How do I make this?

[franzzdyb]

Hello!

This my first post on this forum. I hope that you can help me with some info, suggestions, and perhaps a drawing of a wiring I am going to use on my DIY guitar project. I'm a newbie to electronics.

The guitar will have a single coil in neck, P90 in middle, and GFS fat PAF humbucker in bridge (already bought it) which has four wires.

I want 7 pickup combinations: the five standard (strat), neck + bridge, all three on. I want all 7 combinations in either parallel or series. I also want a phase-switch for the neck pu, so I can get the neck and middle in series, out-of-phase sound (Brian May uses this a lot, I love that sound). I am not sure if i want a coil-split for my humbucker, as I don't really like the single-coil bridge sound. Would you recommend it anyway? It is one more switch after all.

I imagine that the switches would be: 5-way switch, switch for parallel or series, master volume pot, tone for parallel mode pot, tone for series mode pot. The tone pot for series would be push pull, and act as a phase-switch for the neck pu. The question is, can I get the neck + bridge combo in series, and in parallel, if the other tone pot is a push pull that turns on the bridge pu? Is there a better way?
I want as few switches as possible, for quick switching between sounds, and many switches don't look good.
Are all these combinations possible on one guitar? If so, how does the wiring scheme look? I hope you will help me out with this one.

EDIT: I forgot to mention; I read somewhere that the pu's won't mix well if the difference in resistance of the pu's is too big. I measured the GFS humbucker to be 13.3 kohms. That's is a lot more than single coils usually are, isn't it? Is that a big problem?

[newey]

Franzzdyb-

Hello and Welcome!

I don't know that anyone around here has done exactly what you want, but similar wiring schemes abound.

For some background, you may want to read this thread from last year, as well as the links therein to other, older threads on this topic.

Warmstrat's thread

If you decide not to split the humbucker, or to wire the HB coils in internal parallel, you can treat the HB just like any single coil pickup and use any SSS Strat diagram.

I wouldn't worry about the 13.3KΩ reading on the HB, that's not a really hot humbucker so it shouldn't present you with much of a problem balancing with your other pups.

[ChrisK]

I want all 7 combinations in either parallel or series.

Actually, there aren't that many new combinations in series.

My post on Possible Coil Combinations shows what one can do for two, three, and four coils.

You need to make a list of precisely the ones that you want as I do have designs that realize all 18 combinations for three coils (The HSS All Mode 'Caster) as well as we have many existing designs for subsets thereof.

We also have the capability of generating fairly complex wiring designs for specifie combinations.

[franzzdyb]

Thanks a lot!!

[JohnH]

This is my version of what you are looking for, which was the basis of Warmstrats one that Newey linked to:

guitarnuts2.proboards45.com/index.cgi?board=schem&action=display&thread=3156

It will do all combinations of single, series or parallel, with blending across the series modes. What it doesn't do are mixed combos which are partly series partly parallel. Also on that thread, theres a schematic for a version with a splitable bridge humbucker. I have a few other variants not posted.

John

[franzzdyb]

ChrisK: In series I really only want neck + middle and middle + bridge, but neck + bridge should be a great sound as well, and all three pu's on in series give a high output, which is attractive to me if want to make a lot of noise. To that I add the phase switch for neck pu, that gives me 3 more combinations.

JohnH: Yes, I've looked at it, it is almost exactly what I want. The 4pdt switch makes it very hard to read to me, but again, i'm a newbie to electronic circuits. I don't understand the blend pot, is it just a rotary switch, or...? It is a cleverer design than I first thought of, because the switching can be done faster here (fx. If want to go from neck+middle in parallel to all three in series) but I can't see how you can achieve Neck + bridge.

[JohnH]

Nov 12, 2008 16:58:25 GMT -5 franzzdyb said:

JohnH: Yes, I've looked at it, it is almost exactly what I want. The 4pdt switch makes it very hard to read to me, but again, i'm a newbie to electronic circuits. I don't understand the blend pot, is it just a rotary switch, or...? It is a cleverer design than I first thought of, because the switching can be done faster here (fx. If want to go from neck+middle in parallel to all three in series) but I can't see how you can achieve Neck + bridge.

