pmcguitars
Rookie Solder Flinger
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Post by pmcguitars on Aug 17, 2010 14:31:41 GMT -5
hi guys, been a long time follower of the forum and it has inspired me to build my own guitar and im stuck on the electronics. i modified my last guitar to brian may pickup scheme, and condensed the standard 6 switches into 3 on/on/off switches and it worked great i was able to achieve all the brian may settings. but now the guitar i am building is a bit more complicated. i am using a bareknuckle nailbomb pickup in the bridge a bareknuckle mississippi queen in the neck and i also have a single coil sustainiac sustainer in the neck also. what i am looking to achieve is individual on off switches for each pick up with phase switching and in a second row of three switches i would like to be able to switch the pickups in between series and parallel, using the first 2 switches to switch the bridge and neck in series and parallel and use the final switch as an overall kill switch for the guitar. i know there will be repeats in the guitar sounds which is why i am using the final switch for a kill switch instead of a series/parallel switch for the sustainer. i want to be able to achieve all these sounds as well as putting the bridge in series or parallel with itself, and this is where it gets complicated, i realize a coil tap would work but i dont want hum and i would like to just be able to get a kinda single coil sound and i have heard that this is possible with series/parallel with a humbucker. phase switching on this isnt an issue since i have read that phase switching is only good with space between the coils being phased eg. brian may red special, and since the humbucker coils are right beside each other whats the point. i intend to use push pull on the tone pot if possible for this series/parallel switch. and on top of this i need all this to function as well as the sustainer circuit, sustainiac provided me with a diagram on how to wire the guitar with two pickups and individual on/off switches but not on how to do all the other complicated stuff. sorry for the poor explanation on all this, but it would be cool to have all the tonal possibilities within the guitar. so quick breakdown of desired controls 3 on/on/off switches for the 3 pickups a bottom row of 3 switches for the series/parallel stuff and the kill switch 1 volume / 1 tone either of these can be the push/pull coil tap and the final 2 mini toggles that run the sustainer thanks to everyone who helps with the project i have attached the wiring scheme sent to me by sustainiac yfrog.com/i3img001lqj
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Post by newey on Aug 17, 2010 23:51:11 GMT -5
PMC-
Hello and welcome to G-Nutz2!
First off, at one point you said you wanted the Bridge HB coils in series/parallel, but at the end you said:
Do you want to have the Bridge HB coils available in series/parallel, or a coil cut, or both?
I've never played around with a sustainer. Can a sustainer be run in series with a regular pickup? Or OOP? Is there a point to doing either with a sustainer?
Otherwise, one DPDT switch would suffice for the neck and bridge series/parallel, another could do the Bridge HB coils in series/parallel. Both could be P/P pots, and if you don't really need the kill switch, you could eliminate the whole second row of switches, thus simplifying things considerably.
I mention this, in part, because the sustainer circuit alone is going to gobble up a good deal of space.
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Post by wolf on Aug 18, 2010 1:52:20 GMT -5
Wow, when you rotate that image (or even when you don't) it is HUGE. When rotated to horizontal, the image is over 3,000 pixels. Anyway, to keep within the 800 pixel rule, I copied the image, rotated it 90 degrees and shrank it down by a factor of 4. Some of the words are a bit hard to read but at least it is available for all to see - and it's horizontal. Incidentally, here are the wire color codes for Bareknuckle humbuckers: Red + Green - White + Black -
A couple of things I find unusual: • The bridge pickup and sustainer are drawn together. Does this mean the sustainer only works (or works best) with the bridge pickup? • I always thought that a sustainer (or Sustainiac™) produces no guitar signal correct but it seems you treat it as another pickup. • The sustainer circuit (as newey said) requires a lot of space (switches, wires, batteries). However, in the diagram, the neck pickup is only displayed as a switch. So does that mean if a neck pickup is used, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the sustainer?
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Post by ashcatlt on Aug 18, 2010 8:24:02 GMT -5
The sustain driver is just a magnet with a coil of wire around it. It might have different gauge wire and/or number of turns from a normal pickup, but it'll work to transduce string motion the same way. It goes through some kind of active section before becoming available to the rest of the circuit. They must have done something in there to make sure this output is high enough out-z to avoid loading the other pickup. You're never going to get this thing to work in series with another pickup, though.
Wolf, I think if you look again you'll see that the sustain driver is the neck pickup here. When running as a driver, it must be as far as possible from any active pickup to reduce the risk of electromagnetic interference.
And that is an important point for the OP. Whatever you do with the rest of the circuit, your sustain on/off switch must also shut off your other neck pup. Well, you could try to remember to switch it off before turning on the sustainer...
4real has said that with his drivers (not exactly the same as this one, but prettty close) the unused pickup needs to be disconnected at both ends from the circuit.
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Post by ashcatlt on Aug 18, 2010 8:39:34 GMT -5
Another thing I'd like to point out:
In a parallel config, you can turn a pickup off by simply disconnecting it's "top" wire from hot. In series, though, each pickup has to go through the other to get to the output. If you simply disconnect one, the whole thing goes dead. Your on/off switches will have to change the way they work when the S/P switch is flipped.
Better might be a "series override switch. In parallel mode, the individual on/offs work as expected. Flip to Series and we ignore those switches completely and send both pickups in series to the output. There's a couple schemes for this around, but I don't enjoy searching and linking from this iPhone.
