Intense guitar wiring, separate tone knobs?

tcjester

New member
Hi all

I'm currently building a guitar, and I have NO idea what I am doing wiring.
I'm asking, is it possible to have separate tone pots for each pickup? Like, 3 tone pots then a master volume? I've made a diagram of what I think would work.


Much appreciated!
 

Attachments

  • Guitar wiring B.jpg
    Guitar wiring B.jpg
    59.2 KB · Views: 0
Last edited:
Re: Intense guitar wiring, separate tone knobs?

Not exactly. When any pickups are "on", all tone controls will be active on all pickups. No way to get around that without going to active circuitry.
 
Re: Intense guitar wiring, separate tone knobs?

So, each tone pot is also an on/off switch for its respective pickup, and the master volume is a split for the humbuckers?

You were pretty close - all your grounds are good, but you've confused yourself by using pictures where 2 pots are upside down and two are right way up, and if the switches work they'll be very noisy.

Tone Vol.png

Don't forget to ground the single coil. The tone pots are going to put a bit of load on the circuit, so you might want to put a treble bleed cap between the two left lugs on the volume pot.
 

Attachments

  • Tone Vol.png
    Tone Vol.png
    50.3 KB · Views: 0
Re: Intense guitar wiring, separate tone knobs?

Ignore the second image - I uploaded it, then realised i hadn't mentioned the white wire from the single coil, and edited it accordingly. that would have sucked.
 
Re: Intense guitar wiring, separate tone knobs?

After thinking about it, Artie's statement is correct about your drawing, and to a lesser extent correct about my drawing - with mine each tone control is switched in and out of the circuit with the pickup it's attached to, so when more than one pickup is on, the lowest set tone control will affect all pickups, like the middle position of a Les Paul.

Say you have all 3 pickups switched on with the neck tone wide open, middle tone at 50% and bridge tone all the way down. The bridge tone will be the load that the whole instrument 'sees'. Then if you switch the bridge pickup out of the circuit, both neck and middle will see the middle tone control at 50%. Then with the middle pickup out of the circuit, the neck tone will only see its own load and the tone will be wide open.

Hope that makes sense. There may be a way around it - I seem to recall the '62 Jazz Bass style wiring having independent tone controls and no pickup switching whatsoever - the tone controls on that have a jumper across the two left terminals of the tone pot, so that might make a difference. See if someone else chimes in...
 
Re: Intense guitar wiring, separate tone knobs?

Guitar wiring C.jpgThanks for the quick replies guys!

Invader Jim from the UG forums recommended to wire directly to the tone pot BEFORE the on/ off push pull. Seems like that would work, what do you think?
 
Re: Intense guitar wiring, separate tone knobs?

It doesn't matter where the tone control is connected. All tone controls will affect all pickups when those pickups are on.
 
Re: Intense guitar wiring, separate tone knobs?

You would be better off having a single switch to control which pups are on (like a 5 way Strat lever type). That way you could have three separate tone controls and each would only work on its respective pup. And you could have one master volume pot.
 
Back
Top