HHH wiring ideas

[nolan1911]

Hello all

I'm looking to either build or modify an SG to be an HHH configuration. My idea for wiring so as to get the most flexibility of pickup combinations with minimal wires/fancy pots was to basically wire the neck and bridge pickup like normal to 1 vol and 1 tone then a kill switch right before the output. Then the middle pickup would be wired to its own volume and tone with a killswitch right before the output.

All that being said, would running two output wires to one jack be weird? And also, would I want to ground each set of pickups separately, ie, ground the neck/bridge pups/pots together to the jack and then the middle pup/pots to the jack, not putting them together since that might make a ground loop?

All in all, I'm looking to maintain as classic appearing a control layout as possible where I can use the kill switches to blend the middle in if needed/wanted or cut out either set entirely.

 

[beaubrummels]

Welcome to the forum

You can run multiple pickups direct to the jack. Ground is ground, it all goes to the jack ground, so it doesn't matter how you do it as long as there is a path to ground at the jack. There's no such thing as a ground loop in a guitar because there is only one ground.

 

[Chistopher]

How about don't worry so much about how many sounds you can get out of it, and instead figure out what sounds you will use the most. If I had your SG, I would wire it with a freeway (6-way) toggle switch and then a master volume and tone. The other two knobs leave disconnected. Or perhaps each pickup gets its own tone control.

There's not much point to blending in the middle pickup (especially with passive electronics) and ground loops don't exist in guitars.

 

[beaubrummels]

There's not much point to blending in the middle pickup (especially with passive electronics) and ground loops don't exist in guitars.

Actually, the best 3-pickup configuration I've ever played was each pickup on it's own volume, toggle switch standard 3-way for bridge and neck, with a master tone. So the middle volume blended the middle pickup with whatever position I wanted. And turning down the bridge or neck and putting the switch in that position, I could have the middle by itself if needed by turning it's volume. You can substitute a true 3-way toggle (3P3T) to have it switch directly but you lose some of the blending.

 

[Chistopher]

Perhaps I should have elaborated better, with a 6-way switch there's not much point to blending in the middle pickup. But I suppose depending on the individual, 3 volumes and a master tone might be more useful than master volume and 3 tones. It would make it a little tougher to use the volume controls to mute though, so I'd put the tone control on a master push/pull killswitch.

 

[beaubrummels]

Interesting point. I always mute with my pedal tuner and keep my settings, so hasn't come up for me. With a kill switch onboard, you can keep your settings also.

 

[GuitarStv]

Maybe I'm weird, but HHH isn't a config that really excites me all that much. The sounds from adding a middle humbucker just aren't all that different from what you can get with a good two humbucker config.

If you're going the completely custom build option and are set on three pickups, I'd be more interested in a very different sounding grouping of pickups . . . like a single coil or a firebird pickup for the mid and maybe a p90 or filtertron for the neck.

 

[Chistopher]

P90 for the middle is pretty common