krick
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Post by krick on Aug 12, 2011 14:27:48 GMT -5
I'm having a little trouble wrapping my brain around exactly how to wire volume and/or tone pots with two humbuckers and a 6-way pickup selector switch.
At a minimum, I would like to have independent volume controls for each pickup before they feed into the 6-way switch.
The problem (at least with my limited understanding) is that the "normal" way to wire pots is to connect one side to ground (and to the pot casing). However, if I do that, won't it mess up the phase switching in my 6-way switch? My other concern is that the volume controls will "interact" with each other through the ground connection.
I can live without individual tone pots for each pickup, and I'll probably just wire a master tone pot AFTER the 6-way selector, but I really need the separate volume pots.
Can someone point me at diagrams/schematics that show how this is supposed to work with a 6-way rotary pickup selector switch?
Thanks for your time.
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Post by JohnH on Aug 12, 2011 17:07:39 GMT -5
Hi krick. What do you wish the rotary to do? Is it just to make the 6 possible overall combinations of the full humbuckers, or do you want some coil cuts etc as well? You might be interested in this: LP modular wiring designIt's based on an almost standard LP wiring, with seperate vol and tone for each pickup, then shows 6 different ways of doing the switching, and no.6 is a rotary (5-way as shown, but 6-way is possible). My build includes coil cuts incorporated into the tone pots, but that is easily omitted, or easily disconnected if built and not wanted. cheers John
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krick
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Post by krick on Aug 12, 2011 22:28:46 GMT -5
The guitar has two humbuckers. Each humbucker is connected to a 6-way switch, which gives me 6 options for each pickup by combining the coils within a single pickup in different ways... north coil only, south coil only, both series in phase, both parallel in phase, both series out of phase, both parallel out of phase. If you picture it as a block diagram, 4 wires from a pickup (not counting the shield ground) go into a 6-way switch, and two wires come out the other side. Do this for both pickups and you end up with 4 wires (again, not counting shield grounds) that can go into ANOTHER 6-way switch which gives 6 ways of combining the pickups together... neck pickup only, bridge pickup only, both series in phase, both parallel in phase, both series out of phase, both parallel out of phase. Now, I know that I can easily add a "master" volume pot and a "master" tone pot AFTER the 6-way pickup selector switch. However, I don't know if it's possible to instead have individual volume (and maybe tone) pots for EACH pickup BEFORE the 6-way pickup selector switch. I'm modifying the guitar for a friend and he thinks that the individual volume controls for each pickup would be important, but he seems to think that a single master tone control would probably be acceptable if individual tone controls weren't possible. Personally, I think it would be cool if I could have individual volume and tone for each pickup. I'd probably go with two of these to save space... CTS Stacked Dual Concentric Audio Pot 500K+500K www.guitarelectronics.com/product/CPCS55/CTS-Stacked-Dual-Concentric-Audio-Pot-500K500K.htmlThe problem is that every vol/tone wiring diagram I find is for a *normal* guitar and they connect everything to ground, which my gut is telling me won't work correctly with a 6-way pickup selector switch. There's a good chance I'm wrong, however, as I'm new to this stuff. Any guidance you can provide would be greatly appreciated.
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Post by JohnH on Aug 12, 2011 22:49:38 GMT -5
you could wire the rotaries for each pickup, with individual controls, like this: LP Maxand use another rotary to combine them all, as on the other design I linked to. John
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krick
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Post by krick on Aug 13, 2011 0:06:47 GMT -5
I see what you're getting at, but I'm still confused. I've made a simplified diagram (by hacking up a diagram from GuitarElectronics.com) that replaces each of the 6-way switches with a black box. I can't figure out how to hook up the volume and tone pots in the middle of the diagram. I assume the problem is the grounds.
