Official Luthiers Forum!

I am working on a guitar right now that has some wiring options that are a little bit more complex than anything I have done in the past. I think I have it figured out but, I wanted to run it by some other people before I start wiring thins together. essentially there is a blend pot, 3 push pulls, and a DPDT mini toggle. the Vol push pull is a phase reversal for the neck pickup, the mini toggle is a series parallel switch for the pickups and, and the other two push pulls are coil taps for the two pickups. the wiring colors are based off SD so the black is + and the green is -.

I have it wired so that the neck pickups goes to the P/R switch first, then to the tone nob, the blender/series parallel switch, and then to volume. the bridge goes to the tone first, then to the blender/series parallel switch, then to the volume and out put jack. this isnt super comprehensive, so i didn't include all the ground wires for the cavities and bridge and stuff. Its kinda messy, I just didnt know how to make it any neater there is so much stuff going on, so I apologize for that. I have given myself a headache looking this over and tryin to figure it out so any help that would make this diagram work, or confirmation that it will work the way it is would be appreciated. I think there might be a dead combination in there if a coil tap is on and the series/parallel switch is on, but I am not worried about that though.

_________________
~shad peters

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petersinstruments/
http://petersinstruments.blogspot.com/
http://petersinstruments.com/

One thing I immediately see that can neaten/simplify the wiring is that there is no need to wire the coil tap switch using both poles. The white/red wires can be permanently soldered together to one pole, and you can remove the bridge that connects them in series (i.e. humbucking). That means you can shrink wrap them together and leave practically nothing for a service loop.

Not a big change, but it turns 4 wires into two, removes 8 solder joints and overall makes the wiring a lot neater.

BTW, it also means that you can use one push/pull to switch both pickups. A lot of people prefer that, actually, because it's simpler to keep track of on stage. Not sure if you did that because you thought you needed the extra pole or if that's how you want it.

Is the series/parallel switch supposed to change the individual pickups from series to parallel? For parallel, Black/Red need to me together, and White/Green need to be together. That doesn't happen in your diagram.

I need a beer for this one.

(edit: I meant to say coil tap in the first paragraph....and changed colors to correct colors too...LOL)

I am not toally sure that I follow you. Either I did something wrong(a likely possibility) or you might not be completely following the diagram. The two push pulls on the right are supposed to be a coil taps, not a series parallel switch. what you said still applies though, I could make it a lot cleaner by not using both poles. the guy that I am doing if for did want a to be able to switch the pickups individually though, so I need to have a seperate switch for each one.

The thing that was really tricky for me to figure was how to have a series parallel switch that would operate between the two pickups (not the inner coils of each pup). I found this setup here http://www.1728.org/guitar10.htm which has always been a helpful cite. I had to adapt to the rest of my setup though so I am hopeful that it still function as it should.

_________________
~shad peters

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petersinstruments/
http://petersinstruments.blogspot.com/
http://petersinstruments.com/

I corrected myself and corrected the colors too. I was going off Dimarzio colors off the top of my head, and should have said coil tap. LOL...I knew what I meant but no one else did

It makes more sense if you reread it now.

gotcha. that will neaten things up some, not sure why I didnt think to draw it that way, but it will make it a little less work though.

_________________
~shad peters

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petersinstruments/
http://petersinstruments.blogspot.com/
http://petersinstruments.com/

I'm trying to figure out what the blender pot means in series mode.

yeah I was wracking my brain last night trying to figure out what that would do. the diagram I looked at was intended for a 3 way switch, and it essentially said that when it was in series mode that the switch would be completely bypassed, which I assume would be the same with the blend pot, but I dont have an intimate enough understanding of all that stuff to really know.

_________________
~shad peters

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petersinstruments/
http://petersinstruments.blogspot.com/
http://petersinstruments.com/

Blend pots are also parallel when both pickups are on.

Here's Seymour Duncan's diagram, which does Series/coil cut/Parallel all in one switch (3-way on-on-on mini toggle) and adds a phase switch. Do that on one pickup, do just the mini toggle on another, and you have 90 percent of what you are trying to accomplish.
Then you just need to add a switch for the series/parallel switch action.

