theAeronought
New member
(If you want to go straight to my question about the pickups, just go down past the indent.)
None of that really matters a whole lot, though. What matters, you probably already noticed in the Teisco diagram – the leads coming out of the pickups would not likely conform to any current, standard wiring diagram. The three wires correspond as follows: Green = ground, red = start wrap, black = finish wrap.
So the question is: how do I hook these pickups up to separate volume knobs, two master tone knobs, a series/parallel switch, a phase switch, and finally a 3-way selector? Any experts on old guitar wiring out there?
So here’s the story.
I’ve been working on building my first solid-body guitar for about two years now, and I’m only just recently getting to the actually building stage. Up until now, I’ve been stuck in the planning stage because I’ve had to move, had to save up for parts, broke my first neck (and had to re-design the headstock), etc. It’s been one brick wall after another. Incidentally, that’s given me a lot of time to work on the design of the guitar in general, and render it to a certain degree on the computer. It's called the Aeronought, Phase 1. The idea is, it’s supposed to look a little like this:
The picture doesn’t show it, but the thickness is in the neighborhood of 1-3/4 inches. The body is poplar because it’s cheap and it’ll be painted black anyways, so it doesn’t need to be pretty. The neck and fretboard are maple, and the idea is that the headstock will have ebony “wings” after a fashion. They will actually be inlaid, but the side of the headstock will show both woods. There may or may not be inlays on the fretboard, I haven’t decided yet, but if there are, they will be ebony as well.
There won’t actually be binding on the neck or headstock, I just did that to clean up the rendering. There will be white binding on the body, on the top and back both, and the body itself, as I said, will be gloss black. The pickguard will be white (gloss or satin?) and will have the same kind of bevel on the edge that fender pickguards do. I think I’ll have a regular old tune-o-matic bridge, unless I find something else I like better, and I’ve got a miniature jazz tailpiece already picked out. You can get the picture by now that this guitar’s somewhat modelled after the old Harmony Stratotone, though it’s not an exact copy.
Now the pickups I found on craigslist, along with a pickguard, a couple of pots, switches and a jack. They’re Teisco products, which is just fantastic – I love old guitars, junky as they may seem. The pickguard came to me already wired, but it didn’t work as far as I could tell, and the wiring was really bloody confusing. Here’s a diagram:
So since it doesn’t work, I’m just going to take the pickups and use them in a new diagram of my own design. The diagram will include separate volume knobs, one master tone knob and one master bass cut knob, two mini-switches and a final 3-way slide selector switch, leading to the jack. The two mini switches are push/pulls on the volume knobs, and will be a series/parallel switch and a phase switch.
(Don’t bother telling me that’s a silly idea; I know activating either one of those will more than likely eliminate most of the output signal, and that’s fine. Partially, I want to see if it will work, but mostly I just need something to do with two push/pull knobs – there’s a backup plan for this wiring that includes gold-foil replicas, and phase and coil-split options.)
I’ve been working on building my first solid-body guitar for about two years now, and I’m only just recently getting to the actually building stage. Up until now, I’ve been stuck in the planning stage because I’ve had to move, had to save up for parts, broke my first neck (and had to re-design the headstock), etc. It’s been one brick wall after another. Incidentally, that’s given me a lot of time to work on the design of the guitar in general, and render it to a certain degree on the computer. It's called the Aeronought, Phase 1. The idea is, it’s supposed to look a little like this:
The picture doesn’t show it, but the thickness is in the neighborhood of 1-3/4 inches. The body is poplar because it’s cheap and it’ll be painted black anyways, so it doesn’t need to be pretty. The neck and fretboard are maple, and the idea is that the headstock will have ebony “wings” after a fashion. They will actually be inlaid, but the side of the headstock will show both woods. There may or may not be inlays on the fretboard, I haven’t decided yet, but if there are, they will be ebony as well.
There won’t actually be binding on the neck or headstock, I just did that to clean up the rendering. There will be white binding on the body, on the top and back both, and the body itself, as I said, will be gloss black. The pickguard will be white (gloss or satin?) and will have the same kind of bevel on the edge that fender pickguards do. I think I’ll have a regular old tune-o-matic bridge, unless I find something else I like better, and I’ve got a miniature jazz tailpiece already picked out. You can get the picture by now that this guitar’s somewhat modelled after the old Harmony Stratotone, though it’s not an exact copy.
Now the pickups I found on craigslist, along with a pickguard, a couple of pots, switches and a jack. They’re Teisco products, which is just fantastic – I love old guitars, junky as they may seem. The pickguard came to me already wired, but it didn’t work as far as I could tell, and the wiring was really bloody confusing. Here’s a diagram:
So since it doesn’t work, I’m just going to take the pickups and use them in a new diagram of my own design. The diagram will include separate volume knobs, one master tone knob and one master bass cut knob, two mini-switches and a final 3-way slide selector switch, leading to the jack. The two mini switches are push/pulls on the volume knobs, and will be a series/parallel switch and a phase switch.
(Don’t bother telling me that’s a silly idea; I know activating either one of those will more than likely eliminate most of the output signal, and that’s fine. Partially, I want to see if it will work, but mostly I just need something to do with two push/pull knobs – there’s a backup plan for this wiring that includes gold-foil replicas, and phase and coil-split options.)
None of that really matters a whole lot, though. What matters, you probably already noticed in the Teisco diagram – the leads coming out of the pickups would not likely conform to any current, standard wiring diagram. The three wires correspond as follows: Green = ground, red = start wrap, black = finish wrap.
So the question is: how do I hook these pickups up to separate volume knobs, two master tone knobs, a series/parallel switch, a phase switch, and finally a 3-way selector? Any experts on old guitar wiring out there?
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