JamGuy Posted September 1, 2012 Share Posted September 1, 2012 I just routed out an Ibanez AR250 (double cutaway style LP) for a middle humbucker... so now it's an H/H/H configuration. It would have been easy enough to wire it up except I bought push/pull pots so that each individual pickup has a volume knob that coil splits the pickup and I was planning on a master volume. Basically the middle pickup would always be on and you could just dial out the volume for neck, neck/bridge, and bridge alone, w/o the middle pickup. I've found a hand full of wiring diagrams that address individual aspects of the "master plan" but nothing that really covers the whole gamut. Any suggestions (other than take it to a tech) would be helpful... in the mean time, I'm going to try and figure out what I can. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dub-T-123 Posted September 1, 2012 Share Posted September 1, 2012 Which part exactly are you having trouble with? If you're just wiring up the volume for the one pickup, you'll take the output of the pickup to lug 3 of the volume pot (the lug on the left if you're looking at the back of the pot. Lug two will go to the output or possibly lug 3 of the tone control. Lug 1 will go to ground. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kennis Posted September 2, 2012 Share Posted September 2, 2012 not really sure how many knobs you got and what you want them to do, but you can easily find a diagram for coil splitting a single humbucker with a push/pull volume pot. just do this for all three, then send all three hot wires to the master volume, then to the jack. if you want to be able to use each individual pickup's volume knob to turn that pickup off without muting the entire signal, you just have to switch the connections for the pickup signal and the out to jack/master on the actual pot (not the push/pull part). this video might be enlightening: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmAaVSpwIzI&feature=bf_prev&list=PL20AF3FB2CD739CD9 he might have his connectors mixed up on the pot drawing, but you'll figure that out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamGuy Posted September 2, 2012 Author Share Posted September 2, 2012 Cool... perhaps I just need to think about it more. I've just never used push pull pots so I've been scratching my head as to wiring them up. I'm going to work on it a bit and see what happens. Right now I'm just working on a mock-up so no harm done if I foul it up... perhpas I can run it by you all when I'm done drawing it up. Cheers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BobB Posted September 2, 2012 Share Posted September 2, 2012 Do your pick-ups have two conductor wires or four conductor wires? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamGuy Posted September 2, 2012 Author Share Posted September 2, 2012 Four conductor wires... there's 2 Dimarzio Super 2's and 1 Super Distortion... I'm getting closer. I'll try to post what I've mocked up here in the next few hours. The problem is I don't really understand the principles of elcetronics or what the different posts on the pots really mean. Usually I just find a diagram and follow it... I've picked up some understanding doing this but still not enough to just look at what i'm working with and say, "oh, that needs to get wired here and that needs to get wired there..." I've wired up a few dual humbucker guitars over the years but primarily just strats and a few teles. I'll keep y'all posted as the day wears on and my patience wears thin just kidding, it'll be fun to get it figured out and I've got the whole two next days to work on it before teaching begins for the year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamGuy Posted September 2, 2012 Author Share Posted September 2, 2012 Here's what I've got so far... I've made a few additions to this diagram already... so the first lug of each volume (where the red wire is) will also have a wire going to the first lug of the tone pot (I think). Also I realized I didn't need a ground wire from connecting all 4 pots, just 3 of them. My confusion lies in wiring the jack and 3-way toggle. Right now the stock 3-way is sill wired to the jack and there are 2 conductor red and green wires fished through into the control cavity...(though I have lost track as to where they go but I should be able to figure that out.) If I want the middle pickup always on and just controlled by the middle volume does it need to go to the 3-way at all or would it need to be wired to each lug of the 3-way? Also, it's one of the box style 3-ways not like the epiphone or switchcraft kind with the little wings. You'll have to pardon my poor understanding of what the **** is going on here. I've added a few pics so you can see for yourself. Again, any help would be greatly appreciated but any help rendered will need to be in an idiot-based language so I can make sense of it And I thought routing out the body for the middle pickup was going to be the hard part Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dub-T-123 Posted September 2, 2012 Share Posted September 2, 2012 The middle lug on the pot is the wiper and basically acts as the "output" of the pot in this case. Without those wired it definitely won't work. The tone control with nothing on lug 2 or 3 would do nothing as well. I can draw you up a diagram for the pots if you'd like. I'd have to do some reading on the