The Strat SP hss - 85 sounds, no extra knobs

[treguiers]

The bare earth wire from the HB i connected to one of the pots casing.
The black and white wiring of the single coils I've treated as per the black and red in the diagram.
I've everything wired...... first plug in I'm getting a loud hum and the pups aren't registering(nothing when i touch the pup with metal). I've a feeling I've an earth issue.
Should the lug on the vol pot (the lug to the right as per the diagram)that has the earth connection to the jack i/p be earthed to the casing?

But it's quite late here, so I shall go at it again tomorrow with a fresh head and not so tired eyes.
Thanks.....will update tomorrow

[JohnH]

Nov 3, 2011 22:26:14 GMT -5 treguiers said:

Should the lug on the vol pot (the lug to the right as per the diagram)that has the earth connection to the jack i/p be earthed to the casing?

Yes Good spotting! - that will help alot! (thanks - I'll fix the diagram)

Your pickup wiring on the singles sound fine, use your white where I show red on both of them.

On the caps - putting 2x1nF across a 20nF will indeed make 22nF, but I doubt youd hear a difference. You might like to try a larger change, like putting two 20nf in parallel, but its a personal choice.

cheers

John

[treguiers]

Wired up....strung up...
First impressions are very positive.. Extremely quiet. Obviously cannot let it loose in my house at the mo.

Problem..... As far as I can tell all works except series mode. I've a feeling it's in the fade control area:
with nXm, n is dead, m is fine, likewise bXn: b is fine, n is dead, mXb: b is fine, m is dead. Turning the fade knob has no effect.

n+m, n+b, and m+b all seem to work fine. Tone control, bridge split also fine. All pup selections have o/p, and all have minimum hum

Like I said i think it's in the fade pot. But my knowledge on electronics is limited enough. So some pointers as to where to look will definitely help.

But so far.....LOOKING PRETTY GOOD!

[treguiers]

Have unstrung guitar and unscrewed scratchplate. Checked and rechecked(continuity tests and search for shorts) the wires and all seems as per the diagram........ So it's now official.......I need help!!!!!

[treguiers]

Found the problem.....Just went over the fade pot and the vol pot making sure there was no shorts. Whatever i did it's now working, although I had to change the wire on the left side of the fade pot and put it on the right side, cause fully faded in was zero and fully cut was 10..

So as of now as far as I can tell all is working as planned.......F@%^ING EXCELLENT!!!!!(probably not allowed to swear here)

Will gig it over the next few days, I will also show it to some of my guitar player colleagues.

But for now ...to Newey and especially to John............THANK YOU!

I shall be on soon

[JohnH]

Great Work! Well done again for working through this +1.

All comments on what you think of it will be welcomed (clips and pix are good too) - you have a guitar that nobody else has!

cheers

John

[newey]

Glad you got it working, tre- and glad that someone built what I think is one of the better so-far-unbuilt designs around.

But I didn't do anything, it was all JohnH!

Looking forward to a fuller report.

[treguiers]

This report I write, I write as a musician and not as a tekkie

OK.... Firstly i made two slight adjustments to your design. Firstly as mentioned earlier, with regard to the fade knob, it seemed more logical to me to have fully faded in at 10 and fully faded out at 0. Secondly I made the single coil option at the bridge the default position( when the push pull for the coil split is in it's single coil and when it's pulled out it's HB) I view the HB as simply one sound whereas the single coil tapped at the bridge is used in an array of sounds.

I've just finished my first gig with it and it is an amazing guitar now. Firstly it is seriously more quiet, in all positions. Secondly there seems to be a lot more sparkle and quack to the sounds particularly on combination pup selections. I wasn't much of a fan of the out of phase sound I always found them too shrill with a feeble nasally metallic kind of sound. But again because of the extra sparkle the out of phase sounds were very usable.
I love the fact that you can choose which coil you can have on at the bridge(the one closest to the bridge works great for reggae shanks)
It also reacted better with distortion. Feedback was very harmonious (ie no screaming howlers)

On the gig I did tonight there was blues country reggae pop and rock. I could find sounds for each of them. Quality sounds at that. The guitar sang in a way that it never did before. It's the same guitar with the same pups but it's a world apart from the way it was before.

Obviously I'm still on a learning curve with regard to dialing in a sound on the fly at a gig, but its physical design seems very intuitive, one push pull for series/parallel, one for phase/out of phase and on for coil tap.....If you consider using pedal boards, difficulty of material being performed, interaction with bandmates and the public, the last thing you want to be doing is farting around with a complicated array of switches, buttons and pots.

I will post sound clips soon ......but for now John all I can say is that this is an incredible guitar, all my band mates were knocked out by its sound(and they're not the easiest bunch to please)
you are getting a +1

[JohnH]

Good feedback tg, your comments improve the design amd I have amended the diagram.

