Crazy HH Strat?

[yakkmeister]

So I got a pretty good offer to buy a Squier strat, HH model of a mate of mine.

Naturally I now need to get a decent set of pickups and ... about a million new switches and caps and ... you get the point.

Here's a crazy thought I had ...

What if I could use a blend pot to blend in some out-of-phase to kinda morph the sound? Can this be done per pickup?
Has my mind cracked and become a featureless void?

Here's what I am thinking ...

2x Humbuckers (Alnico 2, vintage output)

A Super-5-Way switches between
Neck (parallel) Neck (tapped) N + B (both tapped in parallel) Bridge (tapped) Bridge (parallel)

each humbucker would have a tone-shaping circuit. If not the blend thing then some combination of treble and/or bass cut.

A Common volume control

A control bypass switch that puts everything on in series

A push-button kill-switch

A Flamethrower ... maybe.

Doability?

[asmith]

Let's deal with your goals in terms of "easiest first."

1.
Killswitch: easy.


2.
Common volume: easy.


3.
You could certainly do your

N_(t), N_(p), N_(t)+B_(t), B_(p), B_(t)

t: tapped, p: parallel

with two poles of a four-pole, five-throw superswitch.


4.
Attaching tone controls to seperate humbucker "units" is certainly feasible as well - although I believe you'd have to use up the other two poles in your superswitch to do so.


5.
The "everything in series switch" would, I believe, require seven poles. Here's a link to an 8-pole Double-Throw pushbutton switch that Mouser has in stock. Only thing is, it looks like Option "C" in this catalogue page, and I'm not sure you'd fit that in a guitar body... maybe on the side if you were willing to go nutz.


6.
I'm not what you mean about "the Out of Phase blender." Do you mean:

• The opposite coil in the other humbucker being blended in, in series^*,
  
• The opposite coil in the other humbucker being blended in, in parallel,
  
• The opposite coil in the same humbucker being blended in, in series,
  
• The opposite coil in the same humbucker being blended in, in parallel,
  

Please delete as appropriate.

I'm also not even sure you could do this using only the four-pole five-throw superswitch, being that you have seperate tone controls on each eating up your usage of poles.

^*This is my personal reccomendation.


7.
A flamethrower: this MUST happen.


Hope that's clear and helps.

[yakkmeister]

May 16, 2012 8:40:31 GMT -5 asmith said:

Let's deal with your goals in terms of "easiest first."

1.
Killswitch: easy.


2.
Common volume: easy.


3.
You could certainly do your

N_(t), N_(p), N_(t)+B_(t), B_(p), B_(t)

t: tapped, p: parallel

with two poles of a four-pole, five-throw superswitch.


4.
Attaching tone controls to seperate humbucker "units" is certainly feasible as well - although I believe you'd have to use up the other two poles in your superswitch to do so.


5.
The "everything in series switch" would, I believe, require seven poles. Here's a link to an 8-pole Double-Throw pushbutton switch that Mouser has in stock. Only thing is, it looks like Option "C" in this catalogue page, and I'm not sure you'd fit that in a guitar body... maybe on the side if you were willing to go nutz.


6.
I'm not what you mean about "the Out of Phase blender." Do you mean:

• The opposite coil in the other humbucker being blended in, in series^*,
  
• The opposite coil in the other humbucker being blended in, in parallel,
  
• The opposite coil in the same humbucker being blended in, in series,
  
• The opposite coil in the same humbucker being blended in, in parallel,
  

Please delete as appropriate.

I'm also not even sure you could do this using only the four-pole five-throw superswitch, being that you have seperate tone controls on each eating up your usage of poles.

^*This is my personal reccomendation.


7.
A flamethrower: this MUST happen.


Hope that's clear and helps.

Items 1 - 3:
Yeah, totally. I included them for completeness more than anything...

Item 4:
What if the tone shaping came before the switch?
Also - I'm not too worried about using up the poles ...

Item 5:
That's one crazy-butt switch!
Maybe just a simple bypass then ... lol!

Item 6:
I'm not entirely sure either ...

What I was thinking was by blending in a little bit of OoP signal, one could cut dramatically into the resultant wave ... giving some kind of tonal shaping or decimating?

Maybe it's not even close to what I'm thinking of.

What could also be interesting (if it's possible) is a kind of parametric-eq (being passive, it could only be a frequency cut system, I guess). Something that you can use to make a traditional tone, high-cut filter, a bass-cut or even a mid-scoop ...
Perhaps a switch, on-on-on, to select the filter and a pot to control the amount of filtering...
Perhaps some kind of inductor could be used in a fun and interesting way?

