HHH Super Wiring - Every option?

[burgercrisis]

I am, in the relatively near future, going to be building a highly personalized Warmoth (no faceplate) Jazzmaster. I am going to build it as a triple humbucker guitar (possibly using single-coil sized blade pickup for the middle position). I want it to be my master guitar, from which I can do about anything.

So my goal is series, parallel and coil splitting on all pickups, series and parallel configurations between the individual pickups themselves (so I could have all my pickup coils in parallel with their sisters, but pickups themselves in series or vise versa or various combinations thereof), as well as phase switching, bass cut, standard tone control, the works.

I basically combined 94 sound wiring with Super Seven switching and a bass cut switch.
Here is the (hand-drawn) schematic. Multiple photos for clearness sake. Comes out to 18 switches and 4-6 pots. Haven't decided yet if each pickup should have its own tone control or not. Probably just a single.

Can anyone spot any flaws in my wiring? Think I'll have trouble fitting it all?

[newey]

Burgercrisis

Hello and Welcome to G-Nutz2!

I'm having difficulty piecing together the various parts of the diagram, and it will take some time to go through it all.

Just in general, I will note that your plan has a lot of pots. That number of pots will dull your tone quite a bit, unless you use no-load pots (and keep unused ones turned wide open).

Also, in the first diagram, it looks like you have 3 phase switches, one per pickup. This will not give "all possible" sounds, since you won't have intra-pickup phasing, but putting two HB coils out of phase with each other is not particularly useful (IMO). Second, as far as phasing between your HBs (inter-pickup), three phase switches are redundant, since two phase switches will give you all possible out-of-phase combinations of three pickups. It doesn't matter which two pickups will get the two phase switches.

Again, I need an explanation for how the various parts of this diagram will fit together (redrawing this as one complete diagram, using drawing software, would make everyone's life a bit easier here). Also, parts of this are drawn as a schematic and parts as a wiring diagram (which is not really a problem, we get what you mean) but legibility suffers a bit that way.

[Yogi B]

Sept 27, 2018 16:15:28 GMT -5 newey said:

I'm having difficulty piecing together the various parts of the diagram, and it will take some time to go through it all.

In short it's wolf's 94 Sound Switching (found roughly in the middle of this page), though with the series/parallel switches for each humbucker (which aren't shown on wolf's diagram for clarity) replaced with binary switching, plus the phase switches.

A side note about the 94 Sound Switching, I'm not a fan. The 9 SPSTs are too many to think about, without them being sub divided into clear groups I'd probably need a printout of the following table within reach at all times:

S1	S2	S3	S4	S5	S6	S7	S8	S9
link N+ to HOT	link M- to GND	link M+ to HOT	link B- to GND	link B+ to HOT	link N+ to M-	link N+ to B-	link M+ to B-	link N+ to B+

My other reason for disliking it is that, discounting the series/parallel switches we have a possible 512 (= 2⁹) positions, over half of these, 262, have no output. I don't like dead spots in general but a greater than 50% chance on hitting one, no thanks. Even so that leaves 250 with output, how many of these are unique? 17 -- seven-flipping-teen, that's how many -- meaning we have an overall ratio of distinct selections to duplicates or no output of around 1:29.

Jeff's take on the 94 sound switching, found directly below on wolf's own, makes things a bit simpler, combining switches 2&6, 3&8, 4&7, and 5&9 into four ON/OFF/ON SPDTs.

A while ago alexis came up with a way to get these 17 selections using just a pair of rotary switches (a 6P3T and a 4P7T), with a total of only 21 positions: idea for 3 single coils, all 17 combinations.

Also I've previously figured out something similar to alexis's version using a 6P3T, 4P4T, and 6PDT -- 24 positions, with the 6PDT used to select between the essentially series and essentially parallel configurations.

This will not give "all possible" sounds

Yup, not even close. If that's what burgercrisis is aiming for then I'd suggest either a digital switching arrangement or a modular-synth-like solution using sockets and jumpers.

---

Also regarding the potentiometers, what you have shown currently won't work. Think about what happens when you've got all three volumes on "10", you've shorted B+, M+, and N+ together, which disrupts the intended operation of the switches.

That is provided they weren't already bridged together at the tone control. If you want a master tone control without any '50s wiring weirdness, you'd need a triple gang pot -- which will probably be a troublesome thing to find.

[burgercrisis]

Thank you both! Sorry for the confusing hand-drawn layout.

After reading and thinking, I've decided the 94-sound isn't for me because, yeah, all those dead spots would be a pain.

Maybe going to rewrite Super Seven Switching here for three pickups. Individual volume, I suppose, is probably fine. Alexis' wiring schem seems like it would be difficult to fit or find such rare switches...

I suppose I don't necessarily want every single config, just the useful ones
I don't think I need inter-pickup phasing switches

[JohnH]

If youd like to focus on a reduced set, there's a versatile HHH that I thought about but never tried:

With 3 humbuckers, theres 3 north and 3 south coils. There are 6 possible humcancelling, in-phase pairs. I think just limiting the design to 1 or 2 coils at a time is a good move.

You can have all tbose 6 pairs with one standard 4-pole 6-position rotary. Add an on-on-on toggle to give series, parallel or single options based on the two selected coils. 6 combinations each of series, parallel and single sounds using those two switches. I have a diagram for most of that, which I cohld find if interested.

[tubejockey]

I think you can easily get way too overwhelmed with too many options.  You will end up with something so complicated you will have to keep a spread sheet to remember your favorite settings.  My suggestion is to mount the pickups and play around with some jumper wires and rotary switches until you pick out your top 10 at the most.  Then figure out how to wire up your favorites in an easy, intuitive manner.  So many of the possible options are just duplicates or not musically useful.