wiring diagram help

[lordofp90s]

Hey! Im new to the forum, and I'm working on a build, using 2 humbuckers and one p90, (GFS Dream 180s and Mean 90). Im hoping to have 3 way coil splits (Inner Coil/Humbucker/Outer Coil), and individual on/off switches for each pickup. also 3 tones, one volume. I'm new to wiring stuff, does this diagram look correct? And does this design make sense? 


Thanks so much!

[newey]

lordofp90s-

Hello and Welcome to G-Nutz2!

Your pickup switching looks OK. The coil split switches need to be of the On-Off-On type.

I question the tone controls, though. By daisy-chaining them together and using a single capacitor, all three tone pots are always in the circuit, in parallel. This could dull your tone.

I suggest giving each tone pot its own capacitor. This also allows for different cap values for the P90 and the HBs, which you may find useful. Caps are cheap. Leo Fender saved a few cents by having a Strat's tone controls share a capacitor, that adds up when you make thousands of Strats. You, OTOH, can afford to spring for a few more caps.

Then, you also need to move the tone pot for each pickup so that it is wired between the coil split switch and the on/off switch. That way, if a pickup is off, its tone pot is disconnected.

[lordofp90s]

May 3, 2024 14:18:37 GMT -5 newey said:

lordofp90s-

Hello and Welcome to G-Nutz2!

Your pickup switching looks OK. The coil split switches need to be of the On-Off-On type.

I question the tone controls, though. By daisy-chaining them together and using a single capacitor, all three tone pots are always in the circuit, in parallel. This could dull your tone.

I suggest giving each tone pot its own capacitor. This also allows for different cap values for the P90 and the HBs, which you may find useful. Caps are cheap. Leo Fender saved a few cents by having a Strat's tone controls share a capacitor, that adds up when you make thousands of Strats. You, OTOH, can afford to spring for a few more caps.

Then, you also need to move the tone pot for each pickup so that it is wired between the coil split switch and the on/off switch. That way, if a pickup is off, its tone pot is disconnected.

Thanks so much for the tips newey!! Im going to rework the diagram tomorrow, and post it again to get your insights. What cap values would you recommend for the HBs and P90?

[lordofp90s]

Alright! Heres what i came up with. Im somewhat confused on how the tone pot wiring works, from my understanding, the first lug isn't used, the input is the second lug, and the cap is connected to the 3rd lug and then grounded, however what i don't understand is the output. i just connected another wire to lug 2 which then connects to the pickup on/off switch. That feels too easy, am i missing something?

Additionally, do i need to ground the pickup on/off switches? in my original schematic they are not grounded. 

Thanks again!

[stateofepicicity]

I think the way you have it right now will only split to the south coil, because only the green wire is currently set to split. The bare wire should go to ground in all positions. If you'd like to split to either the north or south coil, then you want to set your 3-way like this, and swap positions 1 and 3 if that's your preference:

Position 1, south split: only the green or red wire to hot, all others to ground
Position 2, series: red and white connected (this is your series link), then either green to hot and black to ground or black to hot and green to ground
Position 3, north split: only the black or white wire to hot, all others to ground

I haven't looked at your tone pot setup, but the bare wire caught my eye right away.

[lordofp90s]

i was just going off of seymour duncans diagram here, however with GFS pickups ill have to switch the black and green, as green is hot and black is ground.

[stateofepicicity]

May 5, 2024 13:13:09 GMT -5 lordofp90s said:

i was just going off of seymour duncans diagram here, however with GFS pickups ill have to switch the black and green, as green is hot and black is ground.

You don't have to treat black as the hot.  In any humbucker you can reverse wire it!  Here's a great post that goes into detail about that:

forum.seymourduncan.com/forum/the-pickup-lounge/276540-questions-about-wiring-a-coil-split?p=4586552#post4586552

But the main part I really wanted to point out is, since you wanted to be able to split either coil of the humbucker, you'd want to separate the bare wire, connect one of the wires from the north coil to hot in one swich position, and one of the coils from the south coil to hot in the opposite switch position.  In your most recent diagram, you have the green wire, which is from the south coil, permanently connected to ground, so you wouldn't be able to switch between and north split and south split.

[lordofp90s]

Ohhh ok i get what you're saying now! thanks for the clarification! what about my tone wiring? any problems there?

[newey]

stateofepicicity-

I think the coil split diagram (from SD, apparently?) above assumes that one is using a DPDT On-Off-On switch. This would then give the full HB in the center position, with the black/white coil with the switch "up" (bearing in mind that the lever's position is opposite of the lugs it connects) and the green/red coil with the switch "down".

lordofp90s-

Get yourself a pair of DPDT On-Off-On switches for the coil splits and you'll be fine.