_________________
Old growth, shmold growth!

I have used that type of switch before, but unless I am misunderstanding you I dont think that is the desired effect. I am trying to put two pickups in series with eachother, not switch the inner coils of a humbucker from series to parallel.

_________________
~shad peters

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petersinstruments/
http://petersinstruments.blogspot.com/
http://petersinstruments.com/

Shad: I'm thinking that the way to make this work in series is going to be similar to how you use a blend pot to "pan" between single coil and humbucker. I have a feeling it may only work when the pickups are in phase. I need to think about this and draw out your diagram when I have a minute, unless someone else chimes in here first. It really is a very strange setup...I'm not sure I've ever seen anything like it.

My gut tells me that it will not work properly when the pickups are out of phase but that's just a gut feeling based on nothing except a little bit of intuition.

Check out some of the wiring diagrams for wiring a blend pot to pan between single and humbucking. I THINK that's the key here to make it work when things are wired in series. When they're out of phase, I think the blend pot sorta acts like a volume control, attenuating both signals about half way at the center detent.

Boy...I really need a couple of beers for this one

I think David Myka does a lot of funky and complex wiring. Maybe he has some insight?

is he a member here? it would be great to here some of his insight.

_________________
~shad peters

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petersinstruments/
http://petersinstruments.blogspot.com/
http://petersinstruments.com/

Myka does do some pretty wild wiring schemes. Very intelligent guy.

I think I might have figured out a better way to do this. When I first started I really didnt know much about blend pots or how they worked, I essentially just copied what I found from stewmac in order to use it as a normal switch where two inputs come in and one input goes out. the nice thing about the blend pots though is that is that the signals entering the two elements don't have to be combined. because of that I can run the two signals through and then run them to a series parralel switch.
very convenient that the blend pot, the one thing I was really worried about trying to work with, actually makes this wiring scheme more doable and practical.

_________________
~shad peters

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petersinstruments/
http://petersinstruments.blogspot.com/
http://petersinstruments.com/

so here is round number 2. I forgot to put in the ground for the volume and the output jack, but obviously I dont intend to leave those out. I really hate drawing on computers, so I just did this one by hand, in all likely hood it is more legible than when I try to draw on my pc. still the same color code for the wires based of of seymore duncans pups. there are a couple spots where I meant to use green but started using black. I just colored back over those with green. pretend like they are just green without the black steak.

I changed the series parallel switch quite a bit, also changed the way the coil splits work, and the way the set up on the blend pot. The idea with the blender was that I could keep both sources separated and join them at the series parallel switch.
I changed the coil splits so that when they are activated they will still send the single coil ton through the phase reversal and series/parallel switch so that hopefully I wont get any dead switch options...
I was not really going off any existing diagrams when I put this together so I am not sure that my switching options will work the way I want though they all seem like they should work to me. let me know what you think. any advice on what to change, how to make it better, or confirmation that this will work would be greatly appreciated.

_________________
~shad peters

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petersinstruments/
http://petersinstruments.blogspot.com/
http://petersinstruments.com/

Were you ever able to wire it up and see if it works? I'm really curious what you find.

I have not been able to yet, I have another guitar that I really need to get out the door before I start worrying about this wiring again. That combined with finals and I havent been able to get around to it yet. Sometime in the coming week or so I really need to get this thing wired up though so I'll let you know what I find.

_________________
~shad peters

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petersinstruments/
http://petersinstruments.blogspot.com/
http://petersinstruments.com/

john I was up till 2:30 last night wiring this sucker up, I successfully managed to make wiring spaghetti I think, but at least at the moment it appears to be working. I havent strung it up yet, but I did plug it in to test everything and it seems to work. The blend pot is a little bit strange when the pickups are in series mode, but I was more or less planning on that happening though. Wont know exactly how things came out till I string it up, but right now it is looking promising.

