day2k
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Post by day2k on Jul 2, 2012 10:12:10 GMT -5
Hi All I am new here and so far this resource has been invaluable in my guitar build, So already thank you very much. I was just wondering if I could get a quick opinion on if this diargram will work for my guitar wiring? also if i connect both humbuckers to the first "3" position will this allow all three pickups to be on in the centre position? Many thanks in advance! Dav
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Post by sbgodofmetal on Jul 2, 2012 12:33:11 GMT -5
Welcome to the NUTZ house ;D ;D ;D First off what kind of guitar is it? Second will there be room for all of this in it? From what I can see you've got three volumes a master tone and a 5wat rotary, And you "ARE" wanting all three pickups activated at a certain position correct? If I may make a suggestion to cut down on space taken up, convert it to two dual concentric pots for volume and tone controls, wire the two humbuckers to a blend pot and use a gibson style 3way switch to select between the HBs and the p_90, Here's the wire diagram for the blend pot Going this rout you'll get the following sounds. 1=bridge 2=bridge+middle 3=middle 4=middle+neck 5=neck 6=bridge+neck 7=bridge+middle+neck And that's just from the switch and the blend pot, I see your using SD active triple shot rings so that will also add more to what I've listed above. So you should now have 1=bridge 2=b(Nc) 3=b(Sc) 4=bridge+middle 5=b(Nc)+m 6=b(Sc)+m 7=middle 8=middle+neck 9=m+n(Nc) 10=m+n(Sc) 11=neck 12=n(Nc) 13=n(Sc) 14=bridge+neck 15=b(Nc)+n(Nc) 16=b(Sc)+n(Sc) 17=b(Nc)+n(Sc) 18=b(Sc)+n(Nc) 19=bridge+middle+neck 20=b(Nc)+m+n(Nc) 21=b(Sc)+m+n(Sc) 23=b(Nc)+m+n(Sc) 24=b(Sc)+m+n(Nc) Now if this is say a les paul you'll still have one extra control you could put in, and if you already have the 5way rotary you could always throw in a varitone circuit and futher increase the total amount of different sounds. 24 x5120 So 115 different sounds going this rout. HTH SBG...
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Post by newey on Jul 2, 2012 12:38:23 GMT -5
Day-O-
Your diagram looks OK to me, but let's get a second opinion before you start wiring.
As far as wiring both HBs to lug #3, if you do so on the left side of the switch, you will have jumpered both HBs across all 5 switch positions, so they'd be on all the time. If you use the right side of the switch, then all 3 would be on in positions 2,3 and 4.
To get the "all 3" option, you would need either a 3rd pole on the rotary switch (you would then use one pole for each pickup, effectively separating all three). Or, you could add another switch, possibly as a push/pull pot, so as to add the third pickup.
In saying your diagram is OK, I am making a couple of assumptions. First, I can't see the white wire from the bridge pickup, but I am assuming it is wired just like the neck white wire. Also, I didn't double-check the wiring to your SD Triple Shots™, I assume you have wired those according to SD's directions.
I also assume that your middle P-90 pickup is a single (black) conductor with a shield.
While your diagram will work as is, there are some issues you should consider. First, if the middle pickup is not an SD pickup, you should check the polarity so as to be sure that it will be in phase with the HBs. If it is not, you will then have the issue of having to make the braided shield into the "hot" line (could be noisy!), or in the alternative modifying the pickup (either by flipping the magnets or by wiring a separate signal return wire).
Since the SD Triple Shots™ allow selection of either N or S coils of the HBs, you don't have to be concerned about maintaining hum-cancellation, since one coil of each HB will always be hum-cancelling with the middle pup, (the other coil will not).
Alternatively, you could solve an OOP problem by re-wiring both HBs the opposite way around; this would change all the connections to your Triple Shots™ and so is a good deal of work.
Second, a master tone control after 3 volumes will present issues of control interaction. This sort of thing bothers some folks, but those who play guitars like a Gibson Explorer have learned to live with it. You may not care about this, but I mention it so that you just go into it with eyes open.
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Post by ashcatlt on Jul 2, 2012 14:30:47 GMT -5
newey's got you going pretty well there.