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pmcguitars
Rookie Solder Flinger
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Post by pmcguitars on Aug 18, 2010 13:10:35 GMT -5
hi guys thanks for all the responses. newey, i meant to say series/parallel the coil tap thing was mis used, my bad. wolf, sorry about the size of the schematic, forgot how big it was, the sustainiac pickup will work as an ordinary neck pickup as well as a sustainer so essentially i would have 2 neck pickups. and ashcatlt, thanks for the information about whether or not a sustainer would run in series, i think my eyes were bigger than my stomach in this case, trying to get too many sounds and over complicating things. i think now i should have just a series/parallel switch for the 2 bareknuckle pickups as well as the phase switch for them and then treat the sustainer as you normally would ie wired in parallel and no phase switching nonsense. so i think now the best way to proceed is to wire the thing in parallel treating it as a bridge middle and sustainer circuit and that should solve the sustainer circuit and have the bareknuckle series/parallel/phase switching thing as a circuit within a circuit if that makes sense. i'll draw up a mock schematic to show you all what i mean and you can tell me if im on the right track.
thanks again everyone for the advice and feedback
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Post by ijustwannastrat on Aug 18, 2010 14:39:33 GMT -5
(Off topic?)
If you wire the sustainer out of phase, does it sustain the notes that you AREN'T playing?
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Post by ashcatlt on Aug 18, 2010 16:53:04 GMT -5
(Off topic?) If you wire the sustainer out of phase, does it sustain the notes that you AREN'T playing? You're funny! If you look at the schematic it actually mentions that if you don't get good fundamental sustain you should reverse the wires for the sutain driver. When OoP, the driver acts against the motion of the string and cancels the fundamental, but sometimes the harmonics come through instead, giving an octave-up sustain that sounds like feedback. Kind of like the Brian May trick where you flip the phase switch while sustaining a note near a loud amp. There's some speculation that this may be how the Moog Guitar accomplishes its electronic muting anti-sustain sort of thing, but I haven't seen any good confirmation, and that system is significantly different from this one.
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Post by sumgai on Aug 18, 2010 18:25:58 GMT -5
(Off topic?)
If you wire the sustainer out of phase, does it sustain the notes that you AREN'T playing? Of course not - it sustains the space between the notes. How could you not know this?
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Post by 4real on Sept 1, 2010 17:23:42 GMT -5
Sorry not to have chimed in a little earlier, I do know a bit about these things and I did take a bit of a study of the diagram. I do note that Sustainiac on their site advise that many complex wiring systems are not suitable for this device and that even if possible and they install (which they recommend because it is not for the faint hearted or inexperienced generally) they will charge a bomb, and for good reason looking at this diagram.
My devices use the same principle but with significant differences and would allow a lot of switching potions depending on the switching power you can muster.
In order to do this kind of thing you need to have an eye on the principles (which I can help with) and the functions of all these wires and all the wires and switches and functions you plan to add to it.
It is important to note that the sustainer can ONLY work with the bridge pickup. In my devices, all other coils must be completely taken out of the equation, the extent of this isolation with the sustainiacs bi-lateral driver or if there is circuit switching is unclear and they may well not really be saying.
So, on mine, the typical strategy I use is to disconnect all wiring and switching both ground and hot, reconnect with that switch ground and hot from bridge pickup into the controls (vol/tone) and connect the battery (usually by connecting the ground) and generally you can do this with a 4pdt switch...generally.
You don't want your bridge pickup out of phase with the system for instance but there are work arounds for most things like this I suppose.
The thing with the sustainiac is that the driver works as an active neck pickup so you can't just pull the power, it needs power at all times and will eat batteries by the way, so make sure you have easy access and budget...mine only need power when actually sustaining.
I'm not dissing the sustainaic by the way, it is an excellent device but there are limitations and they can get pretty complex.
On the out of phase thing, generally putting the pickup (signal) or driver in reverse does dampen the fundamentals and so drive the harmonics in line with the harmonic series (different string lengths will produce different predictable notes, most often an octave and a fifth above, very rarely an 'octave' of the note being played...cant fight physics). I suspect that sustainiacs are the same, this is indicated and you could reverse the driver leads as suggested. However, similar results can be had with filtering, as with the mix mode and of course different guitars and pickups are all going to have different effects.
So, although I did read this and the diagram a bit, it was looking a little daunting and not sure that it will be really possible and certainly will require a fair bit of experimentation.
What is perhaps required is the entire guitars proposed wiring and how you are planning to integrate all this stuff...it's going to take a heap of room so I hope you have allowed for all this stuff.
The best approach is always to take things a step at a time. I'd be looking at getting the basic guitar set up and playable, then integrate the sustainer into the basic set up, then look at the ideas about switching.
You will find other diagrams on their site I'm sure that will show how they deal with such typically applications as a strat which has three pickups including the driver.
But, you know, I understand my simpler systems better and can only really talk with some authority about that...part of the reason I made my own was that the commercial systems are restrictive in some areas and DIY is generally more adaptable. However, there are significant differences in the way my things 'work' though the principle is the same...my driver adds to the guitar not replace and dual purpose as a pickup for instance and the guitar will work without power as required and when off. But, this is not that simple a proposition either and I have come across wiring schemes that I could not get to work and declined pursing those kids of boundaries for others before, and for myself.
In the original guitar I installed the first DIY sustainer, a strat with phase switching, the middle pickup was on a blend pot and this needed to be discarded to incorporate the sustainer system...sometimes you can just have too much 'stuff' and it's a lot of work to even try and work out even wioth one's own system...sustainiac, a whole other layer of mystery to deal with...expect problems...
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