Hastingsish 3

[rod79]

Now i know i can have NECK+BRIDGE as a sound on my standard 5 way switch there is one more sound id be interested in having

same HUM SIN SIN setup on a standard strat 5 way switch. looking to keep positions 1. 2. and 5. but willing to lose 3.(mid) and 4.(mid+bridge) in exchange for the sound below
----------------------------------------------

If i had my guitar on positon 2. NECK+MIDDLE out of phase

but also had 5. BRIDGE on at the same time

what would the combination of these two sounds be called?

They would not be in series, just on at the same time, i suppose thats parallel right?


can this sound be achieved on a standard switch? I'm thinking it mite be time for a super switch

Thinking caps on

[JohnH]

Hi rod

Just catching up from your other threads - is the following a fair summary?. So its Tele guitar, with HSS pups, a standard Strat switch? Also, not interested in series sounds nor splitting the humbucker? As to controls, a preference for just having the 5 way switch to change pickups, rather than bridge master volume or push-pulls. But a toggle switch is preferred to these, if needed?

The extra sound you describe has all three pickups on, and one of them is out of phase (OOP) and it will make a significant sound difference which one you choose. This is different to two pickups OOP, where it doesn't matter which one is reversed. Are you sure you know which of the 3 you woudl like to have out of phase with the other two? In this set up, theres some electrical sense in having phase reversal on the bridge, which is your most powerful pickup, and it also wont mess with hum cancelling between neck and middle. You could call it like this:

N+M-B

Ive played around with phasing on SSS setups however, and on those, I like phase reversal on the neck:

-N+M+B

To get what you want just on the five way I think will require a superswitch.

If I had such a Tele however, I think I would wire it up as normal Strat with standard switch, then have two mini-toggles in the space between volume and tone, for neck on and bridge reverse. Then with toggles down, the guitar is normal and anyone can understand it. By using the toggles you can find all your extra sounds and more.

John

EDIT: Heres another vesion that is very simple and provides your sounds:
Just have a standard 3-position Tele switch, to select N, N+B and B. Then have a three position mini-toggle to put the middle pup on, off, or on(Out of phase). This is a simple 2-pole on-off-on switch, and easy wiring. Im not sure about this version, since I find three position toggles are slightly fiddly to set, and phase reverse on the middle would not be my first choice, but it gives very good simple control of the most useful three sounds of N N+B and B.

[pete12345]

Aug 16, 2008 16:54:49 GMT -5 JohnH said:

Heres another vesion that is very simple and provides your sounds:
Just have a standard 3-position Tele switch, to select N, N+B and B. Then have a three position mini-toggle to put the middle pup on, off, or on(Out of phase). This is a simple 2-pole on-off-on switch, and easy wiring. Im not sure about this version, since I find three position toggles are slightly fiddly to set, and phase reverse on the middle would not be my first choice, but it gives very good simple control of the most useful three sounds of N N+B and B.

I wired up my strat in a similar way to this (though I used all series wiring) with two toggle switches controlling middle on/off, and neck in/out of phase. I find it easier to find the middle position of a 3-way switch than with a 5-way, and you just jab at the toggles to turn the mid on or off.

My neck phase switch is actually an on-off-on (being impatient, I used what I had lying around) and they are a bit awkward to set in the middle.
I would use two switches for on/off, and in/out of phase, another advantage being you can choose which pickup to have the phasing on.

Pete

[rod79]

Hi JOHNH, thanks for the wisdom, much appreciated. I have a question or two

1. On a normal strat position 2. NECK+MIDDLE, one of these pickups is out of phase right? thats why it sounds the way it does right? which one is out of phase?

2. If i were to have NECK+MIDDLE-BRIDGE, what difference would this make to the sound of the humbucker having it out of phase with the rest?


"Tele guitar, with HSS pups, a standard Strat switch? Also, not interested in series sounds nor splitting the humbucker? As to controls, a preference for just having the 5 way switch to change pickups, rather than bridge master volume or push-pulls. But a toggle switch is preferred to these, if needed?"

Yes, this is correct, although i do want a volume control on the bridge as well. I want the additional sound to be wired into the switch so i dont have to roll the volume up and down all the time to turn the bridge on and off(hope im making sense)

I must be driving everyone nuts here, but...just had a revelation, this site is called guitar nuts, oh well, il maybe find some grace.. anyway

The 2 extra sounds i want are NECK+BRIDGE
and the one you have defined for me as NECK+MIDDLE-BRIDGE

ARE YOU READY FOR THIS QUESTION GENTLEMEN?