The one thing I see is that all of the Vs are wired "forwards" - with the output on the wiper. This means that if you turn one of them off the guitar will be silent in any position including that V control. If that's gonna be a problem for you, you can switch to "backwards" LP style Vs, which has its own set of issues.
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day2k
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Post by day2k on Jul 3, 2012 11:25:26 GMT -5
Wow, First of all you all frikking rock... This is properly geeky haha love it.. Sorry I probably should have said it is a warmoth SG with positions for 2 vol, 2 tone and a 3 way all in the same cavity. I am pretty sure I should have space as the triple shots sit in the pickup cavities so they don't take up extra space. I am not using SD pickups (sorry for misleading they just had the best wiring diagrams i could hack about) I am using BareKnuckle coldsweat covered HBs with a Bareknuckle Stockholm HBS P-90 in the middle position, this is yes just single core and shield. OK SB, love what you are saying here, I am definitely considering it. I only considered 3 volumes as I wanted to be able to have both all three pickups on and only the p-90.. but do I really need to have all three or am I just getting crazy? A varitone circuit hmmm.. to be honest I'm not crazy about tone controls generally, i rarely use them but i had a spare control hole for one so I was planning to make my tone a "Zero Load" Pot so i can take it out of the circuit to reduce the resistance but I guess having three volume controls will also pile on the overall the resistance? Newey, great info, yep the white wire on the bridge is just a bit faint it is there on the volume same as the neck, and the triple shots are taken straight from the SD website What is this control interaction issue you speak of? Ash, are you saying that in the position of neck and mid pickup if i turn one volume down, both pickups will be off? hmm hadn't thought about that.. do you have an alternative solution? In summary.. 1) would having 3 pickups on at the same time give me any real advantage? 2) Varitone.. is it worth it? I mean could it compromise the overall standard tone of the wood and pickup? 3) what is the control interaction issue with the 3 volumes and the tone, is it similar to what Ash was talking about? 4) is there anyway around the volume issues Ash was talking about? Thank you all so much for the warm welcome and the extremely informative posts..
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Post by sbgodofmetal on Jul 3, 2012 14:06:01 GMT -5
No real need for three volumes, though it can be done it brings with it like ash has stated "problems" a master volume would be better suited for this application. A varitone is usually just several capacitors of diferent values wired to a rotary switch and ran to a pot. It works the same as a regular tone circuit with the addition of when you turn the switch the tone changes, and can still be adjusted as a normal tone circuit would be
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Post by reTrEaD on Jul 3, 2012 20:52:54 GMT -5
A varitone is usually just several capacitors of diferent values wired to a rotary switch and ran to a pot. It works the same as a regular tone circuit with the addition of when you turn the switch the tone changes, and can still be adjusted as a normal tone circuit would be No. What you're describing is not, never was, and never will be a Varitone. It's just a regular treble-cut circuit with a switch to select your choice of capacitor. Relatively mundane and boring. A real (Gibson) Varitone uses an inductor in series with the selected cap. This configuration is a notch filter. It sounds completely different than a conventional treble-cut. 1) would having 3 pickups on at the same time give me any real advantage? Hey there, Day! It will sound different than a single or pair. Whether or not you find that tone useful is up to your own personal tastes. 2) Varitone.. is it worth it? I mean could it compromise the overall standard tone of the wood and pickup? A proper Varitone has an off position. No compromise there. A real Varitone might be interesting. But the fake thing mentioned above doesn't seem worth the bother to me. 3) what is the control interaction issue with the 3 volumes and the tone, is it similar to what Ash was talking about? Having 3 separate volume controls allows for wide variety of blending between pickups. But there will be some sort of problem, no matter how you wire the volume controls. For instance, in your original drawing, you have the volume controls wired normally. They will behave themselves very nicely until you select more than one pickup at a time. Let's say you selected position 2 on your rotary switch. (neck and middle) The wipers of those two volume controls are connected together and to the output jack. As long as both