Where do the pots go?

[shadowfall]

Hey!I have a small project in my class regarding connections.Here is my drawing of the different pickup connections : postimg.org/image/4v2yv387v/full/
In another discussion ashcatlt commented : "I'm not super happy with the way the V pots work. With the inter- switch in either Parallel mode, turning either V pot all the way down will kill the output of the entire guitar. In either system Series mode, the top pickup's V pot acts as a Master, and the bottom one will be a little weird. Maybe JohnH or somebody can come up with a better plan, but I don't know of a good way to make them work well in all switch positions. The simple answer is don't ever turn either one all the way down unless you really want total silence. If you want one pickup all the way off, flip the switch.



The T pots will interact in different ways depending on the inter-pickup switch position as well. In Parallel modes they both act as Masters (unless the V pots are turned down), and in Series mode, they do the whole Broadbucker thing."
Now i learned how connections between pickup work but i dont get why V/T pots interact differently when placed in a certain place,for example just after the coil switch of a humbucker.

What will happen if i use only T pots and a V pot at the end before the jack or only one V and T pot again before the jack?
If i want to put a V and T for each pickup can i use some type of switching mechanism to get around that problem?

Just co clarify things all this doesnt have to be user friendly.I mean i dont mind if i have to turn 38 switches to get the result

P.S. i didnt post the full diagram because its not finished yet (its ~90% done)

[col]

I was about to point you to some diagrams at guitarnuts2.proboards.com/page/gn1-pages, but the site appears to have been abandoned. There were various 'all options' diagrams there, but the switching was very messy.

[shadowfall]

Ye i cant find more info.Almost every link a check is gone.

[sumgai]

shadowfall,

I'm not sure just what your final plan is, but I can say this, to help you along: in most circuits with multiple pots (not a master V/T), we tend to think in terms of original guitar companies - everything was in parallel, so the "ground" was a common connecting point. As you know by now, that's not true in a series circuit, but how do you get around that?

Well, the easiest way to think about it is to simply hook up your volume and tone controls in parallel with the pickups themselves. If a pickup lead goes to a switch, and not directly to the output jack (nor directly to ground), then you should do the same - hook your control(s) to the same terminals as where the pickup leads went. In this way, if you select series, the action of the controls will be obvious, and they will affect only their corresponding pickup. If they are switched to parallel, then they will all act as if they were wired the way guitar companies make them.

The one drawback here might be, as pointed out by ashcatlt, when in parallel you might have one volume control turning off everything, when all the way down.  There are ways around that which do not involve switching, but the downside there is that the tone is affected.  Whether you think that results in good tone or bad tone, that's up to you.  Otherwise, you get into some overly complicated switching, and that's just plain Nutz!

Or you might consider using a Blend pot instead, alongside of a Master V/T.  Consult both our Guitar Wiring Forum, and some of the sub-Forums therein, there're plenty of threads dealing with Blend pots.

HTH

sumgai

[shadowfall]

Thanks for the useful info.I will look for the blend pots (but im really curious for the nutz switching,for educational purposes  )

[newey]

When using a blend pot with parallel and series wirings, a DPDT switch can be used to switch between parallel and series blending:


guitarnuts2.proboards.com/thread/3863/series-parallel-blend-dpdt-switch

Shadowfall, you get Extra Credit if you can decipher ChrisK's highly stylized diagram without assistance.

[shadowfall]

Apr 3, 2016 17:53:38 GMT -5 newey said:

When using a blend pot with parallel and series wirings, a DPDT switch can be used to switch between parallel and series blending:


guitarnuts2.proboards.com/thread/3863/series-parallel-blend-dpdt-switch

Shadowfall, you get Extra Credit if you can decipher ChrisK's highly stylized diagram without assistance.

Well...decipher this! (All possible combos with 3 PUPs SC or HB) .Now i just need to figure out how and where will i insert the pots. (Thats gonna be something like a PCB thing)

[sumgai]

shadowfall,

Sorry, son, but that's much too small for my tired old-man eyes.

I see you're using AutoCAD.... (albeit a version that won't be released for public consumption until next year - do you perhaps have a time-travel machine at your disposal?)

All of my drawings posted here in The NutzHouse were generated with AutoCAD. What I did was capture the model space as an image, the most detailed format was TGA (bmp and gif were too grainy).  Then I'd convert that to a JPG file, host it on PhotoBucket (but postimg works just fine), and everyone can see it, in full detail. (If your version of ACAD can generate a JPG directly, so much the better. Also, a PNG file works, and is usually smaller in file size, for the same resolution/detail.)

I'd also ask one more favor of you: can you include a truth table, either directly on the drawing (in readable print), or as a separate part of your post?  It's fine to decipher something, that keeps the gray matter functioning.  However, without a guide, no one can tell if the resultant scheme matches what you're expecting/want out of it.  Thanks.

sumgai

[shadowfall]

Sure! Here is the image in full size (i couldnt do it your way so i cutted and pasted smaller images from the actual file and combined them in photoshop)
Now for the switches the first the ones on the left are the same.It give me coil combinations.1 series in phase,2parallel in phase,3 coil 1,4 coil 2,5 series out of phase,6 i wanted to add parallel out of phase but people in the forum told me that this will produce an extremely thin bad sound so i didnt put that in.Now to avoid getting double combos i made the switch in the middle.Here are the positions:1 neck pickup,2 middle pickup,3 bridge pickup,4 neck and middle,5 middle and bridge,6 neck and bridge,7 all together.Now the connections between 2 pickups are going to the switch in the upper section which gives:1 series,2 parallel,3 series out of phase.Now when the 3 pickup combo is active there are two identical switches with the previous one that combine a set and then this set with the remaining pickup.Then everything goes to out.Also the light blue wires in the left are for a 2 conductor pickup 

[sumgai]

shad,

OK, that's readable, gimme some time to go over it in detail.

sumgai

[shadowfall]

If thats correct now i want to add the V/T pots but in two ways.Either one PU has its own or as a master