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Pickup wiring on push-pull pots...?


bluefoxicy

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I've got a Valve Jr. combo amp and found that anything I do changes the tone drastically, so now I'm sitting here trying to decide how to rewire my guitar now that I have two new push-pull pots! (It's a Special 2 so it's only got 2 pots, not 4 like an LP Standard.)

 

I can't find anything about getting two series/parallel switches on one push-pull pot. I don't have a diagram for the pickups, just diagrams for how to wire them; if I'm understanding these right though, the behavior of the pickups vs wiring indicates that the 4 wires are 2 per pickup, and I'm basically wiring one into the next or one in parallel with the next manually. This means they carry signal, and I can't solder the two pickups' wires together (i.e. red to red, green to green...).

 

I'm not sure if I want to do a single coil switch and a phase switch, or a single coil switch and a phase switch (phase switch picks which coil runs in single coil mode!), or single coil and cap mod (0.022uF / 0.047uF cap switch). Single coil switch I want because I want to try to mimic Eric Johnson's strat; parallel or cap mod would be an attempt at darkening the guitar to try to imitate Slash's Les Paul, though I haven't heard enough of that to really figure out the tone (which I think is way cleaner overdrive than mine).

 

I'll probably go with single coil and a phase switch on the top pickup, which will select which coil to use in single-coil mode. Thoughts?

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Bluefox sez:

I can't find anything about getting two series/parallel switches on one push-pull pot. I don't have a diagram for the pickups, just diagrams for how to wire them; if I'm understanding these right though, the behavior of the pickups vs wiring indicates that the 4 wires are 2 per pickup, and I'm basically wiring one into the next or one in parallel with the next manually. This means they carry signal, and I can't solder the two pickups' wires together (i.e. red to red, green to green...).

 

Soldering p_ups together like that is not recommended. The 3 way toggle blends the p_ups as it is, so you are

going to (possibly) create some strange issues .

 

The push pulls are DPST (double pole single throw). The middle contact is the common and there is two of these.

There is a NC (Normally Closed) connection and a NO (Normally Open) that is activated when you pull on the knob.

 

The "standard humbucker) can be 4 wire (red/white & grn/blk) or just a two wire with

the red/white connection hidden inside the p_up.

 

The way a humbucker works is that you have two coils wound 180 degrees out of phase

with each other. ie: one coil is the "North" and the other coil is the "South".

The red/white is usually the "joining connection" between the two

coils. As far as DC polarity, you have to be concious of the "start" wire colour

of one coil and the "start" wire colour of the other coil.

 

 

Once you introduce phase reversals on the coil windings, you are basically starting a

"civil war" with the North/South coils causing some "unique" sounds to emerge.

 

IMO, I would go with the split coils (single coil configuration on the push-pulls and

a phase reversal switch for ONE coil (the humbucker usually) to "flip it around" the

same way as the main pickup coil inside the humbucker. A separate phase reversal

toggle is best for this, because it needs to be independent of the volume/tone controls.

 

You will need the DPST push pull pots for that. If you want to introduce, "sound shaping"

via two different values of caps, you need to have 4 push pull pots.

The volume push pulls to split your coils, and the tone pots to select the cap value.

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