HSS 2 vol, 1 tone, series schematic

[JohnH]

ok, ill do a diagram for that soon.

[Tinus]

Awesome, thank you! Looking forward to seeing it!

[JohnH]

9 months later, here it is...



It's based on the version using your current pickups, ie the bridge does not do series/parallel etc. But I showed the spare push pull, and we can adapt the design to suit this later,

Here are the settings

Basic:
B blends to B+N
B+M blends to B+N+M
M
M+N
N

Pull the series switch:
B blends to B + (NxM in series)
B+M
M
M
NxM series

[Tinus]

Wow, amazing John! This will take me some time to decipher haha!

If you don’t mind me asking for your help a little bit more: what are those two yellow parts in the schematic?

Also, for this schematic I will need to buy the following parts:
- 3x 500K audio potmeter with standard length bushing, of which 2 are Push/Pull (https://www.tonefactory.nl/alpha-push-pull-500k-audio-potmeter-standard-length-bushing-375-3-8-diameter-made-in-taiwan)
- 2x 470k resistors (https://www.vanallesenmeer.nl/Weerstand-470K-Ohm-1/4w-5?gclid=Cj0KCQjwnoqLBhD4ARIsAL5JedI_JWLmqhH3FAgnWJwBUkmkV1B0VsKhdZbv1gB6f9eWAV0PNrgcjswaAsCiEALw_wcB)
Is this correct?

[JohnH]

All good. The pots and 470k resistors seem fine. The yellow parts are capacitors. It doesn't matter what style you get but I drew them to look like yellow poly caps that are quite common. The larger one is the main tone cap 22nF (equals 0.022uF) and the smaller one is 1nF =1000pF, in parallel with 150k. These are the treble bleed.

[Tinus]

Jul 4, 2022 8:14:22 GMT -5 JohnH said:

All good. The pots and 470k resistors seem fine. The yellow parts are capacitors. It doesn't matter what style you get but I drew them to look like yellow poly caps that are quite common. The larger one is the main tone cap 22nF (equals 0.022uF) and the smaller one is 1nF =1000pF, in parallel with 150k. These are the treble bleed.

So I’ll also need to get:
- 1x 22nF capacitor (https://www.vanallesenmeer.nl/22NF-0.022UF-100V-5-POLYESTER-FILM-BOX-TYPE-CAPACITOR-WIMA-MKS2)
- 1x 1nF capacitor (https://www.vanallesenmeer.nl/1NF-0.001UF-100V-5-POLYESTER-FILM-BOX-TYPE-CAPACITOR-WIMA-FKS2)
- 1x 150k resistor (https://www.vanallesenmeer.nl/Weerstand-150K-Ohm-1/4w-5)

Is that correct?

[JohnH]

Hi Tinus, yes that's all fine

[Tinus]

Thanks for checking! I’ll order all these parts and start working on the guitar soon! 😄

[JohnH]

Great! Will you start with your current pickups as we discussed before? or do you have the new ones now? It won't take as long to add the option for the bridge coil cut or series-parallel!

[Tinus]

Still have my old one. I want to first try out this new wiring. Probably I will like it enough to not swap the humbucker out  

[Tinus]

Hi! I'm on and off working on this schematic. I came across two questions: 

What am I supposed to do at the first tone pot where the top two "ports" are seemingly linked together? Do I have to solder them together with a small cable?
And what do the dark gray squares mean on the pots? Do I have to do anything to them?



Thanks in advance!

[newey]

Aug 31, 2022 9:47:13 GMT -5 Tinus said:

What am I supposed to do at the first tone pot where the top two "ports" are seemingly linked together?

Those are the solder lugs, not "ports". The short black line between the 2 lugs means you wire a short "jumper" between the two. That jumper is making the series connection when the push/pull is pulled up.

And what do the dark gray squares mean on the pots? Do I have to do anything to them?

JohnH included a push/pull on the blend pot for future wiring of series/parallel for the bridge pickup. There's nothign wired to it at the moment, so nothing you need to do.

It look like John simply "cut and pasted" that push/pull from the other one, and the black squares got copied over in the process. Looks like he was using the black squares simply to indicate that something was connected to those lugs, but there are a couple where he omitted the blackening. So don't read anything into those, just wire according to the diagram.

