Wiring help

[briand]

This is my first guitar from scratch and I sure could use a schematic. I have an Invader humbucker in bridge, Jazz model humbucker in mid and SHR-1 hot rails in neck. I have installed six toggle switches and a volume knob. I want to put two toggles to each pickup one per side. So I can run full humbuckers or single in six different positions. The toggles are a on/off with three posts on each side. Thanks Brian

[ArtieToo]

Re: Wiring help

Hey Brian; Welcome to the forum. This is actually, very close to something I just "doodled" up in the last few days . . . with one exception: Are you sure you want six switches? The schematic I drew up does the same thing with three, and provides a very cool functionality.

Here's the first draft:

Edit: Pic required a correction. Will post back tonight.

You use DPDT on-off-on switches. Switch up, turns the pup on full. Switch down, turns the pup on split or tapped. (I use a tapped single in my middle position.)

Amazing array of tones, simple functionality, simple clean wiring.
My final drawing adds one more switch. No matter how I have those three set, I flip it, to go direct to bridge full-on.

I can make this into a picture-style diagram if you want.

Artie

[tone4days]

Re: Wiring help

another approach would be an on-off-on toggle for each pickup ... up is stud coil / middle is both (internal series) / and down is screw coil


artie, in your picture, i am assuming green and bare are going to ground ... red and white are going to the sides of the on-off toggle .. where is black?


good luck
t4d

[briand]

Re: Wiring help

Thanks Artie and T4D. Hey, Artie I would greatly appreciate a picture – style diagram for the six on/off toggles (already drilled and routed for them). Just remember to make it as if I was a stupid kid. It is first time to wire a guitar for me. Color code wire, paralleling, polarity and all the other stuff makes no since to me YET.

First time to use a forum, this is great.

Thanks again Artie and T4D.
Brian

[tone4days]

Re: Wiring help

good luck brian - we'll be here if you hit some 'mid course' head scratchin'

cheers
t4d

ps - welcome to the board

[ArtieToo]

Re: Wiring help

artie, in your picture, i am assuming green and bare are going to ground ... red and white are going to the sides of the on-off toggle .. where is black?

t4d

Thats another of those pics from my scratchpad, where I know whats what . . . but no one else does.

The wire coming off the humbucker bottom is the red/white pair. The wire coming off the top is the black wire. But the thing is, I adapted that real quick from another diagram, and left something off thats important.

I'll edit it, and post the correction tonight.

[tone4days]

Re: Wiring help

lol - i gotcha now, artie

see, with his already having drilled holes for 6 mini toggles (!), i was infering that he wants to be able to control each of the 6 coils (2 each from the 3 double coil pikcups) independently ... now that seems reasonable enough, but i cant figure out how to make a situation like that provide "internal series" humbuckers ... i think i can see how to do "internal parallel" hubuckers, but not traditional "internal series" ...

hey brian, any chance you'll plug up some of those holes ?

cheers,
t4d

[briand]

Re: Wiring help

I will if there is no way of making the six work. I came up with the idea from reading about paralleling and tapping at seymourduncans web site. In my head I thought it would different and cool. I am reading books on this but I can not see it in my head yet. If you are wondering what the guitar looks like it is my avatar and if you click on my group name you will see it next to my American fat strat deluxe custom.

[tone4days]

Re: Wiring help

yeah, i figured that the guitar in your avatar was the one we are discussing - pretty wild looking!

have you decided to forego 'traditional' humbucker wiring ("internal series")?

if you have, then i think wiring up the 6 coils individually for an 'all parallel' guitar is a no brainer

like i said, being a bear of very little brain has left me scratching on how to get internal series out of the 6-switch arrangement

let us know in a bit more explicit detail what you want and we can try to get you close

cheers
t4d

[ArtieToo]

Re: Wiring help

Just to let you know, I haven't forgotten about your diagram, just haven't been feeling too good today. I'll try to get this done tomorrow.

[briand]

Re: Wiring help

T4d I think you and I are on the same page. I don’t know about all the terms you are laying down (internal series), (all parallel). I think what you said about wiring 6 coils individually is what I had in my head. If they where wired up individually and you had the 2 toggles in the on position would it be like a normal humbucker or would it lose some of its punch.

I was thinking I would have 3 humbuckers or cut to 6 single p/u that I could use in any 6 positions 3 at a time. Or 2 humbuckers and 1 single, any variation in 3 positions.

Brian

[tone4days]

Re: Wiring help

i'll try and explain the "internal series" and "all parallel" thing ...

this is going to be a very simplistic explanation of the 'circuit' created by the pickups and switches, etc ... it will not be completely accurate in the details, but it will serve the purpose to illustrate the points i want to get across ...

in a traditional humbucker wiring, the two coils are wired in series internally ... which means that the electrons flow around the wire coiled around the first bobbin, then they go immediately into the second wire coiled around the second bobbin until they exit and go on their way out to the guitar to the amp ... it is the arrangement of the direction of the wind that gives the humcancelling property and this series arrangement gives it 'oomph' ...

if you have one pickup coil, and the electrons flow through it and then go to your mini toggle switch, the only place for them to go next is 'out the door' ... you can have the signals from as many coils as you want meeting up 'at the door' ... this is all parallel combining because none of the coil's outputs feed another coil's input?

in your arrangement, if you turn 'on' both of the bridge pickup's coils, you get parallel combination - not traditional 'internal series' humbucker ... there's nothing wrong with this, it is just different than what most people think of when they say they want a humbucker sound ...

if you wanted to preserve 'internal series' as an option, you could use an on-off-on mini toggle (one each per pickup) ... in the center (off) position, the pickup would be traditional humbucking ... each of the end (on) positions would correspond to splitting that pickup's coils (one for screw / one for stud) ... then you'd need a way to select which pickups were on ...

i suppose you could wire the output of each on-off-on to it''s own 'on-off' ... this would determine which pickups signals get routed to the output, but would not be simple to use on the fly for live work ...

this helping?

cheers
t4d

[briand]

Re: Wiring help

Yea, that helped a lot. I can see what you’re saying.

This is a FedEx Express guitar and will probably end up in the FedEx museum so it won’t have much playtime on it. So I think I will go with the three on-off-on toggles and the three on-off toggles.

Really its just what I had in my head when I started to make this guitar and I just want to finish it the way I envisioned it at the start. I don’t give up to easily.

I have one more problem if you don’t mind. I want to get a hard case for it. Are there companies that do custom cases or will I have to gut one and do the inside of it myself? I would like one that is white. Do they make white ones?

Brian

[ArtieToo]

Re: Wiring help

Brian; I'll post your wiring diagram when I get home tonight.

[briand]

Re: Wiring help

Artie, how are you making all of the diagrams? I see that you post them all over the place. Do you make them up on the fly?

Brian