With the fade direction, you are correct and I see that I had it the other way on the SSS version. It should turn up the knob towards 10 to make it louder (less fade), and also, it will be giving much smoother transitions that way if you have audio taper pots.

Your idea about the humbucker coil cut is an interesting one that I would not have thought of. Actually it makes a lot of sense, especially if the base guitar is a Strat where single coils are the default. Also, just as the general series/parallel switch goes to series = louder when you pull it, the bridge coil cut switch could also be thought of as a bridge series switch in whch you pull it to get louder, putting coils in series.

Other things to check out as you play around with it:

• In series mode, when you turn the tone pot from 10 down slightly to maybe 8 or 9, to you get a change in tone? The idea is that you should do, where standard tone controls dont do much before about 5.
  
  
• Does the fade knob allow any useful in between sounds? maybe out of phase ones too where you move in and out of cancellation?
  

Great!

John

[treguiers]

Ok here goes. With regard to the tone and fade on this design I still have a bit to learn. Sorry John I get the feeling that those 2 parameters are of most interest to you. I will post another report when i get to grips with their subtlities.

I'm playing thru a peavey classic 30. I did use a small bit of compresion(retro compressor..home brew electronics).... maybe on hindsight I shouldn't have. The distortion on the last track is a wampler hotwired(brent mason)

The sounds:
First recording is of the guitar in normal strat mode. All pup pairs are in parallel. I am going from neck to bridge.
soundcloud.com/eamonnmoran/rec1-parallel

Second recording is all pup pairs in series...again going from neck to bridge
soundcloud.com/eamonnmoran/rec2-series

Third recording is parallel and out of phase ...again neck to bridge
soundcloud.com/eamonnmoran/rec3-paallel-and-out-of-phase

Fourth Recording is series and out of phase.....neck to bridge
soundcloud.com/eamonnmoran/rec4-series-out-of-phase

Fifth recording ....Good jazz tone, using the excellent tone control, on neck pup ....tone at around 4 (most tone control make it sound like someone threw a duvet over your amp!)
soundcloud.com/eamonnmoran/rec5-interesting-sounds

And lastly just a bunch of ramdom series/oop sounds with distortion, just to show how it interacts with pedals.
soundcloud.com/eamonnmoran/rec6-some-random-sounds-with


I will do another report on some of the subtilitis and interesting sounds on this guitar, But this one is kind of an overview of the sounds.

[cynical1]

Very nice sounding guitar. I imagine there are more tones here then you can record without releasing a double album.

+1 for a very nice functional and versatile build.

Happy Trails

Cynical One

[treguiers]

Thanks Cynical... I really was only following instructions John H has to take all the credit.

[JohnH]

Thanks for posting those - very nice playing. I particularly liked the 5th jazzy one.

Ill be interested in your thoughts on the tone and fade knobs. The difference in the tone control, compared to a standard version would happen in series mode between about 8 and 10, where hopefully there is a difference where most tone controls do little. It may not be a big change or not significant, but it'd be good to know either way.

John

[treguiers]

Right.....Just finished a gig with the guitar and I was paying particular attention to the tone knob. I think I realise my confusion.......If you turn the tone knob down to around 7-8 on 2 pups in series, it changes the tone to one VERY similar in sound, to the sound of those 2 pups in parallel(if that makes any sense?).....I never put the tone to 7 or 8 on gigs as I was never sure if i was in series or parallel. In other words, to my ears it changes the series sounds back to the parallel sounds.


Knockout tone control for getting GOOD dark tones. First decent jazz sound i got fron a single coil neck pup on a strat

I'll really explore the fade knob over the next few gigs.

Glad you like my playing. I was really trying to keep the clips as similar as possible...chords and single notes.

One more thing, with the vol down below 8 it goes kinda oop trebly. Definitely changes the tone.....not to anything disagreeable but definitely different

I absolutely love the guitar John....thanks

[JohnH]

Nov 30, 2011 19:24:02 GMT -5 treguiers said:

Right.....Just finished a gig with the guitar and I was paying particular attention to the tone knob. I think I realise my confusion.......If you turn the tone knob down to around 7-8 on 2 pups in series, it changes the tone to one VERY similar in sound, to the sound of those 2 pups in parallel(if that makes any sense?).....I never put the tone to 7 or 8 on gigs as I was never sure if i was in series or parallel. In other words, to my ears it changes the series sounds back to the parallel sounds.

Interesting - that kind of result would be expected in out of phase series rather than in phase. I might post a clip of how a similar circuit sounds on my Strat. This feature could be removed by removing the connection from one end of the tone pot.

