Artie
Peaveyologist
Quite a few folks have been asking me for this for over a year. I've been tinkering with it for that long. It ain't perfect, but it works. The goal was, to create the ability to switch three single-coil pups into either series or parallel mode using only three switches. Add three more for the phase switching. The worst part of this is that it requires three 4PDT on-on-on switches. Those are a little more than $20 each, which brings the cost of the 3 switches alone, to around $75. That would be a deal breaker for me.
But here it is regardless:
(Notes at the end.)
The blue boxes represent one 4PDT switch each. I drew them with the A-B/C-D sections separated to make the lines less cluttered in the schematic. Switch operation is shown at the bottom. The phase switches are garden-variety DPDT's.
All three switches in the middle result in all three pups being "off". I don't care for that, but there just wasn't enough pole's to create a "default" mode.
It takes two pickups to make a series connection, so if only one pup is set to "series", it automatically becomes parallel, while it waits for another series switch to be thrown. So, if one pup is set to series, and one to parallel, parallel wins the argument. This actually creates a couple of nice operating modes. Lets say you have the middle set to series, and the neck set to parallel. Both will be in parallel. Switch th neck to series, and both now become in series. So you can go from a Strat #2 notch position sound, to a humbucker-ish sound with one click. (Two actually, if you count passing through the "off" position.)
Also, one of the limitations was, if you have two pups set to parallel and one set to series, they'll still all be parallel. You won't have the one series, in series with the parallel pair. Again - just not enough available switch nodes.
The best thing about this is, in developing it, I came up with some interesting Brian May subsets. (With far less, and simpler wiring.) I'll cover those in my next post.
Enjoy.
Artie
But here it is regardless:
(Notes at the end.)
The blue boxes represent one 4PDT switch each. I drew them with the A-B/C-D sections separated to make the lines less cluttered in the schematic. Switch operation is shown at the bottom. The phase switches are garden-variety DPDT's.
All three switches in the middle result in all three pups being "off". I don't care for that, but there just wasn't enough pole's to create a "default" mode.
It takes two pickups to make a series connection, so if only one pup is set to "series", it automatically becomes parallel, while it waits for another series switch to be thrown. So, if one pup is set to series, and one to parallel, parallel wins the argument. This actually creates a couple of nice operating modes. Lets say you have the middle set to series, and the neck set to parallel. Both will be in parallel. Switch th neck to series, and both now become in series. So you can go from a Strat #2 notch position sound, to a humbucker-ish sound with one click. (Two actually, if you count passing through the "off" position.)
Also, one of the limitations was, if you have two pups set to parallel and one set to series, they'll still all be parallel. You won't have the one series, in series with the parallel pair. Again - just not enough available switch nodes.
The best thing about this is, in developing it, I came up with some interesting Brian May subsets. (With far less, and simpler wiring.) I'll cover those in my next post.
Enjoy.
Artie
