Guitar wiring /switching

[jlamie48]

Looking for opinions on a good wiring / switching setup for a guitar with two humbuckers (neck and bridge) and a single coil middle using a Strat five position switch with two DPDT push-pull switches. The humbuckers are four wire.

It only has one volume and one tone.

[newey]

jlamie48-

Hello and Welcome to G-Nutz2!

Sorry I had to move your post, but it really belongs here since it's a wiring question. No worries, newcomers get a free pass on this sort of thing .


As for a HSH design, are you wedded to the std Strat 5-way switch? Wedded, as in, you already have one and don't want to spend extra money?

We'll see what others say, you have lots of options with 5 separate coils to play with.

[sumgai]

newey,

Show her your rolling humbucker!


(note to newey: This is the second time in 6 months that your circuit of a few years ago would have answered a newcomer's questions. Where did you hide it? )

~!~!~!~!~
jlamie48,

Hi, and to the NutzHouse!

Aside from the design that newey came up with sometime back, there are many others available, in the sub-forum named General Guitar Schematics (right below this forum). As noted by my co-Admin, if you're not wedded to the stock Strat-style 5-way switch, there are lots of possibilities that will take you well outside of the normal tonal palette. Did you have a particular tone in mind, perhaps that of your favorite player?




sumgai

[newey]

OK, well sumgai is hinting around that I ought to steer this towards the Ibanez-ish "progressive coil switching" idea, which is discussed in this thread started by Onederboy:

guitarnuts2.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=wiring&action=display&thread=4506&page=2

Actually, I think JohnH's implementation of this is better than mine:



I had, in fact, immediately thought of this scheme for a HSH, but it requires a Superswitch™. So, I first asked jlamie how wedded she was to the std 5-way. The above scheme is for 3 HBs, but it could be easily adapted to HSH.

If a Superswitch isn't part of the game plan, the 2 P/P pots also open up some options.

[sumgai]

newey,

Progressive.... <slaps head> Why couldn't I remember that, instead of "rolling"?

Ah well, we've accomplished the mission though.

~!~!~!~!~

jlamie,

The aforementioned Superswitch allows for a lot of tonal possibilities. However, if you want/need to stay with the simpler, regular switch, we understand.

You've asked for opinions on a good wiring setup. Well, we've got 'em, opinions that is. So to make things simple, why don't you bring us something that you are considering, and we'll give you our thoughts on that idea.

As usual, we'll answer questions until you're happy - that's what we're here for. And to top it off, we don't care if you bring up stuff from other websites - we don't discriminate here! ;D

HTH




sumgai

[wolf]

Okay, I figured I'd make my suggestions:



JohnH and newey have done a lot of work on this circuit (and I only copied some of it).

The leftmost diagram shows the way it would be for 3 humbuckers but, as we know, jlamie48's guitar has a single coil middle pickup.
So, I just thought I'd throw in my ideas about making all combinations humbucking.
And since that super switch has 5 "throws", why not have the 5th position be a single coil of the bridge pickup?
Ordinarily, I'd attempt a drawing but I really don't know too much about super switches. (I like toggles as you all know).

And welcome to the board jlamie48

[JohnH]

That Idea for HHH got morphed into an HSH version, last year:

guitarnuts2.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=wiring&action=display&thread=4762&page=6

There were several versions over 7 pages, but this was the last one:



It offers a wide range of series, parallel and single coil options

John

[sumgai]

wolf,

Thanks for the kind words, but perhaps you've forgotten.... I don't do much with humbuckers, I'm a single-coil kind of guy. Certainly JohnH, as amply demonstrated just above, deserves much more credit for design work in this area than I might.

Although I've probably thrown in my two cents more than once or twice in answer to questions about humbuckers or circuits with them, I'll to admit that much. ;D

~!~!~!~

John,

That's a helluva design!! That's two of them now that you've come up with, that I'm sorely tempted to try. (The other one is your Dual Sound SSS/HSS circuit from about 4 years ago, I like that one too.)



sumgai

[wolf]

Sumgai
Thanks for the correction about JohnH's work concerning that circuit.
And I've corrected my previous posting.
JohnH - thanks for the additional diagram.

[asmith]

Hey Jlamie. Welcome to GuitarNutz2.

If you're a little baffled by all the diagrams, or don't know what the syntax is in some of them, don't be afraid to speak up. Sometimes if a thread particularly grabs a lot of us, we start speaking to each other on the topic, not just directly to you, in language we can sometimes assume fresh members will understand without question. If you didn't grab something here, we'll be more than happy to go through every little detail with you. They all had to with me when I joined, so they're more than capable.

That said, if you're a professor in electrical engineering and you understand this thread in a snap I've just been reasonably patronising. Either way. It's always good to get feedback from new members on our input to their problems. Then once we've caught you, we can bully you into actually building our schemes. Half of us never get round to that bit.

To the rest of you: I'm not too sure what's going on in John's latest diagram, when both switches are out. As far as I can see, the coil cut works independently of the series/parallel switch. Is that correct? EDIT: I'm a doofus, of course Out/Out works as a killswitch.

[sumgai]

ace,

Mar 2, 2011 15:11:24 GMT -5 asmith said:

I'm not too sure what's going on in John's latest diagram, when both switches are out. As far as I can see, the coil cut works independently of the series/parallel switch. Is that correct?

That's what it says on the tin. I'm inclined to suspect that's what'll happen in real life, too.


~!~!~!~!~
BTW......

John, I just noticed that your diagram has a legend calling out wire colors for the adjustable versus slug poles. That's great.... however, the diagram itself shows two adjustable poles on one Hb pup and two slug poles on the other Hb pup. As I follow the signal paths through the switch, they look like I'd expect - the two adjacent coils for each Hb pup are connected to switch terminals that yield the expected results. Was this a boo-boo in the Art Department, perhaps?



sumgai

[JohnH]

Thanks for the review. That design had several iterations as it became set up to represent mclords specific pickups. That involved figuring out the polarity of the coils, and also, the graphic was adjusted to show the pole appearance, which I think did not have screw poles. THis earlier one may illustrate a more generic version:
i731.photobucket.com/albums/ww316/JohnDHewitt/GN2/HSHsuper15100210.gif

The legend for wire colours is a 'borrowed' one that I put in just to help translate between makers, when a base colour code other than Seymour Duncan has been asked for.

In the final version posted earlier on this thread, the all-out position is a kill switch function, at mclords request.

If I was building this, I think I would consolidate the two pp switches into one four-pole 3 position on-on-on toggle, so to select series, parallel and single combinations from one switch. That would concentrate all wiring complication into just the 5-way and this toggle, and make it easier to build and also to operate IMO.

Meanwhile - to jlamie48 - would you like us to start chatting about simpler options? we get a bit carried away sometimes...!