The blend pot is a standard 250k single pot, opened up and the break made in the track at mid length. Easy job and the part is cheap. In operation, it is a smooth turn that blends gradually from series combos of neckxmiddle, to neckxmiddlexbridge to middlexbridge.

Its ideal if you wish to move quickly from neck+middle to middlexbridge or all 3 in series. You'd set up the parallel sound on the 5-way and the series sound on the the blender. Then flick between them with the toggle.

The neck+bridge comes with using the variation switch, you pull the volume knob and in parallel mode, it switches on the bridge so you have the neck set on the 5-way as well, to get B+N. In series mode, it switches off the middle, so you can get to the B*N combos with the blender.

This guitar is my main daily player and I've come to rely on its versatility, recently expanded further with a piezo pickup. Other than myself, the design has been built twice by others to my knowledge.

John

[franzzdyb]

WOW!!! This design is indeed genius! The only thing I would change, is to add a center detent for the blend pot. I can see you write this yourself in an older post somewhere else. I hope I can find a pot with a detent. I know a guy who made a detent of his own design for his volume pot - unfortunately I don't remember how he did it

[franzzdyb]

Question: If I have one master volume for a normal single coil, a P90, and a humbucker, should I use a 250 K or 500 K pot? Also, which should I use for tone and the blender?

[JohnH]

500k is better for this design for volume and tone pots, even with all single coils. It gives you better treble, particularly in the series mode. If you find there's too much, you can turn down the tone but you can't get it back if you lose some by having lower value pots.

At full volume, the sound of a guitar with 250k pots is almost exactly the same as one with 500k pots, with the tone pot turned down to about 6-7, so you don't lose anything.

Volume and tone pots can be linear or log taper, but log is usually preferred. I have linear however. The blender needs to be linear, and 250k is the best value, 100k is OK (but does not give a very smooth sweep), 500k is too high.

A detent for the blender would be perfect, but I haven't found a source for them. If you do find one, please let us know, it would be a great addition. It works fine without though, providing a continuous sweep of tone through the series options.

John

[franzzdyb]

Ok, thanks a lot! If i find a way to install a detent, I will write it here. I read somewhere that I should use log for volume, and linear for tone. You prefer linear all the way?

[JohnH]

My preferences on pots get a bit mixed up, so I dont want to skew the views of others too much!

But here's my current thinking, on volume and tone pots in general:

I prefer 500k over 250k for all schemes with humbuckers, and/or series connections of pickups

One of the things I do to all my guitars is either have treble bleed caps and resistors, or install a small onboard buffer. On this one, it was fine with the treble bleed but better with the buffer. On my LP, I prefer it without the buffer.

If Im doing the treble bleed, I like a log volume pot, since a side effect of the treble bleed is that it reduces the steep taper (sudden drop in volume as you reduce from 10). I find log volume pots without the 220k resistor that is part of the treble bleed circuit fall too quickly. With the treble bleed however, a linear volume pot doesnt reduce much at the high settings.
But on this guitar, I have an onboard buffer, which works great with a linear volume pot and no treble bleed.

On tone pots, with conventional wiring with a single cap using two lugs of the pot, a log pot is best since it spreads the available changes of tone more evenly through the turn.

But my current wiring of this guitar (see the schematics post) has an extra cap that engages in series mode to give a range of extra tones where the neck is bypassed with a cap at high tone settings, making the whole combo brighter. These are my current favorites on series mode, and it works very nicely with a linear tone pot giving a smooth spread at each end of the range.

I actually used linear volume on tone in this case because thats what I had, and these parts are hard to find down here.

Linear and log make no difference to the range of tones that you have between 0 and 10, it just affects the rate that they change as you turn the knob and where they occur on the dial.

Good luck with adding a detent for the blender, I'll be interested to see how it goes.

John