Using a superswitch now, i actually have one here. Could i have my standard 1. 2. and 5. position sounds plus these 2 new sounds?

That would be 1. NECK
2. NECK+MIDDLE
3. NECK+BRIDGE
4. NECK+MIDDLE-BRIDGE
5. BRIDGE

Again sorry for being so fussy, i just want my setup to be very quick and smooth to access the desired sounds, i really dont want to fiddle with any extra switches or push/pulls etc

so if i could have what I'm looking for on a superswitch that would be wonderful

--------

One more time, this is my last thought, the train has stopped

HUM SIN SIN on a tele

3 standard sounds plus 2 new ones using a superswitch

master volume for neck and middle pickups and volume control for the bridge pickup

Can it be done?

[ashcatlt]

Aug 17, 2008 8:17:25 GMT -5 rod79 said:

2. NECK+MIDDLE, one of these pickups is out of phase right? thats why it sounds the way it does right? which one is out of phase?

Well, yes sort of, but not in the sense that we're using here.

When we talk about OOP in pickup wiring, we're actually talking about reversed electrical polarity. That is, it's wired backwards - with the wire that would "normally" connect to ground* going to the hot output instead, and vice versa.

Most of the time the Mid pickup on a strat is actually wired to have the same basic string sensing polarity as the other two. However, thanks to the distance between this and either of the other pickups, some of the motion of the string itself appears to be out of phase (not necessarily reversed polarity) at the mid with respect to the others. That's what makes it sound the way it does. In oversimplified terms, flipping polarity puts those frequencies which are close to in phase further out of phase, and vice versa.

I must be driving everyone nuts here, but...just had a revelation, this site is called guitar nuts, oh well, il maybe find some grace.. anyway

Yeah, we're already nuts. Saves you some gas.

One more time, this is my last thought, the train has stopped

HUM SIN SIN on a tele

3 standard sounds plus 2 new ones using a superswitch

master volume for neck and middle pickups and volume control for the bridge pickup

Can it be done?

With a superswitch (a real live 4P5T) you can have about any 5 combinations of 3 pickups you'd like. What you're proposing isn't that tough.

I'm a little confused by what you might be looking for in the volume controls, though. Maybe it's in one of the other threads? Are you wanting an independent bridge volume with a master volume for all three thereafter, or a "sub-master" for the mid and neck with a seperate for the bridge?


*Well, you know, the signal carrying wire which is normally connected to ground - the signal return as some around here call it. Not to be confused with a non-signal carrying ground wire some pickups have for shielding purposes.

[newey]

Ash:

However, thanks to the distance between this and either of the other pickups, some of the motion of the string itself appears to be out of phase (not necessarily reversed polarity) at the mid with respect to the others. That's what makes it sound the way it does. In oversimplified terms, flipping polarity puts those frequencies which are close to in phase further out of phase, and vice versa.

I'm not at all clear what you're saying here. My understanding, correct me if I'm wrong, is that with a RWRP mid pup, the humbucking characteristics result in certain frequencies "dropping out", giving lower output than 2 pups wound the same. That is, that the sound difference is a result solely of the RWRP mid pup, not any phasing issues.

I thought phasing was the same for all three pups in a std Strat, the RWRP refers to the poles of the magnets and the winding being reversed, not the signal phasing???

Or are we just saying the same thing in different ways?

EDIT:

*Well, you know, the signal carrying wire which is normally connected to ground - the signal return as some around here call it. Not to be confused with a non-signal carrying ground wire some pickups have for shielding purposes.

As ChrisK often admonishes hereabouts, it's best in the interests of consistency to use AC terminology to describe AC systems. "Ground " and "hot", + and -, are DC terms which should be banished from our vocabularies (until we proceed down the signal line to the point where we're discussing amps, or to where a 9V battery gets involved).

"Phase", on the other hand, is an AC concept, methinks.

[pete12345]

I think I get it... the two pickups will -erm- pick up slightly different harmonic frequencies, due to their different locations. Some of these frequencies will interfere constructively (adding) some will interfere destructively (cancelling.)

Reversing the polarity causes the constructive interference to become destructive, and vice versa. This means the fundamental frequency and some harmonics will be almost completely cancelled out, leading to the 'thin' sound you can get (more so with parallel combinations)

As a general rule (if there is such thing) the closer the pickups are to each other, the less difference there is in received frequencies, so the 'thinner' the out-of-phase sound.