[stateofepicicity]

May 6, 2024 5:27:34 GMT -5 newey said:

stateofepicicity-

I think the coil split diagram (from SD, apparently?) above assumes that one is using a DPDT On-Off-On switch. This would then give the full HB in the center position, with the black/white coil with the switch "up" (bearing in mind that the lever's position is opposite of the lugs it connects) and the green/red coil with the switch "down".

lordofp90s-

Get yourself a pair of DPDT On-Off-On switches for the coil splits and you'll be fine.

But in the Duncan diagram, the red is permanently connected in series link, and the green is permanently connected to the ground, so there's no way to split to the south coil in that instance. I'm saying that in order to have a north split / series / south split on a three way, for the south split you have to allow either the green or red to go to hot, but neither the OP's diagram nor Duncan's allows this.

[stateofepicicity]

May 5, 2024 19:41:06 GMT -5 lordofp90s said:

Ohhh ok i get what you're saying now! thanks for the clarification! what about my tone wiring? any problems there?

Intuitively it seems like a cool idea potentially to have three tone pots going at once, buy I assume that would need to run on an active system where it could be buffered so that your tone isn't sucked down to nothing. I'd consider using dual concentrics instead and just allowing each pickup it's own tone and volume in that case. Then you could leave the fourth spot for something else if you'd like, or a dummy pot.

JohnH Is there a way to display what two and three tone pots on a single volume pot would do to the treble of a random humbucker or P90 in Guitar Freak?

[newey]

May 7, 2024 0:15:33 GMT -5 stateofepicicity said:

I'm saying that in order to have a north split / series / south split on a three way, for the south split you have to allow either the green or red to go to hot, but neither the OP's diagram nor Duncan's allows this.

Look again at the SD diagram. With the switch "up" (on the diagram, lever would be down), green is grounded, red connects to output. The black/wire wires are then shorted together, so you get the red/green coil alone.
Same thing on the diagram by lordofp90s although the wire colors are different.

[stateofepicicity]

May 7, 2024 4:58:24 GMT -5 newey said:

May 7, 2024 0:15:33 GMT -5 stateofepicicity said:

I'm saying that in order to have a north split / series / south split on a three way, for the south split you have to allow either the green or red to go to hot, but neither the OP's diagram nor Duncan's allows this.

Look again at the SD diagram. With the switch "up" (on the diagram, lever would be down), green is grounded, red connects to output. The black/wire wires are then shorted together, so you get the red/green coil alone.
Same thing on the diagram by lordofp90s although the wire colors are different.

Man, I did not understand how that worked; I thought you had to send all other wires to ground to split a coil properly. Thank you for your persistence that it was right. I did a reverse image search for the diagram, leading me to the article which explained "when the switch is in the “down” position, you’ll see that those two wires are connected to the hot output of the pickup. What this does is equalize the voltage between the start and end of the slug coil – meaning that now we have an active screw coil and an inactive slug coil." I had never come across that before. Sorry lordofp90s, I'm learning too! I guess there's no real disadvantage to splitting this way rather than sending to ground?

[newey]

May 7, 2024 6:34:32 GMT -5 stateofepicicity said:

I guess there's no real disadvantage to splitting this way rather than sending to ground?

We have had folks suggest over the years that shorting a coil to itself somehow affects things adversely, but I think that has pretty well been debunked here. I've split coils both ways and never heard any difference.

[lordofp90s]

May 7, 2024 0:44:39 GMT -5 stateofepicicity said:

May 5, 2024 19:41:06 GMT -5 lordofp90s said:

Ohhh ok i get what you're saying now! thanks for the clarification! what about my tone wiring? any problems there?

Intuitively it seems like a cool idea potentially to have three tone pots going at once, buy I assume that would need to run on an active system where it could be buffered so that your tone isn't sucked down to nothing. I'd consider using dual concentrics instead and just allowing each pickup it's own tone and volume in that case. Then you could leave the fourth spot for something else if you'd like, or a dummy pot.

JohnH Is there a way to display what two and three tone pots on a single volume pot would do to the treble of a random humbucker or P90 in Guitar Freak?

Well part of the appeal of one volume pot is so i can do swells in any pickup selection. Since i put the tone pots before the pickup switches wouldn't that mitigate the tone sucking issue? I am putting a preamp in there, but maybe a buffer too/instead? I'd love to find a way to make the 3 tones work if at all possible.

[JohnH]

Yes I think thst once the tone pots are behind the switches, it mostly defaults to being like positions on a normal Strat where one tone pot is used on one pickup and maybe two tone pots but only if two pickups are selected. So the sounds should be ok.

But most Strats have a position where there's no tone pot, or a no-load tone pot. So if you want to reach for those even brighter sounds, you might consider no-load tone pots? They are easy to find.