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Post by JohnH on Aug 13, 2011 2:14:12 GMT -5
You can just seperate all the signal grounds from the pot caseings etc, like this: So going into your last 6-way switch, you have 4 independent wires as shown. You can configure that switch so one of them is always grounded (blue line through the switch), and the switch will ground others as needed. Pot cases are grounded seperately, just for screening. John
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krick
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Post by krick on Aug 13, 2011 10:31:42 GMT -5
Excellent! Thank you. One last question. I just grabbed the volume / tone portion of the diagram from another schematic as an example. I know that there are several ways that you can wire up volume and tone pots in a *normal* guitar. Have you tried any of these other methods, and which do you recommend? Here's some pictures I found on this page... www.blueskillet.com/Gibson_Mods.htm...visit the page for descriptions of how each configuration works. NOTE: The diagrams below have the bridge tone labeled wrong.
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Post by JohnH on Aug 13, 2011 16:03:33 GMT -5
Krick – those are three well known variations. At full volume, they all sound the same, but personally I would only use ‘modern’ wiring. That being said, ‘50’s wiring’ is popular on Les Paul forums because they reckon it keeps more treble as you reduce volume. However, it messes up the action of the tone control and other effects that I don’t care for. Here’s what I worked out about it: Modern & 50’s wiringIf treble roll-off at lower volume is considered a problem, treble bleed circuits with modern wiring work better, and here’s what I think of those: Treble bleed circuitsThe ‘independent wiring’ lets you turn one pickup right down to zero with both selected, without cutting out both signals (as modern or 50’s will do). But this is a solution to an issue that is not a problem, because if you only want to hear one pickup, you can select it with the switch. Any partial mixes that you may need will occur at higher settings, and as you turn one pickup down, it will fade from the mix long before it starts to reduce the other significantly. In exchange for fixing this non problem, independent wiring will completely wreck the tone at low volume. So I reckon modern wiring in every case, and particularly on LPs with series/parallel wiring as you are proposing, and I highly recommend treble bleeds (1nF and 150k in parallel) on each volume pot. Apart from helping each pickup individually, they help preserve tone in overall series mixes. One last thing – with all of that, I would not put another master volume after it all. One more pot, and each one dulls the tone slightly. Cheers John
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krick
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Post by krick on Aug 13, 2011 18:24:59 GMT -5
Here's the pot options I was considering...
1) each pickup has a volume and tone, no master pots
2) each pickup has a volume, one "master" tone after the switch
3) one "master" volume, one "master" tone, both after the switch
4) each pickup has a volume, no tone pots at all
What do you recommend?
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Post by JohnH on Aug 13, 2011 18:35:48 GMT -5
That might depend alot on your space and layout. You alredy have 3 knobs for the rotaries. Option 3 is simplest nd is esay to use with no quirks. Option 1 will offer some extra variations which can work very well in series mode, balancing pickup contributions, reducing tone on one pup, adding a bit of neck bass to bridge etc. Its great on an LP but in this case thats 7 knobs in all!
John
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krick
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Post by krick on Aug 13, 2011 19:42:26 GMT -5
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Post by krick on Aug 16, 2011 1:42:25 GMT -5
I took a stab at a wiring diagram for dual concentric pots with treble bleed parallel cap/resistor on the volume pots. Again, I'm black-boxing the 6-way switches. What do you think?
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Post by JohnH on Aug 16, 2011 4:45:23 GMT -5
Seems good to me - and not too complicated when you break it down to show it like that. Now you can focus on filling in the boxes.
John
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krick
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Post by krick on Aug 16, 2011 14:25:22 GMT -5
Now you can focus on filling in the boxes. The wiring of the 6-way switches is actually pretty simple. The hard part is figuring out the best ORDER of the switching options as evidenced by my other thread. I think I'm going to go with this for all three switches... 1) SIP 2) PIP 3) North Coil Only / Neck Pickup Only (for the pickup selector) 4) South Coil Only / Bridge Only (for the pickup selector) 5) SOOP 6) POOP The other consideration is how to physically arrange the switches. The gunea pig for this experiment is a cheap Squier Bullet Hardtail similar to the one pictured here... www.kellyindustries.com/guitars/squier_bullet.htmlI'm scrapping the strat electronics, and I'm going to have to do some routing on the body to accomodate the two humbuckers instead of the 3 single coils. While I'm routing, I'll make room (if necessary) for the 2 extra switches in the area where the blade switch was. I'll take a bunch of pictures and document the process as I go. If any of this experiment turns out to be useful, I'll probably perform some similar surgery on a better guitar.
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