Wiring Question

danw

danw

cheap bastard
Hello all,

My project guitar's not quite ready to wire up yet, but I figure it's time to think about how it's going to be done. It will have two humbuckers. Here's what I want:

- No selector switch; both pickups on at all times

- Independent Volume control and tone controls for each pickup, so I can select the neck pickup just by turning the bridge pickup all the way down.

- A switch that switches both humbuckers to single coils (planning on using a push/pull pot for this)

- A switch to bypass the volume and tone controls for both pickups, so both are wide open (the other push/pull).

The main thing I'm not sure how to do is the bypass. I've got a diagram that I think will work, but I'd like a second opinion on it since I don't have much experience in this area. Any advice would be appreciated.

independent-volume-with-tap-and-bypass.jpg
 
I don't know what good a bypass will do, it is just the same as turning all of the knobs up to full. You could throw that out and make your life much simpler. Then you just have to wire one pickup to one set of pots, the other to the other set and combine the two at the jack or just previous to it.
 
Yeah, I was between this setup and just having individual coil taps for the pickups. I just wasn't sure how useful the single+humbucker sounds would be. The point of the bypass was to do a quick change between two sounds without having to turn 4 knobs. Usually if I need two different sounds, one of them is wide open. If I just pull the switch and don't mess with the knobs, it's like my softer settings are saved to go back to them.
 
Then the way you would wire your bypass is to have probably some sort of dpdt switch in front of all volume and tone controls where when it is in the on position, it passes the signals out of the switch to the controls and when it is in the off position, it sends the signals (still wide open) straight to the jack. Of course, this could get a little tricky as it seems like you would have to do one bypass switch for each of the pickups to avoid combining signals before the output jack. That or you just need one switch that has two isolated in/out combinations of pins where each is operated by the same switch. Take a look at stew-mac or someplace like that to see what they have. it shouldn't be all that hard to do, come to think of it. That just makes for a giant cavity you have to route in your body and a lot of soldering connections that could go bad at some point. But other than that, I see no reason why it shouldn't be fairly simple.
 
Isn't that what a DPDT switch does? The thing has 6 pins on it, and it was my understanding that the left and right sides were independent. As I understand it, when the switch is pulled up, the top on each side is connected to the corresponding middle pole. When the switch is down, the middle is connected to the bottom instead.

And thanks for answering, by the way.
 
I think it is, I just wasn't positive. But yeah, that is how it is done and it really shouldn't be too tough. Make sure to shield your cavity (all that wire and soldering joints are prime for some rf interference and electrical hum).
 
I don't know that I'm going to be able to shield it -- the thing's going to be semi-hollow, and I didn't have the foresight to partition off a separate control cavity when I was starting it. I'd have to shield the whole lower bout, which is kind of irregularly shaped on the inside. I think the tape would be a pain to try and cover everything, and I could probably go through a half pint of that shielding paint easily. I might just leave it out.

Another question: I notice that in most of the 2-humbucker guitars I've seen, the neck pickup is mounted 180 degrees off from the bridge pickup. What's the significance of that?
 
You really would be better off to shield it if at all possible. I think they make some sort of shielding tape that you can put just at the joints to help, but I am not positive on that. I don't think that the neck pickup is necessarily 180 degrees rotated, I think that is just how the neck pickups are made. If you look at a set where the neck and bridge are different models, usually the neck one and the bridge one have the logo in the same direction even though the screws for the pole pieces look like they are on opposite sides. That's the way the set on my last guitar I built looked.
 
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