controls are at max, all is well. If you start to decrease the volume on one of the pickups (let's say the neck), this introduces some resistance in series with the neck pickup and the output. The loading effect of the middle pickup will cause less of the neck pickup signal from contributing to the output. This is good. We are "blending out" the neck pickup. As if we continue to turn the neck volume counter-clockwise, the resistance from the wiper to ground decreases. When it becomes relatively small, it loads the signal from the middle pickup, dullling the tone. When it reaches zero, it completely kills the signal from the middle pickup. You still have the option of putting your selector switch in position 3, if you want absolutely no neck pickup. But in the 2 or 4 position you can't just dial one of the selected, but unwanted pickups down to zero without killing the sound of the other selected pickup. 4) is there anyway around the volume issues Ash was talking about? You could wire the pickup to the wiper of the volume control and the CW terminal of the volume control to the selector switch. This works well for blending out a pickup when two are selected and won't kill the sound if only one of the two are at zero. But then the controls don't work so well when only one pickup is selected. Full volume is still fine. But as you turn the control counter-clockwise, the volume drops off slowly and the tone dulls more quickly than the reduction in volume. If you're careful about how you use your volume controls, normal wiring (like your diagram) is (imho) a better choice. Thank you all so much for the warm welcome and the extremely informative posts.. You're welcome, Day. You seem quite cheerful. Maybe we'll call you Sunny Day
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Post by ashcatlt on Jul 3, 2012 23:54:41 GMT -5
I was planning to make my tone a "Zero Load" Pot so i can take it out of the circuit to reduce the resistance but I guess having three volume controls will also pile on the overall the resistance? That's pretty much exactly backward. These are all parallel resistances. The total resistance around the loop gets smaller with every new path which is introduced. The "Zero Load Pot" removes one of these paths when turned to 10. I never use it. All 3 on in series is sometimes fun (especially when it's really 6 coils!), but the parallel thing just never comes up. I haven't actually used enough to tell you exactly why I never use it. What? Ummm... I never use it. reTrEaD took care of that quite nicely, so I'll quote him: There was a pretty heated debate a while back about whether or not this is desirable. I tend to come down on the side that says that by the time you've dialed back one pickup to 7 or so, it's pretty much out of the picture as far as meaningful contribution to the tone. One might even try to invoke the (at least) 3:1 Rule (of thumb) here... Anyway, just flip the switch! Again, see reTrEaD above. I would add that this fix leaves you with no way to turn the cable all the way off. If you want to set the thing down between songs, you can flip to a single pickup position, and turn its corresponding V all the way down. Now you get no sound from the pickups, it's not likely to feedback, or make loud noises when you trip over it. But the tip of the cable is just sitting there a couple hundred thousand ohms away from ground, acting like a long antenna feeding right into a high gain amplification device.
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day2k
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Post by day2k on Jul 4, 2012 5:34:56 GMT -5
Thank you all so much yet again, you are all terribly knowledgeable! so many new things to consider I feel I have learned so much from this post! So, the inductor in the varitone, hmm what difference does that make? Not sure I will go for it or not, I rarely use the tone control on my other guitars... (although it is hard to turn down some really awesome wiring option) I am now having issues with the pickup select options, is the blend pot with the 3way toggle that SB suggested the best way to go to switch, I would also consider a 3pole 5 or 6 way rotary switch but i don't seem to be able to find one for sale in the UK. I think that one overall volume and tone is the way forward as suggested by SB, I only wanted the extra volumes as a way to feed in the middle pickup alongside the humbuckers. I think better switching is a more sensible option now. However, this gives me 2 spare holes in my guitar.. any ideas for interesting things to fill in these spaces? Thanks all soo much and oh.. sunny day? haha that made me happy
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Post by sbgodofmetal on Jul 4, 2012 18:00:30 GMT -5
There are other ways but that was the simplest way that came to mind at the time. You could just wire the HBs to the 3way and put the middle on a push/pull pot.