[JohnH]

Yes I left the spare switch on the pot for the future parallel-series switching, if you want to try that with a different 4-wire humbucker.

The dark squares on the switches aren't very significant, but they indicate the common pole connections on the switches which connect to the outer lugs.

The short wire between switch lugs is just a cnnecton link, a piece of wire soldered between lugs. You can use a piece of bare wire, or extend the stripped end of a connected insulated wire to bridge across.

[Tinus]

Sept 2, 2022 2:27:59 GMT -5 JohnH said:

The short wire between switch lugs is just a cnnecton link, a piece of wire soldered between lugs. You can use a piece of bare wire, or extend the stripped end of a connected insulated wire to bridge across.

Thanks guys for your clear explanation! So could I use the wire that’s coming from the volume pot to also function as the connection link if I strip it off enough to also touch that switch lug?

[JohnH]

Yes indeed! That's what I'd do.

[Tinus]

I finally got around finishing this wiring scheme! I'm really excited to string the guitar up and test all the new sounds! But before I do that I want to make sure I got everything wired up correctly. I made a video to show it:

[Tinus]

I strung the guitar up because I was so excited to try it out, but I think I must've done something wrong in the wiring. All of the positions where the middle pickup is combined with another pickup (N+M, NxM, M+B, MxB) sound awfully thin and very low in output, even the series settings. I made a sound demo to show you guys what it sounds like. Hopefully someone knows where I went wrong and how to fix it!

Sound demo

In the demo I play through all the positions, in order: Neck > N+M > Middle > M+B > Bridge > NxM > Middle > MxB > Bridge > N+B > N+M+B

[newey]

Tinus-

My first thought was that the middle pickup was out of phase, which would mean just swapping the + and - wires around to fix it. But then I listened to your demo recxording and now I'm not sure. Typically, with an out-of-phase setting there is a pretty noticeable drop in output, particularly for the parallel settings, but your levels seem consistent throughout the recording.

You can check the phasing of the middle pickup without dismembering the guitar by using the "screwdriver pull-off test"

[Tinus]

The weird thing is that this ocurrs only when the middle pickup is combined with another pickup. The middle pickup by itself sounds fine! Hopefully someone knows what I did wrong..!

[newey]

Nov 12, 2022 6:29:05 GMT -5 Tinus said:

The weird thing is that this ocurrs only when the middle pickup is combined with another pickup.

That's what makes me think it's out of phase with the other two pickups. It may be that I'm just not hearing it so much in your samples. Check the phase first.

[Tinus]

I think I don't really understand how this test works. What am I supposed to see on the meter when I touch the pickup poles?

If it ends up being out of phase, then I just have to solder the black wire where the white one is and vice versa, correct?

[newey]

Nov 13, 2022 10:02:43 GMT -5 Tinus said:

If it ends up being out of phase, then I just have to solder the black wire where the white one is and vice versa, correct?

Yes, assuming those are the middle pickup wires.

As JohnH describes in that post, if using a soundcard/PC to do the test, you'll be looking for one "spike" to be downward (presumably on the middle pickup) while the other 2 are upwards, or vice versa. If you're using an analog multimeter, look for the needle to swing opposite on the middle pickup. There was discussion of testing with a digital meter but I've never been able to see the difference with a digital meter. If you have a digital meter, I suggest using the PC way JohnH describes as it is more definitive.

To be in phase, all three pickups should go either "up" or "down" on either the meter or PC graph.

[Tinus]

I managed to fix the issue! It really was as simple as switching the two wires of the middle pickup around. Now the guitar sounds amazing and I’m really happy with it! The singlecoils really sound like singlecoils, while the bridge humbucker still has it’s power. The neck + middle series combo works fine, but it doesn’t quite have that power that the real humbucker has (obviously). I don’t know if there maybe is a wiring trick that I could do to give it a little extra push. The blend knob is also an interesting feature. It’s nice that it adds a little bit of warmth to the bridge or middle & bridge settings, but it also feels like it loses a bit of it’s bite while doing that. I think time will tell in which way I will end up using these extra options.
Overall I’m really happy with how this project turned out. I managed to properly wire everything up by myself, and now all of my pickups sound pretty great + I have a lot of extra options to experiment with! I want to thank everyone who replied on this thread and in particular ofcourse John for putting so much time and work in creating this awesome diagram and continuously replying to my many questions. I am very grateful for that!