hi all I'm new to this forum. Just recently started building and reworking guitars so there's a lot I'm still learning. I just finished my first build of my own design and now I'm working on a mic strat I cut up to do something different with. So here is my issue I'm going with a shs setup in it. For the humbucker I'm replacing one of the tone knobs with a 6pos 4 pole rotary switch to get a bunch of different options out of the humbucker I have found a diagram for wiring that. What I need help with is I'm going to put a second 6pos 4 pole rotary as the pickup selector and I'm not sure how to wire that in with the other rotary and the vol and tone. What is like for the positions is 1 n 2 nm 3 m 4 mb 5 b and 6 nb or all three
Thanks in advance for any help
Brian

[newey]

B Loc-

Hello and Welcome to G-Nutz2!

I have found a diagram for wiring that.

We're going to need to see that diagram if we're going to incorporate it into a complete scheme, so please post it so we can all see what you're after.

I think I can imagine what the 6 positions on that switch will do. Understand that all the different options may not sound distinctively different., particularly if the 2 coils of the HB are identical.

N + B is probably more useful for the 6th position than all three, as it gives you a bit of a Tele vibe.

As far as wiring the whole thing together, one of the things we preach around here is the idea of modular design. You will have 3 modules here:

1 4P6T rotary switch to switch the 2 coils of the mid HB. Together with the pickup, this forms what we'll call a "mid HB module". There will be 4 wires from the HB going into the switch, wired as per the diagram you're going to post. . There will be 2 wires coming out of the module, representing the Mid pickup "hot" and "not hot". Those 2 wires can then connect with any number of other modules, you will treat those 2 wires just as if they were the 2 wires coming out of a single coil Strat pickup.

1 4P6T rotary switch for pickup selection. This will be the "selector module". Your N and B pickups will be wired directly to this switch, and so will the 2 wires from the mid HB module. Just as with the Mid HB module, there will be 2 wires coming off this switch, a "hot" and a "not hot"

V and T knobs, together with the output jack, form a 3rd module, the V and T module. These will be wired just as they are in virtually any guitar with a single volume and single tone control. Diagrams for this module abound.

Now, some things to consider before you commit to a particular design:

First of all, rotary switches come in many shapes and sizes. Be sure the ones you get will fit into your guitar. Rotaries with a knurled shaft to fit a regular Strat knob are pretty rare (and may not be very durable over time, the rotary will put a lot of stress onto those plastic ridges on the inside of the knob), so you're probably looking at changing all the pots and knobs over to solid shaft ones, assuming you want your knobs to all match.

Second, you'll have 4 knobs- two switches and two pots. You'll also have a slot where the 5-way switch was located. You might consider that your life would be a lot easier to just add the rotary for the mid HB in place of one of the tone pots, and keep the 5-way switch for the pickup selector. If you want other options than the standard Strat ones, you can swap out the original 5-way for a Superswitch. And, for that 6th position on the rotary that you'd be losing, a Push/Pull pot on either the V or T could give you even more. For example, the P/P could be used to force the neck pickup "on" in conjunction with whatever is selected on the 5-way switch. This then gives you both options- N + B with the "neck On" pulled and the 5-way set to the bridge position, and all three pups with the 5-way set to the B + M setting.

Doing so keeps the stock Strat look and avoids problems placing the second rotary switch. Also, turning a rotary switch to a particular setting is a bit "fussy" compared with a 5-way, which you can sort of "backhand" into position while playing, if "switching on the fly" is desired.

[brianloco]

So here's the diagram I found and this is the switch I have. I'm not too worried about keeping the strat look since I've chopped the body and it doesn't really look like strat anymore anyway. The pickguard I got I had made without the slot for the 5 way switch so it just has the three holes for the pots I was planning on drilling a new hole where the 5 way switch was supposed to go for the other rotary

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[brianloco]

This is the guitar that I'm working on it was a 96 mic strat

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[sumgai]

brian,



OK, I see a problem here. Before I imitate a one-man Fourth Of July festival, I'd like to see one or two things.... (as I'm sure others here would also like to see):


a) Where did this diagram come from? Can you link directly to the source? Further, is there any discussion behind the design that we can see?


b) What is the intent of this setup? By that I mean, what coil combinations do you expect to get out of this thing, for each position?


