Kent S. . . . . HELP . . .

[ArtieToo]

Kent; The great "personality control" experiment has ended in complete failure, and for the life of me, I can't figure out why!

Here's how simple it is:



A second pot wired in as a variable load control. This configuration will change the effective pickup load from aprroximately 91k to 520k. Which should be a nice subtle, yet significant, change in the character of the sound.

But . . . it did nothing! Rotating the control from one extreme to the other had absolutely no effect at all. I have the Stag Mags wired up so I can have any combination of north/humbucker/south with neck/both/bridge thats possible - and it had no effect in any combination.

Obviously, I double checked my wiring several times, and with a good meter.

I can't figure it out.

Got any thoughts?

[Kent S.]

Re: Kent S. . . . . HELP . . .

............. Rotating the control from one extreme to the other had absolutely no effect at all.
I have the Stag Mags wired up so I can have any combination of north/humbucker/south with neck/both/bridge thats possible - and it had no effect in any combination.

I'm going to assume that we are talking about two separate pots , not a dual-ganged control of some type ... Just double checking. And that the switching of coils that you mentioned doesn't actually have anything to do with the circuit itself (or more correctly a byproduct of the circuit).

Got any thoughts? [/QUOTE]

Are you saying that the VL control had no effect,that the volume had no effect, or that both had no effect ... I'll have to check it over and get back to you via PM ... off hand I hazard a rather haste ridden guess, and say that it probabaly has something to do with the source impedance of the pup(s) coil(s) themselves, as far as volume problems the ratios neceassary to form a correct voltage divider aren't there (Fresh Start ,and I had a similar conversation, but in regard to another application of something else).
As for tonal changes do to loading effects (or lack thereof in this case) again I would haste that this is an issue of the load not being pulled enough in relation to the source impedance, plus the effect the increase in source impedance do the particular volume control settings. Rough half *ssed* guess. I'll have to look it over a bit later on,and get back to ya.

[ArtieToo]

Re: Kent S. . . . . HELP . . .

Hey Kent; Thanks for popping in.

Just to clarify a couple details, they are two different pots. In fact, I used the "personality" pot in place of the tone control.

The volume control worked just as it should. No problem there.

I just would have thought, that the difference between a 90k pup load, and a 500k pup load would be significant. It wasn't. Maybe its a quirk of the Stag Mags.

BTW - the 100k resistor is just to prevent the load control from going to zero.

I removed this wiring from the guitar, and put it back to conventional for now.

It was such a great idea in theory.

[Kent S.]

Re: Kent S. . . . . HELP . . .

Hey Kent; Thanks for popping in.

I removed this wiring from the guitar, and put it back to conventional for now.

It was such a great idea in theory.

..... Well,..... I was going to tell you to check your PM ... kinda uneccessry now though ... Try the series version I mentioned there, although you'll have to trim it ... a friend of mine has one for softening up his stuff ...
although it was the result of him not hooking up something he should have ...

[ArtieToo]

Re: Kent S. . . . . HELP . . .

..... Well,..... I was going to tell you to check your PM ... kinda uneccessry now though ... Try the series version I mentioned there, although you'll have to trim it ... a friend of mine has one for softening up his stuff ...
although it was the result of him not hooking up something he should have ...

Kent; thanks for the PM. Its still very helpful. I haven't given up on this idea yet, I just wired the guitar "conventional" for now, so I could try out my new Stag Mags.

I'll give both your suggestions a try. (Doing a "series" thang, and checking the load variation with a DMM before wiring it all up.)

I'll get back to you on this. And thanks for helping me with this. Like I said - it seems like a good idea.