This is all academic for now as I have not yet got the guitar; anything goes at this point.

www.guitar-mod.com/rg_passive.html
This 'orange' tone-shaper thing looks interesting - LC network.

Has anyone found/used/abducted any variable caps or inductors?
I found some variable caps (photos) that used a wheel mounted on it to adjust ... but could find no supplier.
Found one!
www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=RV5728
From 60-160 pF. Is that even going to make a difference?

I am suspecting that a fixed L, switchable C could be the go.
A varitone-like switch selects between X number of cap values that interacts with a single inductor.
One could have several inductors on a similar switch and have a variety of combinations available ...

Given this, a global LC filter with master volume and 'tone' control to pass more or less signal through the LC Filter would be kinda useful. Dedicated tone controls for each pickup could be done by having a separate 'tone' for each pickup that fed into a common LC.


Point 7:
I know, right!
Now I have written this ...
I wonder if I could actually do it ...

edit:
Had a look at notch filters and parametrics ...
Doesn't look like there is a passive solution to that problem.

[yakkmeister]

Here's point 7 ...

[newey]

As asmith (BTW, welcome back, asmith!) points out "everything in series" is going to mean a lot of poles. However, if you really just want to put the two HBs in series, that can be done.

What I was thinking was by blending in a little bit of OoP signal, one could cut dramatically into the resultant wave ... giving some kind of tonal shaping or decimating?

I'm having a bit of trouble visualizing how that would (or could) work, assuming that you don't want the two pickups to be permanently OOP.

IOW, if the switching on the 5-way is all in-phase, then you'd need a way to disconnect the pickups from the 5-way in phase, and to put them OOP onto a blend pot. The blend pot would have to be out of the circuit the rest of the time.

[yakkmeister]

May 16, 2012 10:35:06 GMT -5 newey said:

As asmith (BTW, welcome back, asmith!) points out "everything in series" is going to mean a lot of poles. However, if you really just want to put the two HBs in series, that can be done.

What I was thinking was by blending in a little bit of OoP signal, one could cut dramatically into the resultant wave ... giving some kind of tonal shaping or decimating?

I'm having a bit of trouble visualizing how that would (or could) work, assuming that you don't want the two pickups to be permanently OOP.

IOW, if the switching on the 5-way is all in-phase, then you'd need a way to disconnect the pickups from the 5-way in phase, and to put them OOP onto a blend pot. The blend pot would have to be out of the circuit the rest of the time.

"everything in series" pretty much referred to coils wired in series and both pups in series. I think a simpler bypass switch, like the one you helped me sort out on the Tele wiring earlier, would suffice.

I have a dodgey little diagram for the concept:



Note that it's not a schematic or wiring diagram - just a general idea - consider the lines as meaning "Is somehow and usefully connected to"

I noticed I have forgotten the bypass switch...
Though it would be pretty epic to have a bypass switch that put coils and pups in series then straight to output...

In terms of the OoP thing ...

If I can refer to edits (in green) in my earlier post, I have abandoned that idea as being pretty much useless or, at least, not going to give me the result I'd like.
I found some stuff on LC networks and figured that could be a really groovy idea.

To briefly recap:
Use a selection of caps with a single inductor to vary the filter point and then use a 'tone' pot to vary the amount of signal being passed on to the LC network.
I am pretty happy with option B (see my diagram) and I will think about how I could work in a massive bypass switch just for the balls-out crazy it would be (though I expect the sheer quantity of connections would make it prohibitive)

[newey]

consider the lines as meaning "Is somehow and usefully connected to"

Got that. Without that, I would have thought the Plan B diagram had your V and T pots in series.

As far as a "Bypass Switch", if it has to override all the other switching and put everything in series, you're looking at a "whole lotta of switching goin' on".

But, very easy to do a switch which simply bypasses the pots to a direct-out setting; a simple P/P can do that, giving you whatever you have selected elsewher directly to the jack. This would give you the "everything in series" direct out only if all-series was selected elsewhere. But it's easy enough to do.

On my Hofner travel guitar, I wired a DPDT On-On-On toggle switch to give me a direct out (bypassing both V and T pots), a "normal" V and T pot setting, and a third setting with a cap bleed (fixed bass-ish tone). (The diagram for this is in the Design Modules area if you're interested- I believe it's the most recent thread I started in there.)

It works nicely for switching to a solo setting, and the three options on the switch gives me a selection of tones from the P90 pickup.