For that second question, what I'm asking you to do is make up what we call a "Truth Table" - it shows what pickups are selected for each position. You can make it as simple as possible, no fancy stuff required here in The NutzHouse!






sumgai

[brianloco]

Here is the link for the wiring diagram
hermeticoguitar.blogspot.com/2012/08/wiring-diy-part-07.html?m=1

As for the truth table
For the rotary
1.Humbucker (in series)
2.Coils in Parallel
3.Split to Slug
4.Split to Screw
5.Series OOP
6.Parallel OOP
And then to the other selector
Instead of using a 4p6t or 5way blade would the 6 way freeway switch work?
That way it would be
1 neck
2 neck/mid
3 mid
4 mid/bridge
5 bridge
6 neck/bridge

[newey]

The Hermetico diagram will work as advertised. My guesss was right as to the 6 positions. The idea is that you go from the highest output setting- the full HB in series- to the weakest, being parallel OOP ("POOP").

The diagram is a bit hard to follow, as he is showing both layers of the rotary in a "real-world" orientation, on top of one another. It would be easier to read if the 2 layers were drawn separately. Just bear in mind when you wire this that the dots he uses indicate a connection; wires which cross without a dot are not connected (e.g., the purple wire at position 5 connects only at each end)

As I said earlier, you may not find all of these combinations to be useful. First, the tonal difference between having the coil split to the slug coil vs splitting to the screw coil is likely to be minimal if your HB has identical coils, as most do. The main reason to have the ability to select one or the other coil is to be able to maximize hum-cancelling when combined with other pickups. This may be a consideration in your design; if you are going to do N + B with single coils (you haven't yet said what the other pickups will be), then you would want to have one or the other of those be RWRP for hum cancellation. So, if that is the case, then the screw coil of the HB will be hum cancelling with one of the other pickups, and the slug with the other.

Second, unless you have a very high output HB, POOP is likely to be so huge a drop in output as to be unusable.

But certainly, it's your guitar and you can wire it as you wish. We can do a diagram to do as you wish, although it may be a while. Not sure whether what you want can be done on the Freeway switch, we'd have to take a look at that specifically. If memory serves, there are a couple of different versions of the Freeway, and one has more wiring possibilities that the other.

You can certainly do this with the rotary. Using a 5-way of course requires you to sacrifice one of the positions, as I discussed earlier.

[brianloco]

Ok the other two pickups will be single coils they are the gfs tru coils four wire noise canceling and the humbucker is a gfs gold foil
Here's the link for the two freeway switches
www.stewmac.com/Pickups_and_Electronics/Components_and_Parts/Switches/Free-Way_Pickup_Switch.html

www.stewmac.com/Pickups_and_Electronics/Components_and_Parts/Switches/Free-Way_Ultra_Switch.html

[brianloco]

And here's the links for the pickups
Middle
www.guitarfetish.com/GFS-Gold-Foil-Humbucker-Black-Neck-54K-Alnico-V_p_14461.html

Neck
www.guitarfetish.com/55k-True-Coil_p_1964.html

Bridge
www.guitarfetish.com/70k-True-Coil-_p_1966.html

[sumgai]

brian,


Thanks for the link, that author explains things quite acceptably. Sadly however, his diagram is wrong. Per your included images above, look closely at the second image, the one that explains each pin number, per "deck". (The back end and knob end.) See where the large terminal in the middle is called out as the Common terminal for the knob end? In Hermetico's diagram, he specifically calls Terminal #6 as the Common terminal (the letter "C") - that won't work. Connecting things like this will allow the lower coil to be heard only in Position 1, the full Hb in series. The remaining positions will not be able to connect this coil, and I suspect, those that aren't in parallel will simply be dead to the world.


Now, further to this discussion... This is a common problem (and it is a problem) in the guitar world - non-electrically inclined people thinking that a wiring diagram of where to put wires is all that's needed - uh uh. Ain't gonna happen. There's a reason we have a schematic in our design process, and that's to separate our electrical design criteria from our physical implementation. In this way, we can visualize much more easily what's supposed to happen for any switch position. That diagram from Hermetico? A friggin' nightmare. Following it can be done, but I dare say, only by a gifted individual, certainly it should not be considered by someone who hasn't been "doing this" for a long time.

