HS config and noise cancelling

[roadtonever]

I have some possibly naive questions. I'm re-building the electronics of a newly acquired stratish guitar. My intention is to have a HS config and replace the stock generic pickups with some well-selected ones from Aliexpress. They will cover the sounds I need, a classic Alnico strat neck SC, and a distortion ceramic HB in the bridge. Just to establish a baseline pickup selection that I may experiment with swapping to Duncans and what not, but still be equally content to keep as-is.

My questions are first, should I select a middle "neck" SC(RWRP) instead of a neck SC(non-RWRP) for noise canceling in the middle position? Does this change if later decide to swap the neck SC to a stacked model, like Dimarzio Area 58 or Wilde L280? Second, Since the SC expects 250k pot, and the humbucker 500k pots, I intend on adding a 470k resistor in parallel with the SC. Assuming I want to stick with common off the shelf parts, is this a smart or dumb solution?

Just for getting things up and running I'm thinking of starting simple, 1V/1T/3-way lever scheme with 500k pots and a 470k parallel resistor addition to the neck SC. Hopefully I'm not painting myself into a corner, later I may want to add HB splitting options through a superswitch or a DPDT addition, even if I'm postponing that decision right now.

TL; DR How do I best implement 1HB/1SC in a simple wiring scheme? Ideally while maintaining appropriate resistive loads and noise cancelling?

[stevewf]

About splitting the HB and choosing which coil, a couple things the might be worth considering:

Hum canceling when combined with the neck SC. One of the HB coils will cancel better than the other (when in phase; when out of phase, the other HB coil will cancel better). So it depends on what you discover when the pickups arrive, magnet-wise. If you're going for in-phase, then you'll want the chosen HB coil to have the opposite magnetic polarity compared to the SC, and opposite coil winding direction. It's possible that you'll need to flip the magnet and/or "restack" the HB to allow you split to the chosen HB coil while achieving hum reduction.

If you don't split the HB, you can count on some hum. Even if you you do split, there's bound to be some amount of hum, unless you get lucky and the pickups' (single) coils balance each other's hum. The hum tends to be louder when the pickups get connected serially.

Outer or Inner coil. I've found that the individual HB coils do produce different sound, probably due to their positions along the length of the string, and to the pickup's proximity to the anchor (bridge).

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As for shorting the SC with a resistor, 470K will have the desirable dulling of the coil's sound, with side effects of reducing the volume and affecting the hum cancelation (possibly for the better, possibly for the worse).

Omitting the resistor, you can just turn down the tone a tad when in Neck-only. Drawback: you'll need to touch the tone knob every time you switch to Neck-only.

Depending on the nature of the selector switch, you could choose different pots depending on selector position. And then you could use dual-gang pots in order to avoid adding knobs.

[roadtonever]

Thanks, that helped a lot. Hopefully my following takeaways make sense.
Manufacturers don't always follow a consistent standard of absolute direction of polarity. I will have to test for noise cancelling each time if I change pickups.

Either pickup soloed will work as intended, per the basic 1V/1T/3-way scheme.

I will have to make a decision on which split and combined selections matter to me. Once I know what I want it will make a lot more sense to flesh out the details of a superswtich-focused next iteration of my scheme.
To get there I'll add an on-off-on switch to my basic scheme, similar to this P-Rails drawing:



With the on-off-on addition to the basic scheme I'll evaluate what I like to have included on a superswitch. While evaluating the tonal qualities I will also pay attention the noise level changes indicating correct noise cancellation or not.

Dialing down the tone knob knob works universally without caveats, just an extra step when switching pickup selections. I might just skip the added 470k resistor across the SC.

(BTW, any tips on apps for making wiring drawings?)

[stevewf]

Nov 1, 2024 12:28:13 GMT -5 roadtonever said:

(BTW, any tips on apps for making wiring drawings?)

Lots of people in this forum report using DIY-LC. Some use MS Visio or even MS Word. I use one called "draw.io"

Whichever, it's nice to have a pre-made library of guitar components so you can just drop them into your drawing and start connecting wires to them. Some program already have a decent library; with others, there are 3rd party libraries you can fetch. And you can always build your own components (though this can be time-consuming).

Edit: I found an my previous post that offers links to shape libraries that I made for draw.io. I put the libraries in cloudinary, where others can grab them, hopefully saving them time.

[kitwn]

If you're buying from aliexpress anyway, think about getting the 4-pole, 5-way superswitch from them on day one. They're cheap enough and look well made from the photographs. This would allow more options to experiment adding extra resistance, different pot values etc and avoid having to completely redesign and rebuild all your circuitry at a later date.

Re the drawings, my advice is to work in schematic diagrams when you're working out the functional design as they are WAY easier to follow. Pencil and paper do a good job for these, though I use the schematic side of KiKad PCB design software for smarter looking drawings. The link below is to a recent thread in which I posted a design for re-wiring a strat with a superswitch. To me this is WAY more readable than a real-world bowl-of-spaghetti drawing. If I want to work out the function of most diagrams on the forum I have to redraw them in a form I can follow before attempting to analyse the circuit.

guitarnuts2.proboards.com/thread/10870/custom-stratocaster-wiring-diagram

Kit

[stevewf]

Nov 2, 2024 18:36:31 GMT -5 kitwn said:

Re the drawings, my advice is to work in schematic diagrams when you're working out the functional design as they are WAY easier to follow. 

I concur. Schematic diagrams are, for me, easier when deciphering someone else's work as well as when I'm trying to design my own. They show the function of the circuit without worrying about the form; in other words, schematics are about "how it works" rather than "how it's physically laid out".

But wiring diagrams have a place, too. For me, two places. One, they're a Paint-By-Numbers guide while I'm soldering. Two, it can substitute for schematic diagrams of circuits that are already familiar to me.

So I have an app for each. EasyEDA for schematics and draw.io as mentioned. I'll go on a tiny bit about each here.
First, they're both free. Then:
EasyEDA exists to sell you your custom self-designed Printed Circuit Boards (and some std components that to go them). So it's really geared toward toward creating PCBs. Still, I've gotten used to its handful of quirks.
Draw.io is meant for collaborative work. It apparently weaves well into a network setting that allows back&forth editing. I don't use that stuff, and again, have learned to work around quirks.