One more thing, with the vol down below 8 it goes kinda oop trebly. Definitely changes the tone.....not to anything disagreeable but definitely different

If thats the case, and it was considered an issue, a smaller treble bleed cap would reduce this effect

I absolutely love the guitar John....thanks

Well thats great to hear - sounds like theres no need to change things further unless you wish to! - but let me know if you want advice on any such tweaks, now that you have played it for a while.

cheers

John

[heritage]

Hey this design looks really awesome! I am going to try to install this with Dimarzio pickups and the two single coils are humcancelling thus four conductor. Is there any advice for where to put the additional two wires thanks? Also I tried spilitting the coils on the hum cancelling single coils and it was an awful awful idea so if i'm using the two humcancelling single coils this design won't split them right?

thanks a lot!

[reTrEaD]

Mar 8, 2012 13:03:46 GMT -5 heritage said:

if i'm using the two humcancelling single coils this design won't split them right?

If you want your SC to retain their internal humcanceling properties, you can. But the colors on the diagram will be slightly different from the ones on your pickups.

Mar 8, 2012 13:03:46 GMT -5 heritage said:

Is there any advice for where to put the additional two wires thanks?

You'll need to look on the DiMarzio site for the color codes for YOUR pickups. Mostly Dimarzio 4wire pickups follow the same color codes. But a few rare models use a different color code.

It's likely you will connect the White and Black of each hum-canceling single together. This pair is not connected to anything else in the diagram.

The Red wire of each single will connect where Red is shown in the drawing.

The Green wire of each single will connect where Black is shown in the drawing.



If your full sized HB is also Dimarzio, you'll have to adapt the colors on your pickup to those on the drawing. That is using Seymour Duncan color codes.

The Red on your HB will connect to where Black is shown on the drawing.

The Black on your HB will connect where White is shown on the drawing

The White on your HB will connect where Red is shown on the drawing.

The Green on your HB will connect where Green is shown on the drawing.




But check the information on the DiMarzio site for the particular model of pickups you have.

[moosie]

Hi all. Getting ready to build this one.

Ideally, you want the bridge HB coil which is nearest the middle to be reverse of the middle pup, as shown by the red/blue coils in JohnH's diagram. This may require flipping the bridge pickup around the other way- or, perhaps not, but best to check it to be sure since it's easy enough to check.

Does physical coil polarity alternation matter? Or just the wiring? I have a set of Texas Specials, but the bridge pup is in a drawer, replaced by a SD little 59. I used the bridge Texas pup to test polarity of the others. Using "positive" and "negative" as purely relative terms, from neck to bridge, my pup polarities are: pos, neg, [neg, pos]. Must I install the Duncan upside down? If I wire it correctly, the correct coils will still be selected at the proper time. Why does physical orientation matter?

[newey]

Moosie-

With a Little '59 for the HB, as opposed to a full-sized HB, it may indeed not matter, since the two coils are so close together in that type of a design. With a full-sized HB, however, the two coils may sound differently because of the slight difference in coil position along the length of the string.

Most folks want to coil closest to the bridge to be the one that is split, for a brighter "lead sound". JohnH's design does that, except that it selects the other HB coil to combine with the middle for hum-cancelling when the B(SC) + M is selected. It also switches to the opposite coil when OOP is selected. Hum-cancelling is thus maintained "automatically" no matter how one pulls the switches.

[JohnH]

Jun 27, 2012 5:10:22 GMT -5 newey said:

Moosie-

With a Little '59 for the HB, as opposed to a full-sized HB, it may indeed not matter, since the two coils are so close together in that type of a design. With a full-sized HB, however, the two coils may sound differently because of the slight difference in coil position along the length of the string.

Most folks want to coil closest to the bridge to be the one that is split, for a brighter "lead sound". JohnH's design does that, except that it selects the other HB coil to combine with the middle for hum-cancelling when the B(SC) + M is selected. It also switches to the opposite coil when OOP is selected. Hum-cancelling is thus maintained "automatically" no matter how one pulls the switches.

I agree, so long as the right coils are wired to the right place, it will still work fine if you then theoretically spin the Hb 180 degrees on the guitar - without changing where each actual coil is wired.

Good luck with the build

J

[moosie]

Thanks guys.

John, this really looks like a great design. I may not know much about electronics, but I recognize elegance when I see it.

Any thoughts on the easiest way to turn on all three (or four, depending on coil tap) pups on at once? I don't mind adding a mini-toggle.

Let's see, it'd be neat to have the toggle do nothing in positions 1 and 5, and 2,3,4 it adds the missing pup, whichever it is.

Coil split would be respected, except maybe other half is selected to make it hum canceling (depending on switch position, that half may already be selected).

In parallel, in-phase mode, that's it, right?