Pete

[JohnH]

Just a short reply, pre comute:

As noted above, the usual posiion 2 is not out of phase, its just two pups in phase in parallel.

Getting your sounds on your superswitch is easy to figure out:

1. NECK
2. NECK+MIDDLE
3. NECK+BRIDGE
4. NECK+MIDDLE-BRIDGE
5. BRIDGE

You have four poles on your switch, two of them connect and disconnect the two coil wires from the humbucker, and one each for the hot connections of neck and middle. N and M ground wires are grounded.

To wire this properly you need your humbucker to have at least two wires plus ground. (You may have four wires plus ground). The traditional form of one wire inside a braided ground screen will cause a hum issue in position 4, since the pickup case would be connected to the output.

But what I'm not sure of is the best way to do all that with the two volume controls. There are issues of keeping the tone good while also keeping the two volumes as independednt as possible, so that if you turn down the neck, position 1 is not affected.

Anyone want to do a diagram?

John

[JohnH]

Further to previous:

OK, I can see how to do it, provided your humbucker has two wires plus braid or four wires plus braid, and provided it is within a metal cover. Can you confirm that?

The reason is that the phase reversal and switching of the humbucker will be after the bridge volume control, and so the Hb coils will be tending towards hot when turned down in position 4 (-Hb), instead of towards ground as usual. Just park that last sentence if it makes no sense!

In what Im thinking of, the two volume controls will work as on a standard LP - ie, in cases where both volume controls are active, if you turn one completely off, then all sound is gone. Some people think this is a problem, but its not really and it is the best tonal option for twin volumes. In normal use, each works fine to control their respective pickups and also to combine for mixes in the positions 3 and 4.

John

[ashcatlt]

newey, you've got me a little confused about what you're saying. Maybe I can confuse you some more and then you can come back and we can get a horrible feedback resonance that shakes apart the universe!

Each pickup "reports" the motion of the string in a narrow area directly above it. It could be said (though it wouldn't be accurate) that the amplifier attempts to synthesize these reports into its own picture of how the string is moving. If Neck says +2, and Mid says +2, then Amp says +2. If neck says +2 and Mid says -2, Amp says 0.

Reversing the wiring of the pickup will cause it to report opposite (?) readings. That is, when it would have said +1, it will say -1 instead.

Flipping over the magnet will cause it to see the string from the other direction, exactly as though it were standing on its head and again report opposite readings.

Doing both at the same time causes the noise to be reported opposite (because it doesn't care about the magnet), while the string motion is reported opposite of opposite, which I guess we could call natural.

The RWRP middle pickup describes the motion of the string in the same way that the normal neck pickup would if it was in the middle position.

If the string's motion described a perfect sine wave, and if every point on the string was always moving in the same direction at the same time, then the string signal induced to all 3 pickups on the strat (RWRP mid or not) would be perfectly in phase. That, however, is not the case.

There are a number of sine waves wiggling up and down the string, sort of riding along as the bulk of the string describes something resembling that perfect sine. Different parts of the string are quite often moving in different directions at the same time. So it's not unusual to see the neck report +2 when the mid reports -2. This has nothing to do with the RWRP nature of the middle pickup, and would be the same even if you flipped the magnet and reversed the wires, only that would be noisier - assuming you didn't destroy the pickup in the process.

The term phase has a number of different meanings depending on what phenomenon you're trying to describe. If all we ever talked about was audio (or wave patterns in general) we'd all have agreed upon a default definition. If we were always talking only about electronics, we might be able to agree on another. Unfortunately, we've decided to hang out in this weird netherworld where we discuss both audio and electricity at the same time!

So which phase are we talking about today?

I think the moon was full last night.

[ashcatlt]

Aug 17, 2008 14:42:48 GMT -5 pete12345 said:

I think I get it...

I think so too!

Though this part kind of freaks me out

As a general rule (if there is such thing) the closer the pickups are to each other, the less difference there is in received frequencies, so the 'thinner' the out-of-phase sound.

Pete

It's close enough to correct, and a good enough way to look at it.

It's slightly more correct to say that as you move the pickups together higher frequencies begin to correlate better.

That is, the two pickups create something like a comb filter. Depending how far apart they are, there will be a series of dips and bumps in the frequency response. Assuming they are wired "in phase," there will be an initial lowest (as in Hz) dip, and then more getting closer and closer as you move up the spectrum. As the pickups get closer together, the whole series slides upwards. Once that lowest dip passes about 4KHz you can pretty much ignore it on a guitar.

