Blackouts Modular Preamp - 3 pickup wiring?

[Toner]

I bought a Blackouts Modular Preamp for a 3 pickup ibanez (3 4-wire pickups HSH as I needed the colored Dimarzios for the guitar's custom paint theme) but I have a feeling I will need 2 blackouts preamps? I don't see how I can plug in 3 pickups, wiring diagram is only for 2. I guess I could try to wire the middle single coil sized humbucker to the 5-way switch as normal and see how bad the volume difference is..... Always some damn problem wiring a guitar....

 

[Artie]

Re: Blackouts Modular Preamp - 3 pickup wiring?

It would seem to me that you could just wire your pups to the 5-way, and then just wire the output of the 5-way to the preamp. I don't see why that wouldn't work.

 

[Toner]

Re: Blackouts Modular Preamp - 3 pickup wiring?

It would seem to me that you could just wire your pups to the 5-way, and then just wire the output of the 5-way to the preamp. I don't see why that wouldn't work.

I thought about that too, then I was looking at the wiring diagram and was wondering if the preamp wouldn't work/sound right since you are not running all the pickup wires into the preamp unit like the diagram shows as it's taking the start and stop wires from each coil.

diagram link.

 

[Artie]

Re: Blackouts Modular Preamp - 3 pickup wiring?

You may be right, but the description makes it sound like it simply includes the Liberator solderless wiring system. I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that only the "pot in" and "pot out" lines are used for the actual preamp. (Along with power and ground, of course.)
I'd bet you can just do this:



Edit: You could probably still use the solderless part for your two humbuckers. Just wire them up just like your diagram shows. Now run the "output 1" and "output 2" lines to the two humbucker tabs of your 5-way. Solder in the middle pup as normal. Now, you could still do a solderless quik-change of the humbuckers.

 

[Toner]

Re: Blackouts Modular Preamp - 3 pickup wiring?

You may be right, but the description makes it sound like it simply includes the Liberator solderless wiring system. I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that only the "pot in" and "pot out" lines are used for the actual preamp. (Along with power and ground, of course.)
I'd bet you can just do this:

View attachment 71722

Edit: You could probably still use the solderless part for your two humbuckers. Just wire them up just like your diagram shows. Now run the "output 1" and "output 2" lines to the two humbucker tabs of your 5-way. Solder in the middle pup as normal. Now, you could still do a solderless quik-change of the humbuckers.

Thanks, I will try it out and post my results.

 

[Darth Nihilus]

Re: Blackouts Modular Preamp - 3 pickup wiring?

Keep us posted. I'm curious to see if this worked because I have about four or five of these modules myself

 

[Toner]

Re: Blackouts Modular Preamp - 3 pickup wiring?

This is my first attempt, Middle pickup is very quiet when selected by itself (3rd switch position out of 5). Also, If I put the amp on clean and tap the coils with an allen wrench, the middle pickup is "on" with all switch positions.

I got the 3 humbucker switch wiring online, not sure if it's correct with all the white jumper wires?

 

[Rane]

Re: Blackouts Modular Preamp - 3 pickup wiring?

I would assume this isn't possible. I don't know exactly how the Blackout preamps compare to EMG, but EMG uses a differential amplifier. From Wiki:

"A differential amplifier is a type of electronic amplifier that amplifies the difference between two input voltages but suppresses any voltage common to the two inputs. "

Basically, EMG runs the two coils from the pickup in parallel. Each coil goes to one input of the differential amp. This amplifies the pickup while also rejecting noise.

As far as the Blackout pre-amp is concerned, I'd guess it's not much different than this. I think it's just two differential amps in one circuit. So, adding another pickup would require another preamp, and would only work with a humbucking pickup. Also, it looks like even if you did add another pre-amp, there's not a good way to interface the two with each other. Your pickup switching would be weird.