In series... the added pup is placed in it's proper position in the chain? Or doesn't it matter, and it's added wherever is simplest...

What does phasing mean in this context? Is phasing a relationship between two, and only two pickups?

Starting to sound like a lot of work for a simple wish.

[JohnH]

Hi moosie, thanks for your comments but i dont think what you request can be done without messing up the design. The whole design is based on the idea that only one or two pickups are needed at once, and everything is optimised for that. If you want all mixtures of 3 pups we have other designs that do that.
cheers john

[moosie]

No problem. This design offers everything else I ever wanted, so I'll live without 3 pups on.

[moosie]

I finally finished this. I wired the new pickguard up a couple weeks ago, but just gutted the guitar now 'cause I was letting other recent (non-electronic) changes "season". Break no more than three things at a time, that's my motto.

I'm amazed not only at the sounds, but that I got it fairly right.

I suspect I have my Duncan-style black and green swapped because positions 3 & 4 hum, and phasing sounds reversed (very thin "in phase") for those positions, but not for position 2.

Does that sound right? Just swap black and green on the 5-way?

I have questions related to the fade control. I might get used to it as-is, but I could see fading bridge-most more often than neck-most. Instead of sweetening a nasal lead tone, I play a lot of neck or mid, and would often just like to add a bit of zip.

I think I figured out that I'd just swap two wires.

Wire 1: Red wire on your diagram connecting the 5-way to vol pot lug 1.

Wire 2: Blue wire connecting phase switch to ground.

Wire 1 would go to ground, and wire 2 would go to the vol pot lug 1.

Because, as I understand it with my extremely limited knowledge, those are the two ends of the series path, and so always one neck-most, other bridge-most.

And handling wire 2 after the phase switch maintains phase setting.

Sound right?

I may even decide to wire it to a mini dpdt, though keeping the stock look has been nice thus far.

And now to step completely out of my depth, would it be feasible to do the same with parallel? I think I understand how the current setup has no fade effect on parallel, but not sure.

Vol pot lug 1 is where the parallel legs of each pup join (one from each, but polarity depends on phase selector). The olive-colored wire coming from the parallel selector (Sw1) is always bridge-most. So, one could choose the desired fade-able pup position, and run that wire NOT to vol pot 1, but to the fade pot, lug 3. And that's it, because then it already comes out lug 2, and runs back to join the other pup at vol pot lug 1. Is this even close?

My Strat is a MIM, with the probably crappy tone stack that came stock. Between the 500k Alpha, and the Orange Drop (same size as original, .022uf), the control sounds a whole lot better. John, I know you're interested to see if there's quick response rolling off 10. I don't notice much change before 7. A little. But then further down it gets more velvety than muddy. Really useful. And I love that it operates on all pups.

Assuming my phase problem is just push vs. pull, and not tone, oop only seems useful for a few positions. Otherwise too thin. Primarily N*B, but need to play with it more.

Series sounds somehow different, not just louder. I like it.

I need to play with it more, but there are definitely some good sounds here. Tele-ish, jazz, BB King, and more, as well as stock Strat chime, snarl, and quack.

Thanks John, for a great design. And off-topic, I clicked the link in your signature. Beautiful, peaceful-looking place.

-joe

[JohnH]

Well done getting it together and thanks for your commenst.

You are probably right about the phase problem, and swapping the bridge green and black should fix it. the bridge combos are likley to hum a bit anyway however, since it is a different type of pickup to the others.

It is possible to fade the bridge side instead of neck side - but i need some sleep to look at it properly.

cheers

john

[moosie]

It is possible to fade the bridge side instead of neck side - but i need some sleep to look at it properly.

Have you by any chance found time to look at this? I'm getting ready to try it on my own, trial and error. It would be great to have a better understanding of what I'm doing. Thanks!

[JohnH]

Hi moosie - I did have another look. I think it would mean moving quite a few wires, or else the fader would mess with the single B and N settings. Im sorry but I dont think I will be getting to this one.

John

[moosie]

Hi John,

Thanks for looking, no worries. I have a nice working guitar.

If I continue on my own, and come up with anything cool, I'll share it here.

Somewhat OT, does anyone know where to purchase a blender push-pull pot? (I'd try to use it for the coil split and either-way fade.) I haven't seen such a thing at the usual places (Stewmac, mostly).

[reTrEaD]

Moosie, I really doubt you'll find a blender with a push-pull. Or any two-deck pot with a push-pull. It would be so long that it wouldn't fit in most control cavities.

Edit:
I was wrong. Bourns does make a dual ganged mini with push-pull. But not a blend pot.

[moosie]

Ah, yes, too big for the cavity. Hadn't thought of that. Thanks reTrEaD.