wiring a 3pup lp.

A

AWILLIAMS64

New member
ok so i have installed a couple new pickups in my epi black beauty. 3 pup version. I have installed a new neck and new bridge, still stock in the middle for now. what i want to do is rewire it so i can have 3 volume knobs and 1 tone but i have no clue where to start. I did buy a gibson push pull pot becuase i want to do something cool coiltap/series-parallel, with the bridge pup. i have a schematic but it kinda blows me away. It is probably no where near what i am making it out to be. Anyone in the dayton, oh area good at this???
 
Re: wiring a 3pup lp.

first(since you may want to do more rewirings in the future) check out http://shop.wymoreguitars.com they've got much cheaper push pulls. second, wiring up a guitar for what you need shouldn't be all that bad even with 3 pickups. if i were you, i'd PM hermetico for a diagram, with the push pull to add the middle pickup and wire up the 3-way switch to the neck and bridge.
 
Re: wiring a 3pup lp.

Can you be more specific about what you want to be able to do with it (what pickup combinations do you want)?

Having 3 volumes is fine...how will you wire up the toggle switch? Traditional 3-pickup LP wiring lets you have the Neck pickup when the toggle is up, the Middle and Bridge when it is in the middle, and the Bridge when it is down. Is this what you want, just will all the pickups wired to volume pots independently? Or, would you prefer something more versatile?
 
Re: wiring a 3pup lp.

what i want to do is take the middle pickup off the 3 way switch. so i can have the neck, bridge or neck bridge combo just like a 2 pup lp. with the 3rd volume knob i think i could use it to turn the middle pickup on or off with any other combination. that way i could have bridge, bridge/middle, bridge/middle/neck middle/neck neck/bridge or all 3. i think that makes sense...i want to do something with the push pull on the bridge pup.

FAC said:
Can you be more specific about what you want to be able to do with it (what pickup combinations do you want)?

Having 3 volumes is fine...how will you wire up the toggle switch? Traditional 3-pickup LP wiring lets you have the Neck pickup when the toggle is up, the Middle and Bridge when it is in the middle, and the Bridge when it is down. Is this what you want, just will all the pickups wired to volume pots independently? Or, would you prefer something more versatile?
Click to expand...
 
Re: wiring a 3pup lp.

The way I did that to my HHH guitars is (I wanted to acheive what you want). You don't need to take the middle PU off the toggle, you just need a specialzed volume pot:

Bridge: it's own volume & tone.

Neck/Middle: share a blend pot & a tone pot. The blend pot is a volume pot wired to the toggle as on a HH guitar. It has a center detent, with both neck & middle on equally. Turn it one way or the other, and you get the neck alone or the middle alone.

This gives me instant changes between the bridge & neck, or bridge & middle, just like a HH guitar. All I do is flip the toggle & I go from neck to bridge. No dialing down or dialing up volume controls to change PU's, which is a hassle on stage. Problem solved.
 
Re: wiring a 3pup lp.

and where do i get one of these pots??
blueman335 said:
The way I did that to my HHH guitars is (I wanted to acheive what you want). You don't need to take the middle PU off the toggle, you just need a specialzed volume pot:

Bridge: it's own volume & tone.

Neck/Middle: share a blend pot & a tone pot. The blend pot is a volume pot wired to the toggle as on a HH guitar. It has a center detent, with both neck & middle on equally. Turn it one way or the other, and you get the neck alone or the middle alone.

This gives me instant changes between the bridge & neck, or bridge & middle, just like a HH guitar. All I do is flip the toggle & I go from neck to bridge. No dialing down or dialing up volume controls to change PU's, which is a hassle on stage. Problem solved.
Click to expand...
 
Re: wiring a 3pup lp.

AWILLIAMS64 said:
what i want to do is take the middle pickup off the 3 way switch. so i can have the neck, bridge or neck bridge combo just like a 2 pup lp. with the 3rd volume knob i think i could use it to turn the middle pickup on or off with any other combination. that way i could have bridge, bridge/middle, bridge/middle/neck middle/neck neck/bridge or all 3. i think that makes sense...i want to do something with the push pull on the bridge pup.
Click to expand...

Initially, I had a shop do exactly that, put the middle on it's own volume. The way they did it, I could never fully turn the neck and bridge pickups off and just have the middle (like on the normal middle toggle position on a two pickup Les Paul, if you turn one volume control all the way down, it kills both pickups...and in this case, all three).

The blender pot is a better idea. Check this thread out: https://forum.seymourduncan.com/showthread.php?t=129262

While your at it, I'd suggest putting a PhatCat in the middle.
 
Re: wiring a 3pup lp.

the blender does sound like a good idea, but if 3 volumes wired correctly, if you turn down the volume on the bridge and neck it would let the middle be by itself on

FAC said:
Initially, I had a shop do exactly that, put the middle on it's own volume. The way they did it, I could never fully turn the neck and bridge pickups off and just have the middle (like on the normal middle toggle position on a two pickup Les Paul, if you turn one volume control all the way down, it kills both pickups...and in this case, all three).

The blender pot is a better idea. Check this thread out: https://forum.seymourduncan.com/showthread.php?t=129262

While your at it, I'd suggest putting a PhatCat in the middle.
Click to expand...
 
Re: wiring a 3pup lp.

AWILLIAMS64 said:
the blender does sound like a good idea, but if 3 volumes wired correctly, if you turn down the volume on the bridge and neck it would let the middle be by itself on
Click to expand...

The blend pot has the neck & middle PU's wired to it, so you can make it neck only, middle only, or any amount of both. So to get the middle only, just turn the blend pot all the way to one side. You can go between the middle & bridge by flipping the toggle (neck's out of the picture, until you turn the blend pot again). It's that fast.
 
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