Need help with wiring, schematic or diagram needed

[Xeromus]

okay here's the switching I'm trying to do, and I know it's possible, but I have no idea how to go about it. I have 3 humbuckers, little '59 neck, cool rails middle, and distortion bridge. I have a 5-way switch and one push/pull pot as the volume knob which also acts to split the coils on the humbuckers. I'd like to be able to have these 5 positions with the push/pull in, and the 2nd set with the push/pull out.

Humbucker mode (pot in)

1. bridge
2. bridge, middle
3. middle
4. neck, middle
5. neck

Single coil mode (pot out)

1. bridge inner coil
2. bridge inner coil + middle north coil (toward neck)
3. middle north coil
4. middle north coil + neck south coil (inner)
5. neck inner coil (south)

basically I'd like to retain the 5-way switching and just globally have the push/pull switch from humbucking to single coil. I checked guitarelectronics.com and they don't have anything like this either. Let me know if you guys can help me out with this. I e-mailed Seymour Duncan too and they haven't got back to me yet.

[ArtieToo]

Re: Need help with wiring, schematic or diagram needed

Hey xeromus; I'll work on this today, and see what I can come up. If I get it working, I'll post in when I get home from work tonight.

[ArtieToo]

Re: Need help with wiring, schematic or diagram needed

Ok, this was pretty simple, but I can't post the diagram 'til I get home from work. (About 7 hours from now. 8:00am)

I assumed that you have an "ordinary" Strat 5-way, that looks like this, and matches this diagram. (That diagram is just for reference. I realize that you have an HSS configuration.)

Normal Strat wiring uses one side of the 5-way to switch the tone controls in and out. My diagram would need to use that side of the switch for coil switching instead. This means that you could either have one master tone control, or perhaps better yet, one tone control for the switch-in, humbucking mode, and one tone control for the switch-out, single-coil mode.
(My diagram will show you both ways.)

Also, keep in mind, that after I drew this up, I noticed that if you wanted to add a second push/pull pot, (say, one for each tone control), it would be super easy to be able to switch between North and South coils on the Distortion p'up. I can draw it both ways, if you like.

Anyway - film at eleven. (Thats 4:00pm EST, actually.)

[Xeromus]

Re: Need help with wiring, schematic or diagram needed

thanks, you da man

I forgot to mention I have one tone and one volume. The push/pull pot is also the volume pot. This is going in an Ibanez S-series guitar, and I may replace the switch to the same one in stew mac anyway because it's old and starting to crap out on me to begin with.

[ArtieToo]

Re: Need help with wiring, schematic or diagram needed

Cool . . . having 1 vol and 1 tone makes the diagram a bit easier to make.
Having the Ibanez 5-way will be a problem, however. I'm pretty sure that its completely different from the "ordinary", or Stew-Mac 5-way. My drawing would only be for the Stew-Mac one, so you may need to decide whether you're going to replace it or not.

I'll post the diagram when I get home regardless, and you can see what you think.

[ArtieToo]

Re: Need help with wiring, schematic or diagram needed

Don't do anything drastic - like ordering parts, until I can back to you.
One of the problems of designing on paper, is its hard to spot some things that would reveal themselves with a working model.

I just found a flaw in this design, and I need to see if I can solve it.
But I'll need to do that once I get home. My boss is funny - he has some expectation that I'll spend at least some of my time at work, working on his projects.

[Xeromus]

Re: Need help with wiring, schematic or diagram needed

Sure thing, I'll await thy reply

[ArtieToo]

Re: Need help with wiring, schematic or diagram needed

Edit: Ooops . . . I said it wrong. This statement should be correct:

Just so that you know what I'm looking at, the "flaw" is simply that I believe this diagram will select the "outer" coil of the bridge pickup, instead of the "inner" coil. And I don't see any way to get around that without adding another switch. (This means, you'll have the adjustable coil of the bridge in single-coil mode.)

Do you think that will be a problem?

[Xeromus]

Re: Need help with wiring, schematic or diagram needed

I don't think so. That'll work. I guess my basic aim is get the combined neck and middle single. (which I managed to do and sounds great) but I can't get just a bridge single, or the combined middle and bridge single. I usually try to go for the inner coils because most of the time with the outer ones there's a significant volume dropoff when selected. But if that's the only way it can be done, then I'm not gonna complain one bit. I'm not going to use it a lot, but it's good to have the option there.

[ArtieToo]

Re: Need help with wiring, schematic or diagram needed

Cool . . . I'll be going home in about an hour, I'll double-check the drawing, and then post it.

[ArtieToo]

Re: Need help with wiring, schematic or diagram needed

Ok, I'm pretty sure that this will do it:



I'm hoping that Kent S. might stop by and double-check me on this.

Oh yeah, the block in green is the basic Stew-Mac 5-way switch.
It has two "commons" on two wafers.

If there's any part of this that you don't understand, just ask.

[Xeromus]

Re: Need help with wiring, schematic or diagram needed

I'll check er out. I'll check back in and let you know how it goes. I really appreciate you going through the trouble.

[Robert S.]

Re: Need help with wiring, schematic or diagram needed

Artie, you never cease to amaze me with the time you put into the schematics on this site. I definately appriciate it!

The schematic above appears to run normal 5 way switching with the p/p down and to the south coils of all three lilHBs when up. I can't figure out the utility of running the middle single through the dpdt. Is there a reason that you did this or did you do it to isolate the mid red/white from the bridge and neck red/whites during normal HB operation? I might have just answered my own question.

At any rate it looks like a cool way to split 3 HBs in a Strat type guitar. I was considering running my JB in parallel to itself to get a better notched tone out of my #4 position in combination with a Hot Stack but I might be able to rework that schematic to split the JB/HS stack combo and make it work.

Again, thanks for the contribution.

[ArtieToo]

Re: Need help with wiring, schematic or diagram needed

The schematic above appears to run normal 5 way switching with the p/p down and to the south coils of all three lilHBs when up. I can't figure out the utility of running the middle single through the dpdt. Is there a reason that you did this or did you do it to isolate the mid red/white from the bridge and neck red/whites during normal HB operation? I might have just answered my own question.

You've got a sharp eye Robert! Thats exactly correct.

In fact, I didn't catch that myself the first time through the schematic. Originaly, that half of the switch had the bridge pup black to the top, and green to the bottom, with ground in the middle, in order to satisfy xeromus's first request. (Of using the "inside" coil in single-mode.)

Then I caught the mistake, and had to do a slight compromise on the bridge position.

[Nightburst]

Re: Need help with wiring, schematic or diagram needed

Hey Artie, you rock man! Thats very kind of you to help everybody out with your schematics!
Just had a little something to add, the Ibanez switch won't be much of a problem because Guitarelectronics.com used to have a cross reference for going from Fender style 5 way to Ibanez style 5 way. I don't see it on their site anymore but I stil have it printed out on an old schematic I got from them.
It goes like this:

Fender style:

]] B0
A1 [[
]] B1
A2 [[
]] B2
A3 [[
]] B3
A0 [[

Ibanez Style:

A1 [[
A2 [[
A3 [[
A0 [[
B0 [[
B1 [[
B2 [[
B3 [[

Orientation: The screws are on the left and the plate/circuitboard is on the right
Hope thsi makes any sense. Good luck!