3 HB LP wiring diagram : please look over

[Frebnedzo]

Heres the 3 pup LP wiring I've come up with, any and all comments
are welcome.

In figure 1, you see the Seth bridge and neck, and a DMZ Fred in
the middle. DPDT switch b is a push/pull in the upper tone pot and
gives the inner coils of the humbuckers. The neck pickup is put in
upside-down so that the inner coils are the stud on the bridge and
screws on the neck, hum-cancelling.

There is also an on/off/on switch shown (a), which gives either of the
Fred single coild in addition to the Fred humbucking. This switch
replaces the lower tone pot.

The main thing in figure 1 is to see how the pickup leads are labeled
so that I can omit them in figure 2.

In figure 2, you see the 6 pickup leads, two more DPDT switches and
a 5 position rotary. I have omitted some of the wires and just used
the names of the leads for clarity. The main thing to check out is
how the switches work in positions 2, 3, and 4.

In position 1 : there is the neck humbucker.

In position 2 : you get the neck humbucker and the middle humbucker. These
can either be in parallel or series through switch d, which is the a push/pull
pot in the upper volume position.

In position 3 : you get the middle pickup, OR the neck and bridge. This is
selected through DPDT switch c, which is in a push/pull pot in
the lower volume position. Note that this goes through the series/parallel
switch as well (please check that the middle pickup works normally
in both series/parallel settings).

Position 4 : middle and neck, sort of backwards from position 2 for the
series/parallel connection.

Position 5 : bridge

With everything pushed in, the rotary selector (replacing the 3-way) is
neck
neck+middle
neck+bridge
middle+bridge
bridge

for a vintage sound with 2 extras. With all combinations of coil cutting,
series and parallel, there are 35 tone combinations. Of course, each pup
alone will be great, I expet some pretty good quack tones, and I think
some of the loud tones are intrigueing (the Fred in series with 1 coil of
the bridge).

The upper tone and volume are masters, the bottom volume knob is
just for aesthitics on the push/pull pot, if I can find two switches that
are identical then I'll have two switches there.

thanks a lot

 

[Artie]

Re: 3 HB LP wiring diagram : please look over

I'm chewing on it.

Artie

 

[Aceman]

Re: 3 HB LP wiring diagram : please look over

Damn - might be easier just to switch guitars! Let me think about that a bit...

I think I like your choice of FRED in the middle, though. I might have gone for PAF Pro also.

 

[Frebnedzo]

Re: 3 HB LP wiring diagram : please look over

Yeah, please do think about it, the idea is to be easy to navigate.

The rotary switch is supposed to be the main interface and is just
like a strat with the (likely set-and-forget) option of position 3 being
neck and bridge instead of middle.

Ignoring the series stuff, there are a bunch of interesting personalitys
wth the coil cutters that may also be sort of set-and-forget,
HHH, HSH, SHS, SSS... or trad HH, SS styles, with bonus quack
tones in the 2 and 4 positions.

Finally, the series thing is sort of a lark, as I thought there were enough
"airy, cleany, quacky" sounds and thought it would be nice to have some
"fat quack" tones as well as occaisionally really sock it to the amp.

thanks

 

[Artie]

Re: 3 HB LP wiring diagram : please look over

I think there's an easier way to do what you want, but thats not so important. The one potential problem I do see, is that you're wiring the bridge direct to hot, and switching it with its ground lead. That means that you'll have a big ole RF and noise antenna connected at all times. I made this same mistake in some of my early wiring designs, and learned the hard way about horrible noise that was hard to track down 'til you realize what you've done.

I'll look it over and see if there's another way to accomplish your switching without having that condition.

Artie

 

[Frebnedzo]

Re: 3 HB LP wiring diagram : please look over

Wow, thanks, I wondered if floating coils ever caused problems and its
really good to know they do. I think the 4 and 5 positions are easy to fix
as I can use the hot lead from the bridge to connect to hot on
the rotary.

The 3 position is a problem (note that the middle pickup is floating
hot when the n+b is used). The backup plan is to have the switch
that currently selects between n+b and middle to pos 3 select between
the rotary output and the middle pickup. The rotary would always
have either n+b or middle.

let me know anything else you see.

 

[Frebnedzo]

Re: 3 HB LP wiring diagram : please look over

So heres the revision, no pickups floating on the hot leads, position
3 is restricted to the neck bridge pair.

The extra DPDT selects either the rotary or Fred to go to volume and
tone.

Any more comments welcome, thanks.

 

[Aceman]

Re: 3 HB LP wiring diagram : please look over

You know - of those "35" I suspect a great number of them are not what we call "Value added" I'll defer to Artie on the technicals. Is parellel and split necessary for all? An easier way of getting the third pup in there is use the standard 3 way switch and just use the volume for on/off on the middle pup. Use push/pull on the volumes for tap or parrellel....thats not close to the 35 sounds, but it'll give you at least a dozen.

 

[Artie]

Re: 3 HB LP wiring diagram : please look over

You know - of those "35" I suspect a great number of them are not what we call "Value added" I'll defer to Artie on the technicals.

I agree completely. But, in some cases, its one of those things that's good to discover for yourself. I've had several elaborate switching systems on my guitars. Eventually, they all go away, and revert to simplistic wiring. But - it was fun to learn which configurations pleased me, and which didn't. I doubt that I'll ever wire a humbucker in parallel again, or two singles in series. But it was interesting to hear the affect.

Artie

 

[Frebnedzo]

Re: 3 HB LP wiring diagram : please look over

I prefer the strat style 5 pos switch as a good solution to
dealing with 3 pups and the rotary is intended to do that. This
was why I worked so hard in the original version to be able
to have it behave just like a strat.

The main number of variations occur in the 2 and 4 positions. I'm
pretty sure that in-parallel with coils cut will give the best quack
tones, but since I'm not sure, and the Fred has mismatched coils,
I end up with a ton of combos. If I drop series / parallel, then things
will look a lot more reasonable and series combinations are probably
the least likely to be useful.

Are there any other bugs in the wiring? thanks