Awesome way to split pickups without buying a push-pull pot of extra switch!

[wasteofo2]

A friend of mine from another forum came up with this idea, and when I get the pickups I've ordered for my SG, I'm definately doing it.

For this mod, you need to sacrifice one of your pots functionalities. What you do is wire your pickups regularly, ground the green and bare and wire the black to the volume pot or switch etc. Then, to another pot, you wire your red or white wire to the left terminal, wire the other wire to the middle terminal and ground the right terminal. Voila, you now have a knob to split your humbucker to varying degrees!

The way I'm going to do this is to keep individual volume controls for both pickups, use one of my tone controls as a master tone and then convert the second tone control to a master splitter. My friend didn't do this, he never uses his tone controls (always on 10), so he just made each tone control into a splitting knob.

A small question I have, if I wire my neck's white and my bridge's red wire to the left terminal of the pot, and wire my necks red and my bridge's white to the middle terminal, when I use the middle position on my switch and have both pickups fully split, will there be anything weird going on?

[ArtieToo]

Re: Awesome way to split pickups without buying a push-pull pot of extra switch!

Hey wasteofo2; I thing what you're refering to is just the "spin-a-split" option that SD has had in their tech section for quite some time:

http://www.seymourduncan.com/website...sum96tip.shtml

There's a wealth of info in the SD data base.

[Boston Joe]

Re: Awesome way to split pickups without buying a push-pull pot of extra switch!

I tried that with an HS-2 pickup, but I believe I may need to use an audio taper to achieve the full effect; the linear pot though created an interesting wah effect.

[Kent S.]

Re: Awesome way to split pickups without buying a push-pull pot of extra switch!

A small question I have, if I wire my neck's white and my bridge's red wire to the left terminal of the pot, and wire my necks red and my bridge's white to the middle terminal, when I use the middle position on my switch and have both pickups fully split, will there be anything weird going on?

You can also just split each pup with it's own tone control, and not lose use of the tone, except it will be at *10* during the split, and fade back to bucker rather quickly, although still blendable with a 500k pot. Get a book by Adrian Legg for more on that stuff.
You can't do what you want with one pot, you'll be running the white wire from the neck and hard wiring it to the red wire of the bridge since they share the same terminal. Which means you'll always have the bridge outer coil hooked in series with the neck inner coil. The two pups will always have a odd interaction, and adding noise in various settings and positions. You'll need a dual-ganged pot for that.

[wasteofo2]

Re: Awesome way to split pickups without buying a push-pull pot of extra switch!

Hey wasteofo2; I thing what you're refering to is just the "spin-a-split" option that SD has had in their tech section for quite some time:

http://www.seymourduncan.com/website...sum96tip.shtml

There's a wealth of info in the SD data base.

That's actually a much different than what I had been thinking of, but I guess SD has most everything covered already.

Here's how I was going to wire it, this would work, right?

[ArtieToo]

Re: Awesome way to split pickups without buying a push-pull pot of extra switch!

Here's how I was going to wire it, this would work, right?

I don't think so.

Lets examine this. Use my diagram as a reference. The SD diagram and your diagram are exactly the same when the spin-a-split pot is on "10", as in Fig. 1.

Fig. 2 shows the SD diagram with the spin-a-split pot on "0", which is what you want - one coil is bypassed, or shorted to ground.

Fig. 3 shows your diagram on "0". You still have one coil bypassed to ground, but you've added the full resistance of the spin-a-split pot in series with the remaining coil.

I'm not saying thats wrong, but I can't imagine why you'ld want to do this. That will be a pretty considerable amount of attenuation in that coil.

[Indie P Bass]

Re: Awesome way to split pickups without buying a push-pull pot of extra switch!

Wait... if you wire both pickups to one pot in this "Dial -a- split" thing or whatever, won't they cancel out and then be on full the whole time?

[mrid]

Re: Awesome way to split pickups without buying a push-pull pot of extra switch!