Of course, as we've both said, "flipping phase" on one of the pickups will cause the dips to become bumps and vice versa.

And that's why we don't talk much about internal OoP within a HB.

[rod79]

Thanks JOHNH
Thats cleared that up, i always thought 2. and 4. were out of phase as thats what everyone tells you but now i know they are not. That has now really helped me understand a lot of other things that had been confusing! isnt it great when the penny drops


I havent bought the pickups yet(everything is hypothetical at the moment)

I was looking at 2 LACE SENSORS(which have 3 wires, i think 2 of these wires go to ground and 1 to hot) for neck and middle,but for bridge ive been looking at:

SEYMOUR DUNCAN HOT LEAD STACK STK-T2B www.seymourduncan.com/products/electric/telecaster/cutting-edge/hot_lead_stack/


"application
Boosted output humbucker. Great for country pop, blues, classic rock and heavy rock.

description
The added windings and the hot ceramic magnet make this a pickup extra powerful. You get a hotter, muscular, twangy sound with more emphasis on the midrange and greater sustain. Comes in black with four-conductor hookup cable.

complete setup
Available in lead (bridge) position only. We recommend the STK-T1n Vintage Rhythm Stack® for the neck position for versatility and hum canceling."

OR A SEYMOUR DUNCAN HOTRAILS FOR TELE STHR-1B www.seymourduncan.com/products/electric/telecaster/cutting-edge/hot_rails_for_t/

"application
High output single-coil-size "rails" humbucker. Great for classic rock, garage, punk, heavy rock, thrash, classic metal and nu-metal.

description
Delivers a fat, full sound with incredible output. The powerful ceramic magnet, two steel blades and over-wound coils all combine to provide a heavy, raw, distorted tone with incredible sustain. Compared to the Little '59, Hot Rails has more output and a chunkier mid-range. Comes in black only with four-conductor cable.

complete setup
Available in lead (bridge) position only. Matches up well with a Vintage Rhythm Stack® for a totally quiet rig; or with a Hot Rhythm for an all-around hot axe."

I doesnt look like these humbuckers have metal casing?? if thats a prob

[newey]

Ash-

we can get a horrible feedback resonance that shakes apart the universe!

Let's hold off for a couple of weeks on that- I don't want to mess up my vacation.

Your latest post explains all.
And Rod:

I doesnt look like these humbuckers have metal casing?? if thats a prob

No problem there.

[JohnH]

Aug 18, 2008 5:43:02 GMT -5 newey said:

And Rod:

I doesnt look like these humbuckers have metal casing?? if thats a prob

No problem there.

Newey - The reason I was asking about the cover on the humbucker is that the way I can see this circuit working puts the phase changing for the Hb after its volume control. In the OOP setting this would result in the Hb mostly hanging from the hot connection when at low volume, instead of being mostly grounded. Hence theres more chance than normal to pick up noise , and an extra advantage in having an Hb all within a grounded cover. It may not be a big deal, and if anyone can see a better way to configure the circuit it would be interesting to know. I'll post a diagram of what I'm talking about as soon as I can.

John

[JohnH]

Here's what I'm talkin' about:



Its drawn looking from the front, as if you pulled out the Tele controls and turned over the plate to see the wiring.

After thinking further, I reckon the covered Hb is not too important. Its only a factor if at all, in position 4 if you reduce the bridge volume significantly, and you probably wouldn't because that would become the same as position 2.

Theres some caps and resistors on the pots, which are for treble retention at reduced volume. These are optional, and you may prefer without. With 500k log pots, I'd use 220k and 680pf for these bits if used. They make no effect at full volume.

You have a choice on what pots to use, and with no tone controls it would be worth thinking carefully about it. Even though you have a humbucker, which woudl usually suggest 500k, the lack of load from a tone pot might suggest 250k pots, unless you want maximum treble.

I hope that is of interest

cheers

John

[rod79]

ABSOLOUTLY BRILLIANT!!! well done John

[JohnH]

No problem Rod. I got interested in it because it struck me as being a design worth designing, and I'm curious to find out how it turns out. I think you have chosen a good selection of options, appropriate for those pickups.

It will be interesting to see how position 4 turns out. With the twin volumes, you should be able to set a very wide range of tones in that setting alone just by making the bridge or neck/middle controls slightly adjusted.

So if you build it, please tell us all about it and if possible, see if you can make sound clips!

cheers

John