For this reason, I'm calling Bojer (meaning, someone screwed up) on that diagram. It needs to be redrawn to comport with the actual switch terminals, as shown in the second diagram. Unfortunately for both of us, I'm out of the loop - this will be my last transmission for at least the next 10 days, and possibly as long as a month. I'll leave it to JohnH, or his assigned handyman, to make the corrections needed. And while he's at it (whoever gets tasked), drawing a proper schematic first would be preferable, then a hook-up diagram second. That way, many more eyes can vet the thing, before the first drop of solder is heated up.

HTH, and good luck!





sumgai

[brianloco]

So now if the hb isn't high enough output as to render "poop" usable what other wiring options could be useful

[JohnH]

Jul 4, 2015 10:14:39 GMT -5 brianloco said:

So now if the hb isn't high enough output as to render "poop" usable what other wiring options could be useful

There are two others that I like, where you have your coils in series and bypass one of them by either a capacitor or a resistor. This gives an almost single coil tone but with added weight from the partly bypassed coil. You'd have to try a few values of resistor and/or capacitors to pick which you like best. I tend to go for a 0.047uF cap and I have this instead of a full coil cut on my LP bridge pickup, because I like it better. Gibson use it themselves in one set up, using I think a 0.01uF cap. The higher the cap, the more it sounds like a fully split pickup. Alternatively for resistors, the best different sounds are probably in the range say 4.7 to 22k or thereabouts.

[brianloco]

That sounds good and I can mess around with the different caps and a alligator clip to decide which one I like best before soldering so I guess we can go with that instead of POOP thanks a lot for the help guys

[brianloco]

Now I also found this diagram where would I change the wires for poop to do it with a cap or resistor as stated in the earlier post and for the pickup selector I got a freeway 2p6t switch to use instead of the 5 pos blade and I think I can find a diagram for that since it would be like wiring three single coils if I'm thinking right

[brianloco]

Sorry forgot to post the link
sd2cx1.webring.org/l/rd?ring=guitaring;id=23;url=http%3A%2F%2Falexplorer%2Enet%2Fguitar%2Fmods%2Ehtml

[JohnH]

Jul 11, 2015 13:46:25 GMT -5 brianloco said:

Sorry forgot to post the link
sd2cx1.webring.org/l/rd?ring=guitaring;id=23;url=http%3A%2F%2Falexplorer%2Enet%2Fguitar%2Fmods%2Ehtml

Hi Brian - that link seems to go to a whole page full of links - looks interesting, but is there a specific one to look at?

[brianloco]

Here's a better link
alexplorer.net/guitar/mods/rotary.html

[JohnH]

Hi Brian
I had a look at that link, which is fine but the diagrams dont have the options in the order that you probably want. Id suggest doing your own sketch to figure it out. Much better to do that (happy to review) then you can follow ut when troubleshooting.

But the extra part bypassed mode can be described: If you look at the first setting of the switches, for normal seriez connection, there is a pink wire joining lugs for rows 2 and 3, with nothing else connected to it. That is creating the normal humbucker series connection. The part bypassed setting will be exactly like that but with your choice of bypass cap/resistor going from that pink wire, to either ground or hot on the switch, depending which coil you want to bypass.

If you want to arrange the 6 tones in order if brightness, then this extra one will probably be between parallel and the pure singles.

[brianloco]

Here's what I came up with. Forgive me if it's a bit hard to read on the freeway switch solder points in between terminals are meant to abridge and I think I put the cap/res to the wrong place for bypassing the coil on the third position of the rotary

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[newey]

bl-

I haven't reviewed the freeway wiring, buit your rotary wiring has major problems, so let's start there. First off, it's a bit disconcerting in that the freeway, and the rest of the wiring, is shown as a wiring diagram, whereas the rotary is rendered more like a schematic- but I think I've got the gist here.

Position #1 of the rotary (series HB) is fine.

