|
Post by ashcatlt on Sept 3, 2021 19:58:00 GMT -5
Apparently it is backwards at this point... Not the kind of "backwards" I meant. You've got that 50s tone wiring thing happening, but from the most recent picture, it looks like the connection to the jack is on the wiper, like it's supposed to. This way, when you turn it all the way down, the jack itself is shorted, and no sound can happen. On a guitar with two V pots like an LP or SG, if those pots short the output when turned down, then turning down one of the V pots will silence both that position on the switch and the middle (both) position. Some people don't like that, so they swap the wiring around so that it shorts the pickup itself, but leaves the jack (and the cable to which it's connected) floating in the cosmic wind, which can be a lot noisier.
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on Sept 1, 2021 21:53:53 GMT -5
K maybe I was playing a little fast and loose with the thing about the treble bleed/bass cut. The one guitar I ever owned with treble bleed got really thin and nasty when turned down a ways. I didn’t know enough about anything to explain why at the time, but I distinctly remember the cap on the V pot. ...a "stand-by switch"...the only "fix" of which I am aware. I mean the Volume pot accomplishes the same thing when turned all the way down. At least, as long as it’s not wired “backwards” like some LPs and such. Let’s please don’t do this. To have a good chance of working, it really wants to be the same “ground” to which the guitar is ultimately connected, and either way, things can get dangerous fast. We mostly don’t talk about the “safety cap” nowadays because it’s a kind of questionable solution to a fairly rare problem, but physically tying yourself to anything in the system so that you can’t possibly let go is a very bad idea.
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on Aug 28, 2021 10:48:56 GMT -5
Treble-bleed IS bass-cut. Win/Win.
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on Aug 27, 2021 18:48:44 GMT -5
Do I need to wire Lug 1 (as labelled) of every pot to the grounding bus? Well, lug 1 of the V pot, the ground end of the cap on the T pots. I'm pretty sure it is otherwise wired correctly, though honestly I get my CW and CCW confused sometimes... Note: I also seem to remember ashcatlt telling me that I could solder the capacitor pin, that used to be grounded to the back of my tone pot, to the unused lug on my tone pot; instead of running a wire from it to my star ground... I don't think I'd have said that. Maybe you misremember or misinterpreted or it was in some other context. One might connect that capacitor to lug 1 of the V pot, which itself then connects to the star ground, if you found it more convenient than running it to the star separately.
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on Aug 27, 2021 18:38:12 GMT -5
But won't putting a jumper from A2 to B2 create continuity on the neck pickup from top and bottom? Well, yeah, that's kind of the point. The bottom of the neck pickup is connected to its own top. The bottom of that pickup isn't otherwise connected to anything else, so all you're doing is shorting the pickup so that it can't contribute any sound OR noise. The sound we get out of the pickup is the potential difference between top and bottom, but when they are both in the same place, there is no difference, so no sound. I can't imagine any way of wiring a working tone control that would make any meaningful difference in noise either way, and I'm sorry but I'm not the best to tell you about treble bleeds. You neither need nor want the jumper between the commons. That would just screw everything up. Standard Tele 3-way wiring is a different thing. In that, normally the bottom end of both pickups is permanently connected to jack sleeve ("ground"). The jack tip is connected to both commons, and then each side of the switch decides whether its respective pickup's top gets to that tip or not.
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on Aug 26, 2021 18:46:21 GMT -5
You know, I think you got that right. The Tele 4-way switch is a proper DP4T switch where each lug is discrete to itself, and you really just need to move the connections from one lug to another in order to move the different selections around. That is, you wanted to swap position 1 with 3 and positon 2 with 4, so you swapped the things that were connected to lug 1 on each side with those on lug three, and those on lug 2 with lug 4, and that's exactly how that works. So lets go through it maybe? 1) The bottom of the bridge pickup is permanently connected to the jack sleeve. The top is connected via the jumper to the bottom of the neck pickup. The top of the neck pickup is permanently connected to the jack tip, so that completes our circuit: sleeve>bridge bottom>bridge top>neck bottom>neck top>tip. The two pickups are in series. 2) Bridge bottom is still connected to the sleeve. The top of the bridge now connects to the top of the neck pickup, which is still connected to the jack tip. There is a complete circuit there: sleeve>bridge bot>bridge top>tip. But the bottom of the neck pickup is not connected to anything. There is no circuit that way, so there should be no contribution to from the neck pickup, so this would be bridge only. That neck pickup IS "hanging from hot", though, and can be expected to add a bit of noise we might not prefer. The scheme that newey posted above actually helps that in the respective position by shorting the bottom of the neck to the top. You could accomplish that by jumpering B2 to A2, and I'd suggest doing so. 3) The bridge bottom is still connect to the sleeve, but the top now goes nowhere. It is "hanging from ground" which we do all the time and is nowhere near the noise concern of "hanging from hot", but anyway, there's no circuit through the bridge pickup, so it contributes nothing. The neck bottom is now connected to the sleeve through the switch, and we already know that its top is connected to the tip, so there's a circuit there. This is neck only. 4) Here the bottom of both pickups connect to the sleeve, and both of their top wires are connected to the tip. There is a circuit through each, but neither goes through the other. They are in parallel with one another, the standard Tele "middle" connection. Hope this helps. Holler if you have questions.
