Two pickups, two volumes, no tone, no switch

A

Almost Never

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I have done this before, but the frequent suggestion is to wire it like a jazz bass without the tone control. When doing so, the neck pickup pot acts as a master volume and the pickups are wired in series. I want each pot to control one pickup. Any idea how to wire it?

I tried this. It does not work; the bottom pot controls both, and the top pot functions backwards for the neck pickup

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Re: Two pickups, two volumes, no tone, no switch

Almost Never said:
I don't know what the error is, or if there is one, but with this, the neck pickup doesn't work at all and the bridge pickup only works with the neck pot at mid.
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Swap the pickup "hot" and volume "out" for both bridge and neck.

So for both volumes, the "in" in the middle lug, one outer lug is ground, the other outer lug is output. You can go from one "out" to the next "out" to the Jack, they don't have to meet at the jack.
 
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Re: Two pickups, two volumes, no tone, no switch

Because of several attempts and being out of phrase each time, I added a second jack and wired the neck pickup straight to it. I don't use it much. If I get a switch sometime I could add it.
 
Re: Two pickups, two volumes, no tone, no switch

Out of phase needs the hot/ground wires reversed one one pickup. This is independant of any wiring scheme which you will use and will continue to happen whenever the 2 pickups are selected.

You will need independent volume wiring. That way you can roll 1 vol down to zero without affecting the other. The pickup hot wires need to go to the middle lug of their respective pots, and the output to the jack on the outer lug that isn't ground.
 
Re: Two pickups, two volumes, no tone, no switch

Use a stereo jack, wire each pickup to their volume pot, and each pot to its own hot of the jack. If you experience phase issues, reverse the green/black of one pickup, not both.
 
Re: Two pickups, two volumes, no tone, no switch

It's not ideal, but this should work. (Maybe use 1meg pots.)

seires-twin-pots.png
 
Re: Two pickups, two volumes, no tone, no switch

I'm really curious about this control configuration. It's almost like the Billy Gibbons Les Paul, which just adds a master tone but has no selector switch.

In practice, for those who've worked with this kind of setup, does it affect how you interact with the guitar? Like, are you really getting a lot of mileage out of blending the pickup tones and/or do you miss being able to switch discretely between bridge-only and neck-only pickups?

With this kind of setup, it seems almost required that you have pickups that clean up well and/or offer useable tones below 10.
 
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