At Position #2 (parallel HB), the green wire from the top coil is disconnected from everything, so you won't hear that coil at all. The green wire needs to reach ground for the parallel setting there.

At position #3, the two coils are OOP, not in phase, and both coils are being bypassed by the cap.

At position #4, you will have the top coil (red/green)alone, so if that's the screw coil, you're OK. However, that coil will be OOP with the other pickups at that position. Also, you've unnecessarily complicated things (and extra connections are points for possible errors. There is no need to ground both ends of the unwanted coil. Since each pickup wire has its own common lug, you can simply disconnect both ends of the unwanted coil; this saves wire, solder, and eliminates possible sources of problems.

At position #5, you'll have the same (green/red) coil as at position #4. Wire the other coil to output and to ground at that position, and, again, simply disconnect the unwanted coil.

At position #6, neither coil is connected, and you'll have silence. The top coil is hanging from the hot wire, but isn't connected to the ground, while the bottom coil is grounded but isn't connected to the hot output.

Also, as far as simplifying this: Since only one of the two coils needs to have its ground switched for the OOP position, the black wire can be permanently grounded, and not switched at all. Swap the phase on the red/green coil for the OOP position, and just switch the white wire(shown as blue on the diagram), leaving the black permanently connected to ground. Thus, you'll only be using 3 of the 4 poles of the rotary, again, saving unnecessary connections. For the split coil position, just disconnect the white wire from the output; it is OK to have a coil connected to ground alone.

[brianloco]

Again sorry about the diagram I'm still new to this. I think I'm a bit confused about the in phase and out of phase and series and parallel could someone try to clarify it for me in terms that someone new to wiring would understand and I'm gonna start redrawing the rotary connections

[brianloco]

Ok I hope this is better or at least closer

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[brianloco]

And now the wires that run between the lugs do I need to run them from the common lugs or am I thinking about this backwards as in the hot from the volume should run to the position lugs and same with the ground and then jumpers between poles where needed

[newey]

And now the wires that run between the lugs do I need to run them from the common lugs or am I thinking about this backwards as in the hot from the volume should run to the position lugs and same with the ground and then jumpers between poles where needed

Not sure what you mean here.

As for the new diagram, it's better, but you still have problems at position #6, and I'm not sure about #3. More later.

[brianloco]

For some reason I was thinking that I had to first run a wire from the common to the first lug on the same pole. Must've been having a brain fart cause the common connects everything on said pole. It helped me thinking of wiring it not from rotary to the switch but looking at the connections back from the p/u selector to the rotary. Now I think I have the remaining problems worked out. For the #3 position johnh had said to attach the resistor from the wire connecting poles2 and 3 to either the hot or ground on the switch depending on which coil to bypass. I took that as between the poles when it means from the wire on poles 2 and 3 to either the hot or ground attached to the common lug,please correct me if I'm wrong. And for position 6 pole 1 should be hot and instead of pole 4 pole 3 should be ground to switch phase and poles 2 and 4 tied together

[newey]

And for position 6 pole 1 should be hot and instead of pole 4 pole 3 should be ground to switch phase and poles 2 and 4 tied together

Yes.

For the #3 position johnh had said to attach the resistor from the wire connecting poles2 and 3 to either the hot or ground on the switch depending on which coil to bypass. I took that as between the poles when it means from the wire on poles 2 and 3 to either the hot or ground attached to the common lug,please correct me if I'm wrong.

You are correct.

I think you've now got the rotary corrected; let me look at the Freeway wiring next.

[brianloco]

I think I'm starting to understand this a little better thanks for your help so far and I noticed on my diagram for the freeway I forgot to draw in the wire bridged on the common to the vol pot

[brianloco]

Here's just a question now if I were to attach the leads coming from the rotary to a push/pull before going to the selector in the down position and then reverse them in the up position would that change the phase on all 6 positions when pulled up.

[brianloco]

Thanks again for the help I went ahead and wired her all together and everything works I ended up using a 10k resistor to bypass the screw coil on the third pos of the rotary and it ended up being one of the sounds I like the most

[newey]

Glad it worked for you, BL!. Sorry I didn't get the chance to vet the rest of the wiring for you, but apparently you had it right anyway.