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on Aug 26, 2021 15:43:56 GMT -5
...the pots are all mounted to a METAL control plate... Ahhh... That is a little different. Assuming that metal plate is connected to the jack sleeve one way or another, you don't have to solder anything to the pot backs at all. For you and unreg: Pot backs and that metal plate are shield connections and should not be relied upon for our audio signal. Audio signals are pretty much anything attached to a pot or switch lug, including the "ground" end of the Tone caps and the "ground" lug of the Volume pot. Use wire for those. The pot backs sort of want to get to ground also in order to maybe help with noise, but you don't want to depend on that connection for your life. Pot backs are too tough to solder to, and that connection too often goes wrong. In this case here is even worse because you're literally depending on the nuts holding the pots to the plate. Those things will come loose. It's not a matter of if, but when. By the Law of Murphy, we can expect that to be exactly when you need that connection most. Don't do be that guy. Connect audio signals via component lugs or wires.
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on Aug 26, 2021 12:16:38 GMT -5
No that’s worse. Now the pot cases aren’t connected to ground at all, so neither are any of the components connected to them. Don’t connect anything to the pot backs! Send all those ground end connections directly to the star ground. Then separately connect the pot backs to that star. Don’t rely on shield connections to carry audio signals.
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on Aug 24, 2021 11:35:06 GMT -5
“Brain Surgery Through a Nostril”
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on Aug 14, 2021 10:51:11 GMT -5
A bunch of good answers here, but I’m gonna try to underline the part that I think is important which I think a lot of people misunderstand. I kind of cringe to describe “ground” as though it was a destination, but IF we’re going to do that, then the ultimate destination is the jack sleeve. We’re not trying to get our ground wires to the pot backs. They need to get to the jack sleeve. The pot (and switch) casings are things which also want to get to the jack sleeve, but that’s for (perhaps questionable) shielding/noise reasons - mostly just “best practice” and not at all required for normal function of the pickup circuit. It is, in fact, a very bad idea to rely on the connection between the pot bodies to carry our pickup signals. I tend to think Leo was just a little lazy one day and everybody has followed his poor example ever since. I personally shoot to collect all of my grounds on an actual solder lug. If there’s pots, I’ll try to connect all the wires at the grounded lug of the volume and connect the jack sleeve there too. Then I know that all of my signal wires are actually soldered together and have to work. In some cases it might be a switch lug. Some switches have dedicated frame ground lugs, and that’s a decent place to collect all your grounds, too, but we’re not relying on that frame to conduct anything. All the wires are connected directly and that’s just a convenient place to anchor that. Wherever we choose, we are going to find a way to get the pot backs to there, not vice versa if that makes sense. I never even try to solder to the back of a pot. Put a ring connector or washer around the shaft and run a wire to your actual ground point. It’s not going to ruin anything if that comes loose. In many cases you’ll never notice.
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on Aug 12, 2021 21:50:43 GMT -5
So I'm a bit rusty at this, and still kind of think I must be missing something, but I'm not getting what you described from what you've drawn here.
First off, there is no way that this ever ends up with either of the pickups in local parallel. They're either normal series-wired HB or one coil shorted, and that only happens with the switch that does that. Then, the way I'm seeing it, with the S/P switch in series mode, it should be N*B, B only (N shorted), B only (N open, hanging from hot).
Edit - IDK why this is bothering me so much, but it's just not adding up, which has me second-guessing myself, but it's such a simple scheme... I got to thinking maybe I was wrong about which lugs I thought were common on the tele switch. Looking at it with that assumption just doesn't work at all, though. You end up with the middle position dead no matter what else is going on, and frankly the jumpers just don't make sense because those adjacent lugs wouldn't ever do anything anyway. So... hopefully somebody can help us both check our sanity here, but I still don't like it.
