humbuckers with phase and series

[papacueball]

Howdy Nutz! I've been a member here for a while and never posted much, though I do a good bit of lurking. Anyway, a couple of years ago I put an Ibanez RG together from ebay parts and some pickups I already had (Kramer quad rails in neck and bridge and a dual rail in the middle) , a superswitch, and dpdt switch for series/parallel.

Now I'd like to add another dpdt for phase, and was hoping someone would check this out and let me know if it will work like I think/hope it will. My main concern is not to create any dead spots in the switching. The only differences between the old wiring and the new will be the addition of the phase switch and elimination of the tone control.

The combos should go like this for series and parallel:
1) B1 - B2
2) B2 - N1
3) M1 - M2
4) B1 - N2
5) N1 - N2


Any comments or criticisms welcome and appreciated.

Thanks,
Jason

edited for color and format

[wolf]

Hi Jason,

Well, that diagram is a little hard to follow because it's so darned dark.
Also, diagrams for circuits look better if they are in gif format instead of jpg.
Since, I'm not very familiar with super-switches and am more familiar with toggles, I figured I'd at least attempt making the diagram a little more readable:





Notice all that "crud" that's left over? That's the leftovers from the jpg diagram. I hope I made this a little easier to follow.

[papacueball]

Thanks, Wolf! I'll work on it some more and see if I can make it a little easier to look at. BTW, your website helped me figure out (maybe) how to put the phase switch in there.

[papacueball]

Well, I got it wired up and everything works. Not a lot of difference from one position to the next on the superswitch, especially with the series combinations. Parallel combos are a little brighter.

The phase switch thins out the parallel combos, and makes the series combos clangy and metallic sounding, and way down on volume.

Overall, the guitar sounds fairly dark.

Anybody got any tips or tricks to brighten it up some?

Thanks,
Jason

[wolf]

Well humbuckers are pretty dark sounding anyway, and so a guitar with 3 of those is not going to have that Fender "twang" to it. Still, how is the sound at position 1 in parallel? (That should be the bridge pickup in parallel with itself, which should sound very bright).

[papacueball]

Position 1 in parallel is brighter than series, though not as loud, but I wouldn't call it very bright by comparison. I guess I should have pointed out that the bridge and neck are really two single sized hb's in each pickup. The bridge in parallel is like two hotrails side by side wired in parallel with each other.

I'm currently using a 500k volume (actually tested at 540ish). Do you think a 1 meg pot would make much difference?

[wolf]

Hmm so the neck and bridge are actually a total of 4 humbuckers and in fact you really have a 5 humbucker guitar? Wow that's the kind of rig that Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap would want.

I have a bit of experience working with Seymour Duncan Hot Rails and I know they are very dark sounding. (I imagine the single coil size humbuckers you are using are somewhat similar).

One option for making an even brighter sound would be to wire some (or all) of those humbuckers with series/parallel switches. (Of course that is a lot of work considering what you have already done.) I'd think that one or both of the bridge humbuckers in parallel with themselves and then in parallel with each other would sound much brighter than they do now.
But before you start tearing into that wiring, I'd certainly like to see another GuitarNut reply to this thread.

By the way, I have a guitar with 3 Seymour Duncan Hot Rails and used the wiring here www.1728.com/guitar2.htm for the 3 pickups and then put a series/parallel switch on each of the pickups. Adding a phase switch and a solo switch brings that up to a guitar with 10 switches. (Still, I'm glad I have those series parallel switches on each of the Hot Rails).

[papacueball]

wolf said:

Hmm so the neck and bridge are actually a total of 4 humbuckers and in fact you really have a 5 humbucker guitar? Wow that's the kind of rig that Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap would want.

Yep, 5 humbuckers. Now I just need treble that goes to eleven!

Unfortunately, each half of the bridge and neck pickups is wired in series internally. I guess that could be changed, but I don't think I'm ready to perform that kind of surgery.

[wolf]

Well, if you have to get at the internal wiring of those double humbuckers, that could get very tricky. I don't know just how difficult it would be because I don't even know how a double humbucker is constructed.

As you've probably seen, one of my guitar wiring pages has instructions about converting a 2 wire humbucker inro a 4 wire:
www.1728.com/guitar1a.htm

That's pretty tough as is but getting at four coils could create quite a problem.

As I said before, I wish someone else would reply to this thread because:
1) Would series/parallel switching of the individual humbuckers produce a cleaner sound? (I think it would).
2) Can a dual humbucker be disassembled in order to bring out four more wires?