2 humbuckers, coil splitting, help!

[tadfury]

hello everyone, ok i'm a newbie :)but i've been reading some of the threads and they're really interesting!
i hope someone can help me out with a wiring question..

i have 2 humbuckers on my strat, i want to rewire it so i have:

2 volumes, 1 tone, 1 3-way switch, but push/pull pots for both volumes to allow me to split the inner and outer coils on the pickups.

is this possible? if so, does anybody know where i can find a diagram to help me?
thanks alot!

[jimplaysguitar]

Inner and outer?
The difference between the coils is very little, virtually unnoticable to me anyway.

What you want to do, is have one split to ground, and one split to hot. That way, when using both pickups split, it will be hum cancelling. Atleast I think, lol.

I'll draw you a diagram if you want.

Jim

[JohnH]

No problem. This is a good versatile meat and potatoes option for two hbs. There are three main tricks to this:

1. Fundamentally, you need to get four wires out of each humbucker, so you have access to each end of each coil. You may have this already, but many OEM Hbs just give you two wires, which does not give you the split. If this is a problem, you may be able to convert them, see this thread:
guitarnuts2.proboards45.com/index.cgi?board=wiring&action=display&thread=1136069018

2. When you split them, try to split to a south coil from one HB and a North coil from the other, so that the result can be humcancelling

3. Wire the volume controls so that fading one down does not fade all of the sound.

Theres plenty of diagrams for this. Let us know what you think of the above and we can post a suitable link.

John

[tadfury]

hi guys! thanks alot for the ideas
i like the sound of your suggestions john, it's pretty much what i had in mind. i have the four wires out of the humbuckers already
can you give me a link to a diagram? i've not had much experience with wiring before ;D

[UnklMickey]

jimplaysguitar said:

Inner and outer?
The difference between the coils is very little, virtually unnoticable to me anyway...

i'd like to go on record as having said: i agree with this when the pickups are far apart (and the inner and outer coils are fairly similar) as they are on most 2HB configurations

however, when the pickups are fairly close to one another, such that the inners are about "strat-spaced" or closer, the inner pair will sound quite different from the outer pair.


unk

[JohnH]

Tadfury - I reread your first post, and realised that what you describe is not quite standard, but is possible. This one is close:
www.guitarelectronics.com/product/WDUHH3T2206, but one extra tine control. The coil spilting can be divided between two pots, wheeas this diagram cuts both at once.

Most people I think would simply have a coil cut on the neck vol for the neck, and on the bridge volume for the bridge. How would that be? or do you want one push pull that cuts both to say, inner coils, and another that swaps this to outer coils? Or do you want to pull one pot for inner coils, pull the other for outer coils and pull both to cut everything for a kill switch?

Heres what I would do with an HH guitar, and three controls, all of which could be push/pull. It is based on a Jimmy Page les Paul.

push/pull 1 - cuts both to single coil
push/pull 2 - phase reverses the bridge, and also selects the other bridge single coil if PP 1 is also pulled
push/pull 3 - puts the overal system into either series or parallel.

John

[UnklMickey]

johnh said:

...Heres what I would do with an HH guitar, and three controls, all of which could be push/pull. It is based on a Jimmy Page les Paul.

push/pull 1 - cuts both to single coil
push/pull 2 - phase reverses the bridge, and also selects the other bridge single coil if PP 1 is also pulled
push/pull 3 - puts the overal system into either series or parallel....

i looked at the "Jimmy Page" mod a while back, and as i remember, there were a few things i didn't care for.

if i know you, John, your's is functionally based on that, but is probably "cleaner". i like that you are keeping track of hum-cancelling by changing the bridge coil when changing the phase (PP 2).

now if you just bypass those cut coils, rather than shunting them...

{beaten horse finally expires} .:lol:.


Tadfury,

where ARE our manners,

a brand new member, and none of us said "WELCOME ABOARD".

well, now that THAT has been taken care of, i'll get out of the way and let you and John finish with the specs of what you want, and his take on how to get there.


unk

[tadfury]

hi john
i really like your idea based on the jimmy page LP. is there a diagram somewhere?

for my original idea is was thinking pull one vol to cut inner coils, pull the other to cut outer. but i think i like your idea better

hehe, thanks for the welcome unk

[UnklMickey]

the basic JP mod is here:

guitarelectronics.zoovy.com/product/WDUHH3T2204

but wait for John's version. i'm sure you'll like it much better.

[JohnH]

Tadfury
The diagram that Unklm linked to is close to what you need. Here is my plagiarised version:



Here are some features:

• The two coil cuts are consolidated onto one switch - pull to cut both coils. You get one north and one south coil, so the combination is hum cancelling
  
• The phase switch acts on the bridge. In combination with coil cut, it changes which bridge coil is selected. Hence you then have two similar coils, out of phase, also hum cancelling
  
• The volume controls act independently on each pup when in the parallel mode
  
• When you go to series mode, also select the neck pickup on the 3-way toggle, since the neck volume control is then a master control for the series mode. The bridge volume control does not function in series mode.
  
• Treble bleed capacitors are added, to keep the highs when you reduce volume.
  
• You can change which switch function goes with which pot if you wish
  
  

There are other way sof configuring the volume controls, but see how you go.

John

[tadfury]

wow! thanks john! it looks like an awesome mod
thanks to all you guys for a great welcome to the boards and for your help!