It's funny, I just had to open up my 12 string tele to see what I had even done to it, and found that it actually was my first (and only) series override switch, and now I think I'm kind of a fan. The 3-way really just works like you'd expect - N, N+B, B - but when you flip (pull) the switch, it's just N*B no matter what the tele switch thinks it's.
BTW - The two different ways of wiring that tele switch are functionally identical and interchangeable as long you don't get confused about which lug is which. I notice that the two diagrams have the switch lugs offset differently, and that helped me to think I might be wrong, but both of them must have the bottom left and top right lugs as common or else they can't work.
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on Aug 12, 2021 17:48:17 GMT -5
I edited my post while you were posting, so now I'm unediting that post and posting this new one instead. I feel like I must be missing something here, but if I'm correct, I don't like this scheme at all. Series mode only seems to work when the 3-way is in the Neck only position. In the other two positions, that whole pickup is shorted (both ends connected to hot output), so that you'll have bridge only in a total of 3 positions. For this kind of scheme, I very much prefer a Series override arrangement where flipping (pulling, in this case) that switch just puts both pickups in parallel regardless of the 3-way.
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on Aug 12, 2021 17:38:06 GMT -5
The only thing I can think is that the ground connection on that switch is hinkey. I'm sure you've checked it 18 times, but there's just nothing else that I can see that would cause that aside from a bad switch. I would not trust that kind of thing to go through a foil shield. It needs to be a good solid wired and soldered connection that ultimately reaches the jack sleeve.
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on Aug 11, 2021 19:49:04 GMT -5
Not even the same thing, but it reminded me of this thing:
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on Aug 7, 2021 18:24:33 GMT -5
Oh hey I fixed it!
Opened up my Donner Verb Square, poked around with the free end of a big cap alligator clipped to the cable until I figured out about where the signals were getting mixed. Took a pic with my phone so I could zoom in far enough to see the smd components and the traces on the board. Poked around some more and narrowed it down to one of two resistors. Shorting one end of one of them killed the dry signal while allowing the wet through. I’m sure scraping it off with a nail is not the way you’d be taught in school, but I got rid of that one R without ruining everything else, and... didn’t help. The second R didn’t respond to the nail treatment, but wire snipper did the job, and so...
It’s 100% wet forever! Exactly what I need from it.
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on Aug 5, 2021 11:04:21 GMT -5
They never fully split... What? I certainly never said anything of the sort. Typical coil-shorted-split is about as fully split as you can get. Only one of the coils contributes meaningfully to the sound. The picture you posted doesn’t fully split, but just an RC filter parallel to one of the coils which gives us a version of what we around here usually call “broadbucker” tone. It’s something like HB bass but SC treble, though it can be tough to get those two balanced in a way that sounds natural, which I’d imagine is what the resistor here is trying to accomplish. I mean, the un-shorted coil generates the same signal it otherwise would, which is exactly half the voltage that you’d get from the full humbucker because, like, math. The individual coils of an HB tend to be slightly lighter wound than a typical SC, but honestly there’s a lot of variability in both. I’ve got a 16K rail humbucker in one of my guitars. When split, it’s 8K, which is about the full DC resistance of the PAF HBs in a couple of my other guitars. If I split one of those PAFs, it’s be 4K, which is still bigger than many single coils, so... The question I was addressing is exactly what the shorted coil might be doing. There is a reasonable argument that says it’s still generating the same signal that it otherwise would, but since it’s shorted, none of that actually contributes to the output signal. Certain physical laws say that the energy generated (wasted) in that shorted coil has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere basically has to be the strings. I’ve seen some convincing evidence that this does have a measurable effect on the actual vibration of the string, but it was kind of just barely outside the margin of error and in actual experience, it’s never been an issue. Like there are many other things that will affect sustain and stuff much more. Do I understand this correctly? Yeah I think so. It doesn’t matter which coil you short. You might have a preference as to slug vs screw or inner vs outer, but having the shorted coil “closer to ground” doesn’t help enough to worry about. We usually choose for convenience based on what else our scheme might be trying to do. We still haven’t addressed the OP except in my flat “no”. I was kind of hoping for your sake that one of the smart-a...er...folks around here would prove me wrong via some elegantly genius thing, but I’m afraid in this case you’ve got too many things trying to connect to other things without quite enough lugs to keep them all separate. So then the question is “Why?” What exactly are you trying to accomplish? Is the smaller cap actually better for the way you intend to use the split coil? Is the bigger cap actually important for the HB? Neither one matters much at all until the T pot is way down anyway, and if you’re never going to roll it way off...
