Concentric Pots and Coil Splitting, and other weird ideas!

[Kent S.]

Re: Concentric Pots and Coil Splitting, and other weird ideas!

I'm pretty sure the Clapton kit only takes up one knob. Again, it depends on whether or not you want to drill into the pickguard to install extra switches. It's no big deal on a Fender guitar because you're not drilling into the guitar itself. I saw that Duncan pickup booster circuit, that might be kind of cool if you think you might use something like that. It's basically just a preamp system that you can use to push the amp a little harder. It might be useful with vintage style pickups, but probably overkill if you have pickups with more output.

As far as the reliability of push/pull pots, I've been using them for years, and I've never had one go bad. You just need to avoid the cheaper brands. The best ones are the Dimarzio brand push/pull pots, any Dimarzio dealer can get them for you.

Ryan

The DMZ stuff can be ordered thru any loacl music store also, dealer of not, Harris-Teller stacks a full line of their stuff (They are a jobber, a retail music store will know what that means ... I'm assuming USA here also), the Clapton mid boost requires (disclaimer ... unless they changed it recently) a 50k-A pot for the volume, and a 250k-A pot for the mid boost amount, here's a quick and dirty view of it ...different models had slighty different pots and setups. The PCB for the EC, the buddy guy, the Strat elite, the pwerhouse strat, and whatever else uses it , I believe is all the same PCB(you'd have to cross reference the numbers with Fender customer support), there is a blue dot that was the input for the dummy coil as wired on the strat elites, it's not used on the others and is wired (the dummy coil) a bit differently on the powerhouse strat. it's sloppy but I'm tired.

 

[The Don]

Re: Concentric Pots and Coil Splitting, and other weird ideas!

Damn. Doesn't sound like it would be compatible with my Concentric Pot/switch idea (2 concentric pots, 1 mid boost).

Maybe a volume and 2 push/push pots would do the trick... blah...

Looking at the kit, what's the TBX control? It almost looks like it comes with the mid boost and a volume control, with an optional TBX control that would replace the tone knob - a set of 3 pots. What if you only installed the mid boost, with 500k pots?

 

[Kent S.]

Re: Concentric Pots and Coil Splitting, and other weird ideas!

Damn. Doesn't sound like it would be compatible with my Concentric Pot/switch idea (2 concentric pots, 1 mid boost).

Maybe a volume and 2 push/push pots would do the trick... blah...

Looking at the kit, what's the TBX control? It almost looks like it comes with the mid boost and a volume control, with an optional TBX control that would replace the tone knob - a set of 3 pots. What if you only installed the mid boost, with 500k pots?

The 250k section of a concentric pot will work just fine for the midboost, the preamp on those boards want to see a 50k volume pot though. You could either try it with the 500k (or 250k) (( maybe even load the line to bring it down to 50k)), or you could try not using the preamp part at all. In which case you's run from selector switch to volume pot to tone pot (or vice versa on those last two) and then run the midboost accordingly. You won't hurt anything by running a 250k or 500k pot in there, you'd have to try it.
The tbx was a no-load pot with a variable load placed on the signal, it allowed you to dial in extra high end;the standard no-load pots have all but replaced them (they are still available and put on certain models), and may actaully be capable of being a bit brighter than the tbx's were wired stock.
Visit www.mrgearhead.net/faq for an explanation of the tbx vs. the delta tone no-load pots. You could also run into from the 500k volume pot into the preamp, out of it and into the midboost circuit ...problem there is you'd probably get a lot of extra noise from the preamp, as it would be like turning your amp up to high gain and turning your guiatr down to keep clean.
Call Fender and see if the midboost can be used without the preamp, as it probably can. Also doesn't chandler still have that Tone-X control around, and Musictech has a couple of midboosts as well, so does Bartolini (designed to work with passives also). A lot out there to choose from... I don't know what effect installing a 500k pot on the midboost would have, you'd have to try it and see.

 

[The Don]

Re: Concentric Pots and Coil Splitting, and other weird ideas!

Seems all of those have 2 or 3 pots.

This all sounds too complicated honestly. What started as simply wanting to split humbuckers has turned into on-board preamps! I think, like usual, I'm overthinking the situation here.

I still want to know what the differences between phase switching, series/parallel wiring and coil tapping. Besides splitting the humbuckers, any of those worth looking into???????

 

[Kent S.]

Re: Concentric Pots and Coil Splitting, and other weird ideas!

Seems all of those have 2 or 3 pots.

This all sounds too complicated honestly. What started as simply wanting to split humbuckers has turned into on-board preamps! I think, like usual, I'm overthinking the situation here.

I still want to know what the differences between phase switching, series/parallel wiring and coil tapping. Besides splitting the humbuckers, any of those worth looking into???????

The differences between those are explained under the FAQ part of the main SD site ... it all depends on what you want to do. Read over that stuff and familiarize yourself with what's what ... that will give you a clearer understanding of what might suit your sonic goals (so to speak), concerning the EC style preamp, it's divided into a preamp/buffer and a midboost ...
one pot for the volume the Sambora strats used a 500k pot BTW and one pot for the midboost amount (a 250k), the other pot was just tone. So yeah those do take up two pots.