LP alt split wiring

[jamesperkin]

Hi all

You may have noticed a post I put about rotary switches on a Les Paul. Well I'm gonna drop that idea and just go for a straight coil split.

However before I go for a push/pull I just wondered if anyone had tried the "spin a split" wiring and how good it is?

From the the wiring diagrams on the site it looks like it suggests changing the tone control. Would it be possible to use one tone control as master tone, and one as master spin a split?

Just thinking through my options before getting the soldering iron out!

Thanks a lot

James

 

[Zhangliqun]

Re: LP alt split wiring

You could use one tone as a master tone but you wouldn't be able to use the other pot as a Spin A Split for both pickups. Each needs it's own pot, though you can get concentric pots that are two pots on one shaft, so that would work as a master SAS pot.

I like the Spin-A-Split mod quite a bit. It allows you to have a million pickups in one pickup, from pure single coil to minihumbucker to P90 to full humbucker. The tricky part is getting a pot with just the right taper so that you get a steady change all along the traverse.

One nifty way to check out what the SAS does is to plug a cord into your guitar, measure the other end with a multi-meter and turn the pot back and forth. If you have, say, a 9k pu with even coils, you can see the multi-meter go from 9k all the way down to 4.5k as you turn the pot down. What you'll also see with many pots is that there is very, very little change from 10 to 7 -- maybe it goes from 9k down to 8.87k or something like that -- and then it drops off the table from 7 to 4, down to 5.5k, then sits there like a turd from 4 to 2 (from 5.5k down to 5.38k) and then drops off the table again down finally to 4.5k.

I haven't really looked for a pot with the ideal taper so I can't give you any advice on that. Just beware of the taper issues and once you get used to them, SAS is still very cool.

One other thing: As with a coil split switch, you can choose which coil gets cut out by SAS. Where you would normally solder the red and white wires (middle lug of SAS pot), replace them with the green and black wires and make red hot and white ground.

 

[jamesperkin]

Re: LP alt split wiring

That's really helpful thanks a lot.

Based on that I may even set up master volume and master tones then use the remaining pots for spin a splits for each pup.

Seems almost too simple and means I only really need to get some 4-wire pups (ie the pots I've got would do the job). Then I could experiment with different pots later if I wasn't happy with the range of the pots I was already using.

Right cheers

James