You might be able to make it work if you had a double pole switch with three separate positions (not just on/on/on for the middle) and ran the pickups to the switch then one side of the preamp. I don't know where you'd find a switch like that though.

This is all just an off the top of my head educated guess, so YMMV.

 

[Toner]

Re: Blackouts Modular Preamp - 3 pickup wiring?

I would assume this isn't possible. I don't know exactly how the Blackout preamps compare to EMG, but EMG uses a differential amplifier. From Wiki:

"A differential amplifier is a type of electronic amplifier that amplifies the difference between two input voltages but suppresses any voltage common to the two inputs. "

Basically, EMG runs the two coils from the pickup in parallel. Each coil goes to one input of the differential amp. This amplifies the pickup while also rejecting noise.

As far as the Blackout pre-amp is concerned, I'd guess it's not much different than this. I think it's just two differential amps in one circuit. So, adding another pickup would require another preamp, and would only work with a humbucking pickup. Also, it looks like even if you did add another pre-amp, there's not a good way to interface the two with each other. Your pickup switching would be weird.

You might be able to make it work if you had a double pole switch with three separate positions (not just on/on/on for the middle) and ran the pickups to the switch then one side of the preamp. I don't know where you'd find a switch like that though.

This is all just an off the top of my head educated guess, so YMMV.

Makes sense and I was thinking of that before I started this.

There are plenty of 3 pickup guitars out there, that would suck if you can't use the BMP for any of them.....

If SD made Neon Green Blackouts I wouldn't be in this mess I sen't an email to SD so lets see what they say.

 

[Toner]

Re: Blackouts Modular Preamp - 3 pickup wiring?

I found this in an old thread, this may be the only option, which still wont work for me.

The bmp has 2 p'up inputs, each w/2 legs of preamp. I run the bridge std, by running each coil of the HB to each leg of 1 input...so, they are parallel wired normally into the bmp, then summed for output. Then, run your 2 single-sized HB's as 2-cond humbuckers to each leg of the other bmp input. Your Lil59 & Dbkr will already be humbucking before the preamp, so you won't get typical single-coil hum. However, when using them separately you don't get the additional noise canceling benefit that the balanced differential design offers in its std configuration. Also, you'll notice one leg of the preamp accentuates highs more, one leg lows more. This actually works out well, though, and gives you an option of how you want the neck & middle to sound. To use the single-size HB's separately, just set one lead up on a switch to go to ground as you would for normal coil-splitting.

 

[Rane]

Re: Blackouts Modular Preamp - 3 pickup wiring?

I found this in an old thread, this may be the only option, which still wont work for me.

The bmp has 2 p'up inputs, each w/2 legs of preamp. I run the bridge std, by running each coil of the HB to each leg of 1 input...so, they are parallel wired normally into the bmp, then summed for output. Then, run your 2 single-sized HB's as 2-cond humbuckers to each leg of the other bmp input. Your Lil59 & Dbkr will already be humbucking before the preamp, so you won't get typical single-coil hum. However, when using them separately you don't get the additional noise canceling benefit that the balanced differential design offers in its std configuration. Also, you'll notice one leg of the preamp accentuates highs more, one leg lows more. This actually works out well, though, and gives you an option of how you want the neck & middle to sound. To use the single-size HB's separately, just set one lead up on a switch to go to ground as you would for normal coil-splitting.

Good find! Interesting.

You know, you could build an EMG preamp from scratch for each pickup. Or you could forgo the noise canceling and build a more basic single input preamp. This way you'd only have to build one preamp and place it after after your volume and tone.

Links:

This page has a quick schematic, layout and summary of an EMG preamp (Scroll down a bit).

http://revolutiondeux.blogspot.com/2012/06/active-pickups-how-do-emg-do-it.html

This is the full thread where they reverse engineered the emg preamp. (It may require you to get an account to view the thread).

http://www.freestompboxes.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=880&start=80

Basic preamp with 3db boost.

http://www.till.com/articles/GuitarPreamp/index.html