capacitors in series

[9Lives]

Hi, I recently wired up my strat with 2 qp flats and a 59 custom hybrid. I used a super switch and 1 concentric 500/250k pot. And one push pull pot. This way I could have independent vol on singles and humbucker, coil tap, master tone and still remove pesky vol knob from under the humbucker.

After staring at it for hours I got it so that in pos 3 it was neck/ bridge rather than just the middle. Every thing works as planned except one draw back. It's not a deal breaker but I just want some opinions. When in the pos pairing humbucker and singles there is slight reaction when using separate vol. My guess is bc they aren't truly isolated. If I use a capacitor between the pickups and the switch can u isolate them w/o effecting the tone?

Thanks in advance for any opinions

[9Lives]

Re: capacitors in series

O yea, my intention is to be able to blend out individual pickups in the notch pos which I've already done. It's just not perfect yet.

[trevorus]

Re: capacitors in series

No, capacitors can be used for decoupling of DC, not AC (which your guitar signal is). There's always going to be some interaction with the volumes, unless you were to put in active circuitry that actually isolated the pickups. One solution I used when I coupled humbuckers and singles was using a single 500K volume control, then using a 510K ohm resistor from the hot of the singles to ground, so that they "see" a ~250K load from the volume control, and the bucker still "sees" 500K. To match volumes between pickups, you need to adjust pickup heights, possibly switch magnets on the bucker to drop its output. There are other less orthodox solutions, like wiring in a set voltage divider on the humbucker, but that's a big compromise that probably wouldn't net you what you want.

[uOpt]

Re: capacitors in series

In a passive guitar you can't mix without heavy drawbacks.

If you connect the pots forward (like in a Les Paul) then you disable both when turning down one pot.

If you connect the pots backwards (like in a Jazz Bass) then using any of the pots at any value not 0% or 100% will kill the amplitude of the resonance peak of both pickups.

In addition to that both solutions don't just mix, they combine the electrical properties of the pickups and the frequency of the resonance peak goes up.

[9Lives]

Re: capacitors in series

That's a good idea basically like that suhr diagram