Firebird build with a kick!

[ziggy2]

I am building a Firebird style guitar.  However, this piece will have a neck single coil, mid single coil, and a Humbucker style bridge pickup.  These are the GFS Redactive pickups.  I would like to keep the original cosmetics as much as possible.  My question is wiring these three pickups.  How can I maintain the two volume and two tone pots and
produce some unique tones, as well as the old standards.  Any help would be appreciated. 

[newey]

Ty-

Hello and Welcome to G-Nutz2!

First off, what sort of switching will you have for the pickup selections? Your choices there may influence what you want to do with the pots.

Obvious choices for pots would be to keep the V and T pots on the neck and bridge pickups, and do without either on the middle pickup. Depending on the switching, you could also have one V and T for both neck and middle SCs, and separate V and T controls for the bridge HB. There will be some interaction, however, between the pots when the bridge is combined with one of the other pickups, just as on an LP-style guitar with separate V aand T controls (or, on a Firebird, for that matter).

Depending on pickup switching, you might want to use one pot as a blend, to add in the middle pickup. Lots of options here, you may need to "zero in" a bit more on what you want before we can give you much by way of meaningful advice.

[ziggy2]

I am open to what type switching.  I have pondered the idea of doing away with the traditional 3 way switch and adding a 5 position switch.  I'm looking for the best option to utilize the single coils and Humbucker type setup.

[newey]

Well, you had said you wanted to keep it looking original, so I was figuring you'd want a regular Gibson-style 3-way toggle. And, adding a 5-way switch means cutting a slot, not as easy to do as drilling a round hole for another toggle switch.

If you're looking to keep the stock look, you could use the 3-way toggle to select B/B+N/N, as on a regular 2- pickup guitar, then use a push/pull pot to add the middle pickup; this would give you all 7 possible parallel combinations of three pickups. But there are numerous other possibilities.

If you look at how Gibson deals with 3 pickups (You're building a Firebird, after all, and the fact that you'll have 2 SCs instead of HBs doesn't really change anything), as on the 3-pickup SGs or LPs, the wiring is pretty underwhelming. The 3-way switch gives N/M+B/B, with V and T controls only for the neck and bridge pickups. No way to get the middle pickup by itself, and no way to control its volume. One common mod for that style of Gibson guitar is to repurpose one of the tone controls as a middle pickup volume control, so that the 3-way switch works just like on a 2-HB guitar, and then the middle pickup's separate volume control can be used to blend that pickup in/out of the mix. If one wants the middle pickup alone, one just turns the other 2 volume controls all the way down. The remaining tone pot is then wired as a master tone. There are a number of diagrams on the web to do that mod, just search for "Gibson 3-pickup wiring" or some such.

But again, we still need more guidance as to what you want here, there are simply too many possibilities. What sounds do you want to have? What pickup combos do you use most when you're playing?

[reTrEaD]

Oct 21, 2020 16:29:22 GMT -5 newey said:

If you're looking to keep the stock look, you could use the 3-way toggle to select B/B+N/N, as on a regular 2- pickup guitar, then use a push/pull pot to add the middle pickup; this would give you all 7 possible parallel combinations of three pickups.

Well ... six of the seven anyway.

With a single push-pull to add the middle, you can't have middle-only.

Also, these are active pickups so parallel combinations are the only possibility. Also, GFS doesn't seem to have much documentation publicly available for them. Apparently they are prewired to connector so they can plug into a two-pickup hub or a three-pickup 'hub' printed board/block. With terminals on the hub for the selector switch or switches.

[ziggy2]

I'm not married to the idea of using the GFS pickups.  I'm still searching a unique setup.  I am not sure what I want.  The further I get into it, the more confused I get.  I do know I want the versatility of having both single coil and Humbuckers.  Other than that, I don't know anymore.