HHH 3V 3T + Push/Pull and Toggle Switches.

[biturbo]

I am new to the board and I have been reading a lot of info in various sites out there and the members here appear to have some great thinkers so I would like to seek some advice please.
I am building an hhh project which was inspired by the jimmy page lp number 2. There are lots of great wiring diagrams out there but i haven't found anything with 3 humbuckers, a volume and tone for each pickup, push/pull switches to handle most of the series/parallel and coil split work, and some toggles to handle the pickup selection. I was also considering toggles to handle the phase selections. I have seen the great work done on the 94 sound setup on the 1728.org site but I am having difficulty going from the schematic to drawing a wiring diagram that makes sense to me.
Thanks
Dom

[JohnH]

welcome again

There are so many possibillties with HHH that you have to set some direction and priorities.

Eg, is this basicly an LP style guitar, where a main toggle switch is the main control, rather than a Strat basis?

Or maybe the type of control where each pickup has its own toggle/switch for off/on, like a Brian May guitar.

Are you looking for a few good sounds or as many as you can get? Any favorite sound settings?

cheers
John

[biturbo]

Great questions John... My guitar is a Rickenbacker style semi hollow body currently with toasters which allow me to replace with humbuckers without any woodwork. The switch/knob cavity is pretty spacious to allow for lots of options.

As far as style goes, I don't have any pre-conceived ideas. I like the Brian May direction with individual toggles. I don't mind having a dozen toggle switches because I am making a new pickguard and since the guitar will likely never leave my basement the looks are not important.

Regarding quality vs quantity of sounds, I think quantity is the goal for this project. My Fat Strat and Telecaster are my sound "quality" guitars. I have played with computer equipment that can provide an impressive variety of sounds from one guitar. While that is pretty interesting, I want to push the boundaries of what is possible using analog bits.

For this project, because I am new to this, I foolishly wonder why I can't have 6 volumes and 6 tones and a dozen toggles to control the individual coils within the humbuckers. I'm sure someone will provide the practical explanation why that might not work and that is why I decided this was the forum to pose the question.

[JohnH]

OK, that’s understood.

If you like the BM style of switching, how about base it on that. The original connects all the selected pickups in series, and has phase switches for each. We have designs that add an extra switch to also have parallel options.

Brian May switching with series/parallel

But instead of connecting the raw pickups to that, you could have three modules, each with a pickup, volume and tone, and probably a switch or two to get variations within each pickup, eg single coils or humbucker, or parallel. Out of each module comes two wires that go to the BM switching, leaving out the master volume and tone. Maybe put the phase switches, if you want them, within each module before each volume control.

This would be a mega-wire up, but actually not too hard to step through because each module would be the same and tested first, before the BM switching

I'd suggest cavity shielding on this to reduce noise, if possible, in view of the large number of wires required

This is not the right place to be told that things can’t be done!, though Id think youd be happy with just the 3 volumes and 3 tones.

If you are interested in this, we can talk more about what the three modules are.

John