So how does this work in practice? At what point on the tone knob does the pup actually split?

[ArtieToo]

Re: Awesome way to split pickups without buying a push-pull pot of extra switch!

Wait... if you wire both pickups to one pot in this "Dial -a- split" thing or whatever, won't they cancel out and then be on full the whole time?

You don't wire "both" pickups to the tone control. Lets make sure we understand this. First of all, in the spin-a-split mod, one tone control is converted to a spin-a-split pot. Its no longer a tone control. (Although it can be. More on that later.)
You can only spin-a-split one pup per pot. So, if you wanted to do this with two pups, you'ld have to convert both tone pots over, or, and this would probably be the better option, replace the tone control that you're converting with a dual-concentric pot. Then you can do both.

So how does this work in practice? At what point on the tone knob does the pup actually split?

Ok, remember, as I state above, its no longer a tone control. The "split" happens gradually over the entire travel of the pot. So, you are "dialing-in" any degree of "split" that you want. There is no "point" per se. You just fade in, (or out), the other coil.

Now, as for the splitting and being a tone control at the same time: this is exactly how a Peavey T-60 is wired. The red/white wire is connected to the unused end of the tone control. As you bring the tone control around to a certain point, the resistance-to-ground becomes low enough that coil "splits".

Here's a Peavey T-60 diagram. Keep in mind in this diagram, Peavey has the red/white wires connected together internally, and they only bring the red wire out. But its the same thing as the red/white combo on a Seymour Duncan pickup. Also, Peaveys "white" wire, is SD's "black" wire.

[ArtieToo]

Re: Awesome way to split pickups without buying a push-pull pot of extra switch!

Edit: This diagram is only relevant to the dual-function tone-control/spin-a-split idea thats borrowed from a Peavey T-40/T-60. Ignore this diagram for "ordinary" spin-a-split operation.

Here's the simplified version using SD color codes. Also, note that that is borrowed from a dual-volume control guitar, so it has the "backwards" volume wiring. You'ld reverse the wiper and one end of the volume pot for single-volume operation.

(I can draw that up if anyone wants.)

[Indie P Bass]

Re: Awesome way to split pickups without buying a push-pull pot of extra switch!

So, Waste'll have to use either a ganged pot, a dual concentric or two pots to split both his pickups. I'm doing this same thing in my japanese 12-string. :-D

[ishmun]

Re: Awesome way to split pickups without buying a push-pull pot of extra switch!

i had this done to my flying V

to my ears, u can start to hear it split alot at the 4-5 mark and theres a big jump from 0-1 as well

the 'spin pot' only affects the bridge humbucker, so when i have the pickup selector in the middle positon, and keep the bridge humbucker split, i get this really awesome tone
i love using it for clean chords - real thick and nice, much better than the normal middle position imo

chek it out
its alot of fun

Ishan

[wasteofo2]

Re: Awesome way to split pickups without buying a push-pull pot of extra switch!

Ok Artie, what i need is a diagram for 2 humbuckers, 3 way switch, master volume, master tone, and an individual spin-a-split for each pickup.

Thanks alot for the help,
Jacob

[TheGZeus]

Re: Awesome way to split pickups without buying a push-pull pot of extra switch!

Edit: This diagram is only relevant to the dual-function tone-control/spin-a-split idea thats borrowed from a Peavey T-40/T-60. [/IMG]

I was going to ask about this.
I think Peavey had that patented at some point.
Long since espired either way.
VERy cool idea.
Thanks
*saves image to put in some guitar someday*

[ArtieToo]

Re: Awesome way to split pickups without buying a push-pull pot of extra switch!

Ok Artie, what i need is a diagram for 2 humbuckers, 3 way switch, master volume, master tone, and an individual spin-a-split for each pickup.

Thanks alot for the help,
Jacob

I'll get on it today. Hopefully, post something tonight. See ya in the "chat".