coil split switching though Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamGuy Posted September 2, 2012 Author Share Posted September 2, 2012 The middle lug on the pot is the wiper and basically acts as the "output" of the pot in this case. Without those wired it definitely won't work. The tone control with nothing on lug 2 or 3 would do nothing as well. I can draw you up a diagram for the pots if you'd like. I'd have to do some reading on the coil split switching though Yeah, that'd be awesome... some of what you said makes sense but some is over my head. I'm going to keep scouring the web for info... maybe some of this jargon will sink in and begin to make sense. In the mean time, I may have to take a little guitar break... playing of course! Here's the rest of what I thought would work... though it now sounds doubtful that it will. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamGuy Posted September 2, 2012 Author Share Posted September 2, 2012 The amazingly awesome tech staff at Dimarzio sent me the following diagrams... on the Sunday of a holiday weekend no less. Very impressive customer service to say the least! Anyhow, these should help... back to the drawing board. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamGuy Posted September 2, 2012 Author Share Posted September 2, 2012 Here's what I think might be the final version that'll have this thing up and running... any feedback from wiring gurus welcome Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamGuy Posted September 3, 2012 Author Share Posted September 3, 2012 Well, I just finished up wiring and am about to plug 'er in. My fingers are crossed... ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dub-T-123 Posted September 3, 2012 Share Posted September 3, 2012 I think it's not going to work. You've got your master tone wired as a variable resistor but there's not going to be any signal going in or out of it. I think it might help if I try and explain what the pots are doing here. Basically the volume pots are just taking the signal from your pickups and controlling the amount of resistance between the signal and ground. When there's no resistance between your signal and ground, there is no sound because the entire signal is being dumped to ground. In the case of the tone knob there's a capacitor between the pot and ground, so it's letting only the frequencies that pass through the capacitor dump to ground. So when it's dumping the higher frequencies to ground you hear less high frequencies from your guitar. The way these pots are wired is very similar and simple once you understand how the pot works. For a volume knob you will wire your pickups "hot" wire to lug 3 of your pot. Then you wire lug 1 to ground. With this setup you're able to control how much of your pickup's signal is dumped to ground, but you won't have any sound because there's no "output" wired up. So what you do is treat lug 2 like the output or hot wire of your pickup. This is how a lot of master volume controls are wired in amplifiers and pedals and the same principle applies for guitar volume controls. So if you want your pickup to be affected by the tone control, you will have to wire the output of the pickup's volume control (lug2) to the "input" of the tone control. The part of the tone pot that will act as the input in this case is lug 3. Same principle as the volume control but with a capacitor between lug 1 and ground. Again lug 2 will act as the output, so take lug 2 of your tone pot to the tip of your output jack. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamGuy Posted September 3, 2012 Author Share Posted September 3, 2012 Hey all... well, it may defy logic but it's working as it's supposed to. Each pickup splits as it should, the master tone works for all three pickups, and the middle pickup simply dials in or out with its volume knob so you can add it to either the neck, bridge, or neck/bridge combo... it also works alone if you dial out the neck and bridge volumes. And best of all, it's dead silent and there isn't so much as a crackle or any other sound when using the push/pulls or 3-way. To sum it up, it's working perfectly, which is as surprising to me as anyone believe me! Dub-T-123... I do appreciate you taking the time to explain more about how electronics work... it's not something I'm great at and every bit of help offered is much appreciated-Thanks.Basically I just used the two diagrams from Dimarzio and another from GuitarElectronics that I found as a reference. I'm going to try to get a little video made of how it all works and sounds and will post it as soon as I can...hopefully in the next few hours. Thanks to all of you who chimed in... it was helpful and a very fun project, definitely the most challenging thing I've tackled with routing the body and the wiring. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamGuy Posted September 4, 2012 Author Share Posted September 4, 2012 This goes through the various settings and tones... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0gS9dKKbfM Wow... that's really a great thumbnail Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamGuy Posted September 4, 2012 Author Share Posted September 4, 2012 And one of me jamming on Sugaree... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmGokobd5Ug Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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