[yakkmeister]

I'm thinking a bypass for just tone and volume controls.
All series won't make that much of a difference, really.

Another thought - I could reproduce the 'triple-shot' switching with some mini slider switches just under the pickups to deal with series/parallel/coil-tap configuration. This arrangement would go where the "series/parallel" switches are noted on the concept diagram.

The standard 3 strat knobs are replaced with a varitone-like switchable LC filter network, a 'Tone' for mixing in the network and a master volume. The standard 5-way is replaced with a tele 3-way to have N N+B B.

One position of the rotary could be a standard-style low-pass filter instead of the traditional bypass. This gives the guitar a totally normal operation plus 5 (assuming a 6-way rotary) C values on an LC network.

I can get axial RF Chokes from a local supplier - they're very small and should be able to do the job - they have them from 1-1000 uH.

[yakkmeister]

So here's a circuit I knocked up ...



It's more than likely to be 100% wrong, especially with component values.

I noticed that I forgot to label the inductor - I expect that 100 uH would suffice.

[reTrEaD]

This certainly has changed from the first post. Not that it's a bad thing.

If you use DPDT switches for the "triple shot" duties, you should be able to get rid of any unused coils hanging from hot. iirc, there is a post or thread in the reference section that does this. 222 or something.

Consider using a 4P5T superswitch instead of the tele switch. This will allow you to put the two pickups in-series and in-series oop.

Varitone circuits usually have the inductor and capacitor in series with each other. This results in a mid-cut. Having the inductor and cap in parallel results in a mid-pass. Not necessarily a bad thing, just different than what you might be expecting.

100uH is about 10,000x too small.

[yakkmeister]

May 17, 2012 6:01:49 GMT -5 reTrEaD said:

This certainly has changed from the first post. Not that it's a bad thing.

Yeah, first post was a "hey! I got a idea! Herp!" kinda thing to get some ideas going.

If you use DPDT switches for the "triple shot" duties, you should be able to get rid of any unused coils hanging from hot. iirc, there is a post or thread in the reference section that does this. 222 or something.

That was something I had thought to address later on - thanks for the heads up!

Consider using a 4P5T superswitch instead of the tele switch. This will allow you to put the two pickups in-series and in-series oop.

Yes. I have a good quality 4P5T in my parts box. I only have a cheap, crappy 2P3T. Also, I like the other combinations the 4P5T can facilitate.

Varitone circuits usually have the inductor and capacitor in series with each other. This results in a mid-cut. Having the inductor and cap in parallel results in a mid-pass. Not necessarily a bad thing, just different than what you might be expecting.

I am looking for more of a mid-cut. I will have to adjust this accordingly.
Is there some way to alter the bandwidth of what is being cut?
like ... instead of a v-shaped notch, something more like a U-shaped channel?
Incidently, will the 'tone' control work? I pretty much just expected that the LC filter would replace the regular cap on a normal tone control.

100uH is about 10,000x too small.

Heh ... good to know!

[edit]
Looks like something closer to 7-15 H was used in early ones and is required for a more dramatic effect.

[newey]

Is there some way to alter the bandwidth of what is being cut?
like ... instead of a v-shaped notch, something more like a U-shaped channel?

Yes, by varying component values.

A few months ago, I had a thread where I was using 5spice sims to explore that same question. I'll have to dig through the basement to find you a link.


EDIT: Here's the link to that thread, this rather lengthy discussion may point you towards some component values of interest:

Passive onboard EQ

[reTrEaD]

May 17, 2012 6:52:37 GMT -5 yakkmeister said:

Looks like something closer to 7-15 H was used in early ones and is required for a more dramatic effect.

Actually they were using a larger value for a less dramatic effect.

May 17, 2012 6:52:37 GMT -5 yakkmeister said:

Is there some way to alter the bandwidth of what is being cut?
like ... instead of a v-shaped notch, something more like a U-shaped channel?
Incidently, will the 'tone' control work? I pretty much just expected that the LC filter would replace the regular cap on a normal tone control.

The resistance (pot) will do 2 things. It will lessen the cut and widen the bandwidth. At minimum resistance you will have a deep, sharp trough. As you increase the resistance the trough will widen, and the amount of cut will decrease.

[yakkmeister]

May 17, 2012 15:23:48 GMT -5 reTrEaD said:

Actually they were using a larger value for a less dramatic effect.

So do I want something like 3-5H or closer to 1-2H ?
I would like the effect to be pretty dramatic at least resistance.