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on Aug 4, 2021 17:38:10 GMT -5
The argument continues to rage about exactly what if any effect shorting one coil of an HB might have. I’m willing to accept the idea that it might “steal” some energy from the string, reducing sustain by some minuscule amount and possibly even affecting the harmonic series coming off the string itself. I do not believe that it has any real electronic effect, though. It can’t contribute enough to matter in terms of level, frequency response, or noise***. And I totally don’t believe it matters which coil you short for any of those things either. Yes, the coils aren’t identical so there will be some variation there, and they are sensing slightly different spots on the string so slightly different harmonics picked up, but it doesn’t matter whether it’s on top or bottom of the series stack.
All that said, none of the above actually addresses the question in the OP. They want to use one switch to split two humbuckers AND switch the cap, which I’m pretty sure can’t happen with a DPDT. Well, at least not passively.
***I suppose all of this is compared to just leaving that coil open and completely unconnected. I’m obviously not saying that one coil will not be different from other in series. That makes a big difference. But shorting is most definitely better than leaving one end of the coil unconnected and hanging in the cosmic wind. In that case, it probably will depend which side of the circuit it’s hanging from. Most guitars leave unused coils “hanging from ground”, and nobody complains, but we tend to try not to leave coils “hanging from hot” because the potential for extra noise is much worse than any questionable tonal effect of shorting the coil instead.
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on Jul 14, 2021 18:56:05 GMT -5
Note that Miss Massy is using the light bulb to create distortion, which I suppose we could consider non-linear attenuation, but not exactly the same as the more typical "power soak" kind of thing. I tend to think a fluorescent bulb would act like a diode, so that in series it will create crossover distortion, and in parallel it will provide clipping/clamping, but I've never really looked that far into it nor tried it.
I just saw on today a joke post from the Behringer facebook account with a picture of a TRS > 3 prong plug and the caption "don't try this at home". If the plug is an outy, it's definitely a horrible idea, but if it's an inny, I don't think it can hurt much.
EXCEPT you'd kind of want to be careful about impedances. As we know, tube amps can fail catastrophically when the load is way off from what it expects. Solid state amps are usually a bit better at handling "fault" conditions, but you'd still want to be careful with any amp you actually care about.
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on Jul 13, 2021 11:02:09 GMT -5
Lol ashcatlt… that was silly; the guy held a note and so obviously they just had to turn on the light. Maybe that guy somehow turned on the light after he exited the room. And all the intro was just them moving a couple of lamps into a room and laying a few bulbs on the ground. I’m sorry, are you questioning Sylvia?!? This is not a joke like the JHS video above. She doesn’t go into a lot of detail about how it’s connected, but that lamp is definitely affecting the sound of at least one of the speakers they’re recording. The video could have been better, but I’m sure it was lighting up when he played. She does this kind of thing regularly. Has special cables with TS on one end and regular extension cord (the outlet side) on the other. There’s another video out there where she put pickles in series with the speaker wires. They end up glowing, and distort the sound pretty severely. On a slight tangent, I’m pretty sure it was Eddie Van Halen who originally used a toaster as a power soak in order to get more gain from the amp while keeping the SPLs down a bit.
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on Jul 9, 2021 18:47:02 GMT -5
Did I fail to post this in this thread
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on Jul 2, 2021 18:33:33 GMT -5
....they each will tend to 'short' lower frequencies as they more easily passed by the other inductor in parallel. So, yes, higher frequencies are not suppressed (passed) as much because higher frequencies are better 'resisted' by the other pickup... Well, see the "other pickup" resists high frequencies just as much better as "this pickup" does. That is, they both look like a largish resistor at low frequencies, and like a bigger resistor at higher frequencies. That frequency factor is linear and the same for both, so basically cancels out of the voltage divider calculation, so that the attenuation will be the same for any frequency you choose. At least at first approximation, it will be full broadband attenuation. BUT the two in parallel look like a smaller resistor (at any given frequency) than either one together. This then is the "top resistor" of a divider with the "bottom resistor" being the parallel combination of the pots, the cable capacitance, and the input impedance of whatever you're plugged into. The "bottom" doesn't usually change much, and frankly is dominated at high frequencies by the capacitance, but the "top" gets smaller, so that there is less overall attenuation from that, but the frequency at which the "top" is big enough to be significant is that much higher, which is why we get more treble (proportional to the overall output/bass frequencies) from the parallel combination. The resonance thing is tied in with that action, too, but a bit more complex. It comes from the fact that we have both an inductance and a capacitance involved in the circuit, which is complex in the literal sense of imaginary numbers and vector math and stuff. I'm not sure if it has more to do with the way that frequency/phase relationships of the L and the C getting closer together or if the change in overall static resistance influences the damping somehow. I tend to think it's a bit of both, but maybe somebody with a bigger brain can shed some light on that part.