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Post by newey on Jul 4, 2012 21:18:30 GMT -5
As RT noted, it makes a notch filter- it cuts a range of frequencies (the range being dependent on components values). This is similar to turning down the midrange on a 3-band EQ as on most amplifiers (but different even than that, because we're talking about this in conjunction with parallel interaction of your pickup coils, not in an amp stage). Your regular tone control is a low-pass filter, it cuts the highs only. Wiring a bunch of capacitors to a rotary, in parallel to ground, does the same, just in discrete increments. Rotary switches would fill your holes. But I didn't see any 3 pole ones with >4 positions. Both Maplin and Rapid Online offer 3P4T ones, but not ones with more than that. Of course, there is plenty you can do with 4T switches . . . Of course, US supplies can be accessed- and some Nutz are even willing to help with that sort of procurement if you decide that's really what you want to do.
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Post by ashcatlt on Jul 5, 2012 0:20:17 GMT -5
Oh, you can get nearly as many Ps in a rotary switch as you'd ever want.
The thing is that there's a limit to how many total Ts you can have on a single deck. It seems that for most readily available models, that limit is 12. Split those into how ever many Ps as you need. So, you could have a 1P12T, DP6T, 3P4T... And you don't actually have to use all of the Ps on the deck. You can get the DP5Ts, and that's only 10.
If that ain't enough for ya, just keep adding decks. This can be taken to absurd lengths! Eventually the thing gets too deep to fit in a solid-body guitar... The double decker 4P5T just barely fit into my Rick 330 (which is actually semi-hollow).
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day2k
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Post by day2k on Jul 5, 2012 9:33:44 GMT -5
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Post by ashcatlt on Jul 5, 2012 12:44:32 GMT -5
From what I'm seeing there, the pole 2 common isn't connected to anything, so you'll never hear the mid pickup, and you'll have a dead position at 3. Interestingly, pole 4 common goes with the others toward the output even though there's nothing connected to its throws.
Once that's fixed it looks like you'll have N+M in positions 4 and 5, with no provision for Neck only. I think you want the M pickup connected to 2, 3, 4, and 6.
Have you measured the depth of your control cavity and compared to the switches data sheet? Pretty sure that switch would be sticking out the back of my SG.
The Varitone looks screwey, but should work. Seems it would be esaier to send the wiper of the pot to the switch common and the inductors to ground. Also, it might be useful to have one position which leaves out the inductor - for normal tone control action - as well as maybe one without the cap - which should act more like a bass cut.
BTW - what happened to the bass cut.
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Post by reTrEaD on Jul 5, 2012 13:59:03 GMT -5
BTW - what happened to the bass cut. Are you confusing day2k with zedsnotdead? I like your idea of including one position for standard treble-cut and one for bass-cut. Also, the Varitone should use 10Meg resistors from signal to any unused caps. This reduces glitches when switching. also I still have a spare control space, any good idea what to do with it? You could put a DPDT switch in it for series/parallel on whatever two pickups are selected. But you'd need at least 3 poles on your pickup selector switch.
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day2k
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Post by day2k on Jul 6, 2012 5:17:53 GMT -5
Thanks again everyone I think I am pretty much there now Doh.. yes of course.. clerical error I have tried the depth and it is tight but ok, my sg is non standard thickness, 1/4 inch thicker than standard. Retread, If i do as Ash suggests and move the common to the wiper of the pot and the inductor to the earth.. how do the resisters fit in to the wiring ? Thanks!!
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Post by reTrEaD on Jul 7, 2012 5:54:30 GMT -5
Here are a few examples of Gibson Varitone circuits. The 100k resistor is out of the circuit when the rotary switch is in the off position. It forms the top half of a voltage divider (the bottom half being the coil/cap combination). You can omit it and just shunt with the coil/cap. But the effect is less dramatic without the 100k. The 10Meg resistors minimize the spikes you would normally see when switching between capacitors.
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Post by ashcatlt on Jul 7, 2012 12:47:39 GMT -5
BTW - what happened to the bass cut. Are you confusing day2k with zedsnotdead? Um... Yup... Sorry! Insert lame excuse...
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day2k
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Post by day2k on Jul 8, 2012 9:44:54 GMT -5
Wow ok, this is certainly more food for thought so thanks for all this info.. I guess I had better get on and do it.. haha wish me luck
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Post by reTrEaD on Jul 9, 2012 20:37:34 GMT -5
Hey Sunny, good luck!
If you choose to draw up your wiring plan before doing the wiring, feel free to post it so we can proofread it for you.
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