The resistance (pot) will do 2 things. It will lessen the cut and widen the bandwidth. At minimum resistance you will have a deep, sharp trough. As you increase the resistance the trough will widen, and the amount of cut will decrease.

That sounds great!

newey said:

A few months ago, I had a thread where I was using 5spice sims to explore that same question. I'll have to dig through the basement to find you a link.

Thanks, mate! I'll get into that asap!

On that note - here's a new schematic ...

[EDIT]: The "Jack" wiring appears wrong - the wire from the right side of the Volume pot actually connects to ground but the drawing program borked it on me. Wiper goes to tip, right goes to ground.



The DPDT wiring is from here:
guitarnuts2.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=wiring&action=display&thread=5213

The 4P5T switch is supposed to do
1: Neck only
2: Neck + Bridge (Parallel)
3: Bridge only
4: Neck + Bridge (Series, OoP)
5: Neck + Bridge (Series, iP)

The 5-Way-Rotary (there was no symbol for a 5-way ...) selects the cap and puts the cap in series with the inductor. Final position is just an inductor for a low-pass filter effect.

Hopefully I have not made too many mistakes...

[EDIT] If I have done the 4P5T correctly, it could be possible to solve the hanging-hot issue with those spare throws...
I suspect if I connect those all to earth, I'll be home and hosed.

[EDIT] Oops! I forgot the killswitch!
On my working copy, I have added it in between the volume pot wiper and the jack tip connector. This would be a normally closed, momentary SPST. Since it's not the kind of thing that will be open too long, it should be ok. I can, potentially, use a SPDT to short-to-earth instead.

[reTrEaD]

0.5~5H should be okay. It's not that critical, really. Inductors can be hard to find, so you settle for something close enough. Also, add some 10Meg resistors from each cap to the pole of the switch. This will minimize clicking when you rotate the switch.

Your drawing threw me for a moment. The right coil of each HB is upsidedown. It will work. You have the right coil shunted when the left coil is the only one selected. Unnecessary but if you want to, I suppose it doesn't cause any real problems.

May 18, 2012 3:28:00 GMT -5 yakkmeister said:

[EDIT] If I have done the 4P5T correctly, it could be possible to solve the hanging-hot issue with those spare throws...
I suspect if I connect those all to earth, I'll be home and hosed.

The only hanging from hot issue would be in the series out-of-phase position. But since you flipped the phase on the bridge, unused coils in the split HB will hang from the middle of the series link of the two pickups. This is better than hanging from hot.

Don't connect the unused throws of the 4P5T to earth. It accomplishes nothing useful.

[sumgai]

FWIW, Gibson's original Vara-Tone circuit used a 1.6H coil.

[yakkmeister]

Retread:

I assume that means there is a more elegant solution?
I am pretty stoked that my drawing is mostly ok, I was expecting to be more wrong than that, but I would like to use a more elegant solution is one is available.

Sumgai:

Thanks for the data, mate!
Seems there is a lot of variation in those!

[JohnH]

Just to chip in on your tone circuit:

If youd like to explore inductor/resistor/capacitor values, I have your tone circuit modelled on my GuitarFreak spreadsheet. So if you can run it, you will be able to see visually what happens:

GuitarFreak

John

[sumgai]

May 18, 2012 10:52:23 GMT -5 yakkmeister said:

Seems there is a lot of variation in those!

Yes there is, but I'm fairly certain that Gibson was "first to market" with their version. I'd also bet a hefty sum that they didn't do it overnight, like they do it nowadays. IOW, they tinkered and experimented (meaning, they had real players test it in the field) before releasing to the public. Compare that to such "modern day blockbusters" as the RoboGuitar, or the DarkFire.... Pure genius, those ideas, right?




sumgai

[reTrEaD]

I'm not sure I'd call this "more elegant", but it omits the wire I consider unnecessary. Also, I've twisted things around with the tone control. The original Varitone circuit used a 100k resistor in series with the signal, in any of the "on" positions. This mimics that, along with adding a variable control. And I've added the click suppression resistors.




Needs vetting by another Gnut.

[newey]

pɐƎᴚ⊥ǝᴚ :

I think your diagram is good to go, although there are a couple of wires - lug 5 on S6-1 and on S6-4 - that need dots to show they are connected.

That part of the diagram was a bit tough to read without the dots on those wires, since several wires cross there.

[yakkmeister]

Ok, Sounds awesome!

Thanks for all the assistance!
I'm jonesing to get this axe and nutz the living b'jeezuz out of it ^_^

Oh - I can't run GuitarFreq cos I don't have Excel - I use Libre Office.