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on Jul 1, 2021 21:42:22 GMT -5
...in parallel - this results in a thinner sound where bass frequencies are suppressed. It is actually more like the high frequencies are not suppressed as much. It will also be overall quieter than a series connection, so it can come across as less bass, and definitely does fit what most people mean when they say "thinner". Both the frequency and height of the resonant peak of the LPF are expected to be higher, which is significantly different from just shelving or high-passing the bass down.
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on Jun 18, 2021 21:19:36 GMT -5
Billy Bragg (English folk-rocker with a message): I think if you’re regularly hitting a pickup wherever it is on the guitar, you must be holding the pick really funny and/or digging in way too far. I guess by default my hand goes close to the bridge ready to palm mute, but I move it around as necessary both for ergonomic and tonal reasons without putting any real thought into it nowadays.
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on Jun 5, 2021 12:47:03 GMT -5
...should I cut the little wire from the baseplate to the other plate ? Yes! BUT then neither the baseplate nor (much more importantly) the bridge/strings will be grounded, so you'll need to find some way to connect another wire from the bridge to the the actual circuit ground. I'd probably just wrap it around the one of the screws. Maybe use a ring connector. You might try to attach a wire to the baseplate where that one already is, but I don't love trying to solder to big hunks of metal.
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on May 26, 2021 17:02:20 GMT -5
...but why wouldn't this be possible for any 7 or 8 terminal Tele switch? Common | Pos #1 | Pos #2 | Pos #3 |
---|
Volume Input | Bridge | Bridge | Load to GND | Volume Input | | Neck | Neck |
Oh. I...uhhh...don't know what I was smoking that day. You are correct of course. Sorry about that.
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on May 7, 2021 13:44:31 GMT -5
The actual problem here is that there’s no good way to wire this without also affecting the middle position. I didn’t notice if we’re talking about a fender or Gibson style switch, but it doesn’t matter. Neither will work. If you have a tele switch, I think you might could get close to what you want via series resistance(s), but the Gibson won’t do that either.
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on May 3, 2021 11:00:06 GMT -5
Ahem. This is real close to that religion+politics line that we try not to cross around here, but... But roadtonever said “sunlight is the best disinfectant”, and you may recall how the former Dufus in Chief suggested this as a possible cure.
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on Apr 19, 2021 10:27:56 GMT -5
What is actually happening or not happening or... I’m sorry, but this is like I walked into the middle of a conversation where I missed all the foundational information. Is it on some other thread somewhere? Edit - I found it, but honestly let’s not do this. We can’t butt-u-me that any random person that comes through will have read the thread where this first popped up, or be bothered to search your recent posts just to figure out WTF is going on. Anyway, the schematic says that header is as follows (from bottom to top in your picture): 1. Audio input 2. Ground * 3. Power (positive battery terminal) 4. N/C 5. Audio Output I put the * by “ground” because what that actually is is the ring of that TRS jack which will connect to the bottom of the battery when a cable is inserted. Pretty sure that’s your issue here. At least explains why it won’t turn on. It appears to be wired correctly, but you can’t prove it till you plug into it.
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on Apr 16, 2021 18:09:50 GMT -5
But Im guessing that if you have a basic digital reverb, where the mix control is an analogue bypass, it must be possible to figure out a mod to suppress that bypass for the 100% wet? Well, yeah, it's probably as easy as finding the mixing amplifier and lifting the dry side, but like I said, SMD, and probably a double sided board, and... b4nj0 - When that pedal is on, it's pretty specifically to obscure the attack of my notes while also adding some sustain and stuff. Basically I add reverb, then distort, in order to get something out that sounds more like a string pad or synthesizer and as little as possible like an actual guitar. But also, it is in a feedback loop, and first off with that just having that dry signal passing through causes is to break to just plain squealing rather than letting me do all the cool stuff I could do with it otherwise, and second when the feedback pedal itself is turned up, it starts to mix in the dry signal anyway, so... It just really needs to be 100% wet.
|
|
|
Post by ashcatlt on Apr 16, 2021 12:25:35 GMT -5
The NUX Oceanic does 100% wet or dry. It’s a mini and about $60. I do appreciate the suggestion. I got kind of excited for a minute. It is a nice sounding reverb. Unfortunately, the demo vid I found which actually shows the level control all the way up did not seem to actually be 100% wet. The dry sound was clearly audible. I'm pretty sure that knob is literally just the volume of the reverb path, while the dry path is always basically unity. That's what I have right now. Or did the dude in the video just mess up somehow?
|
|