_________________
~shad peters

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petersinstruments/
http://petersinstruments.blogspot.com/
http://petersinstruments.com/

I'm definitely interested in hearing how the blend pot ends up working in series mode

I still haven't gotten it strung up yet, but essentially here is my understanding of how the blend pot will work. since it is wired in series one the first pickup signal will run through the blend pot and that signal carries into the second pickup and gets run through the second half of the blend pot. so essentially one pup get run through both halves of the blend pot. so that one half of the blend pot is totally none functional, and other half works as a volume knob for both guitars. I am going to try and figure out a way to work it so that it only cuts one pickup out instead of both.

_________________
~shad peters

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petersinstruments/
http://petersinstruments.blogspot.com/
http://petersinstruments.com/

I think this was sort of how I was thinking it might work....almost like a messed up master volume. One thing to try too is to see if the behavior changes when one pickup is out of phase.

I had some major hickups yesterday. I got it strung up for the first time and plugged it in to see how the electronics were behaving, prognosis was terrible. nothing was performing the way it was supposed blend pot wouldnt really work in either series or parallel mode, the neck pickup essentially wouldn't work at all unless the phase switch was engaged... the neck tone was acting like a volume... lots and lots of issues.
After wracking my brain trying to figure out what was going on I finally gave up and had to sleep on it. After going back to my diagram I realized a couple of things. First off I realized that in the chain of switches for the neck pickup the phase reversal switch should have been the very fist thing before going to the tone pot or anything else. In the process of doing that I realized that I had overlooked something vitally important to the operation of the guitar... I hadn't actually grounded the center lug of the series parallel dpdt switch .... I am not sure how I missed that, but I am also really surprised that it actually worked at all without the pickups being properly grounded. What a relief, after racking my brain for so long it turned out to be something very simple and obvious, its nice to know that I am not crazy and my diagram worked just as planned.

_________________
~shad peters

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petersinstruments/
http://petersinstruments.blogspot.com/
http://petersinstruments.com/

I had some major hickups yesterday. I got it strung up for the first time and plugged it in to see how the electronics were behaving, prognosis was terrible. nothing was performing the way it was supposed blend pot wouldnt really work in either series or parallel mode, the neck pickup essentially wouldn't work at all unless the phase switch was engaged... the neck tone was acting like a volume... lots and lots of issues.
After wracking my brain trying to figure out what was going on I finally gave up and had to sleep on it. After going back to my diagram I realized a couple of things. First off I realized that in the chain of switches for the neck pickup the phase reversal switch should have been the very fist thing before going to the tone pot or anything else. In the process of doing that I realized that I had overlooked something vitally important to the operation of the guitar... I hadn't actually grounded the center lug of the series parallel dpdt switch .... I am not sure how I missed that, but I am also really surprised that it actually worked at all without the pickups being properly grounded. What a relief, after racking my brain for so long it turned out to be something very simple and obvious, its nice to know that I am not crazy and my diagram worked just as planned.

_________________
~shad peters

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petersinstruments/
http://petersinstruments.blogspot.com/
http://petersinstruments.com/

Nice job. Now how does it sound? I'm gonna be playing around with some similar wiring on my next one, although the series/parallel will be for each humbucker. I wonder if it would work to have a series/parallel for each pickup as well as for both pickups together along with a phase and or coil split. I'd be very happy if I could do all that without making a cluster-fud of switches.

_________________
http://www.tinyhouseandland.com

It sounds great to my ears, there is so much tonal variety that I cant even begin to describe what all you can get out of it. with some push pulls or mini switches you could just about get any of those options. With two on-on-on switches you could get series/split/parallel for each pickups, and one normal DPDT switch is all you need to get the series/parallel function between pickups. Doing it that way works well with a blend pot, but I would stay away from a 3-way toggle unless you. You would either need to have one of those free way toggles from stewmac which I think could work, or a 4 or 5 way switch which I think could also work well for the series/parallel switch.

Haveing both pickups in series is a nice touch, its kinda like have a little boost switch on the guitar, not a lot, but just a slight increase in output.

_________________
~shad peters

http://www.flickr.com/photos/petersinstruments/
http://petersinstruments.blogspot.com/
http://petersinstruments.com/

could you explain why it wouldn't work with a 3 way switch?

_________________
http://www.tinyhouseandland.com