Wiring two Hotrails to a single stereo jack for stereo coil split

[luca9583]

Hi all.

I'm using two Hotrails in an extended range multiscale guitar..both are in the bridge position to cover the low and high strings. It's working great. I'm currently hard wiring each pickup to the tip and ring of a stereo jack so i can get each pickup on it's own line.

I'd like to wire it as follows now but not sure of the correct method:

Both pickups hard wired and humbucking to tip output, and inner coil of only one of the pickups wired to the ring output

or

Both pickups hard wired and humbucking to tip output, and outer coil of only one of the pickups wired to the ring output.

I've done this with a single Bareknuckle pickup by wiring the white and green wires (different colour code to Seynour Duncan) to the ring which gives me humbucking on the tip and outer coils at the ring, so it would be great to be able to do this with one of the two Hotrails.

Maybe via a 3 way switch always set to middle position so that both pickup are on/summed as one pickup?

 

[GuitarDoc]

Black wire (of both pups) to tip, red + white wires (of one pup) to the ring, green to the barrel and to ground.
That would give you both pups in humbucker mode, each in series (both pups in parallel) to the tip of the output jack, screw coil (outside coil) of one pup to the ring of the output jack.

 

[Artie]

Welcome to the forum.

You've got a lot going on here. Let me go over them one by one, in no particular order.

What you mentioned in the 1st paragraph is actually a cool idea. Similar to what I'm doing with a pair of P-Rails right now. But P-Rails split, are completely different than a single Hot Rails split.

A Hot Rails, (and none of the single-sized 'buckers, for that matter), sound particularly good when split. Unless, possibly, when used in conjunction with another coil from another ss HB'er.

Electrons don't know where they're supposed to go. You'd need some kind of switching system, or when you plugged in a regular cord, you'd auto-split the pup that had it's "inner coil" wire connected to the ring. Even if you always used a stereo cord, whatever "load" was being presented to the inner-coil would impact the sound of the humbucker side, so to speak.

I love playing with wiring as much as, if not more than, playing my guitars. So, by all means, experiment. But IMHO, your 1st idea is still the best.


​

 

[beaubrummels]

Welcome to the forum.

You've got a lot going on here. Let me go over them one by one, in no particular order.

What you mentioned in the 1st paragraph is actually a cool idea. Similar to what I'm doing with a pair of P-Rails right now. But P-Rails split, are completely different than a single Hot Rails split.

A Hot Rails, (and none of the single-sized 'buckers, for that matter), sound particularly good when split. Unless, possibly, when used in conjunction with another coil from another ss HB'er.

Electrons don't know where they're supposed to go. You'd need some kind of switching system, or when you plugged in a regular cord, you'd auto-split the pup that had it's "inner coil" wire connected to the ring. Even if you always used a stereo cord, whatever "load" was being presented to the inner-coil would impact the sound of the humbucker side, so to speak.

I love playing with wiring as much as, if not more than, playing my guitars. So, by all means, experiment. But IMHO, your 1st idea is still the best.


​

Sounded to me like he's using two rail pickups across like a 10-string extended range guitar, like a P-Bass or Fender XII type of setup. Hence some pickup splitting/combining for low-end and high-end separately.

 

[Artie]

Sounded to me like he's using two rail pickups across like a 10-string extended range guitar, like a P-Bass or Fender XII type of setup. Hence some pickup splitting/combining for low-end and high-end separately.

I think you're right. I didn't quite understand that 1st sentence. I probably should have waited for some clarity.

 

[GuitarDoc]

Welcome to the forum.

You've got a lot going on here. Let me go over them one by one, in no particular order.

What you mentioned in the 1st paragraph is actually a cool idea. Similar to what I'm doing with a pair of P-Rails right now. But P-Rails split, are completely different than a single Hot Rails split.

A Hot Rails, (and none of the single-sized 'buckers, for that matter), sound particularly good when split. Unless, possibly, when used in conjunction with another coil from another ss HB'er.

Electrons don't know where they're supposed to go. You'd need some kind of switching system, or when you plugged in a regular cord, you'd auto-split the pup that had it's "inner coil" wire connected to the ring. Even if you always used a stereo cord, whatever "load" was being presented to the inner-coil would impact the sound of the humbucker side, so to speak.

I love playing with wiring as much as, if not more than, playing my guitars. So, by all means, experiment. But IMHO, your 1st idea is still the best.


​

Switching would be ideal, probably, but he asked how to hardwire it. The electrons would go to wherever they could. So they'd go to the tip AND the ring. You'd get series at the tip and split to screw coil at the ring.
If he used a mono plug/cord, the white + red from one pup would be grounded so that pickup would be split to the slug coil...you wouldn't get series PLUS split on that pup, only split to slug coil going to the tip.

 

[GuitarDoc]

Welcome to the forum.

You've got a lot going on here. Let me go over them one by one, in no particular order.

What you mentioned in the 1st paragraph is actually a cool idea. Similar to what I'm doing with a pair of P-Rails right now. But P-Rails split, are completely different than a single Hot Rails split.

A Hot Rails, (and none of the single-sized 'buckers, for that matter), sound particularly good when split. Unless, possibly, when used in conjunction with another coil from another ss HB'er.

Electrons don't know where they're supposed to go. You'd need some kind of switching system, or when you plugged in a regular cord, you'd auto-split the pup that had it's "inner coil" wire connected to the ring. Even if you always used a stereo cord, whatever "load" was being presented to the inner-coil would impact the sound of the humbucker side, so to speak.

I love playing with wiring as much as, if not more than, playing my guitars. So, by all means, experiment. But IMHO, your 1st idea is still the best.


​

Switching would be ideal, probably, but he asked how to hardwire it. The electrons would go to wherever they could. So they'd go to the tip AND the ring. You'd get series at the tip and split to screw coil at the ring.
If he used a mono plug/cord, the white + red from one pup would be grounded so that pickup would be split to the slug coil...you wouldn't get series PLUS split on that pup, only split to slug coil going to the tip.

 

[luca9583]

Thanks for all the replies everyone.

Yep it's for a 7 string fanned fret that has a 3" fan, hence the sharp angle. I found the combo of the two Hotrails is perfect to really get the ideal response from the low and high strings (both at different angles), which isn't really possible by just having one long pickup at an angle.

I'm using a stereo cable into an audio switcher which, with the Bareknuckle, allows me to do a footswitchable, per preset, coil split or humbucking.

GuitarDoc in this setup with the Hotrails, how do i wire it to get the inner coil instead (going to the ring)?

 

[Artie]

Cool. I hope you post pics when this is all done.

 

[MikeS]

So to be clear, the foot switch is acting as the switch between the two options and the stereo cable is really just an extension of the guitar’s wiring? My initial read was that there might be some intent to run both options in a stereo rig, which would not work.

IMO it doesn’t matter which coil you split to in a rails pickup. The rails are so close together that the difference is indiscernible. But if you want to test, it’s as simple as swapping the black and green pickups. Black to tip = south coil when split. Green to tip = north coil when split.

So when you run only one coil of one pickup in this guitar, does it pickup all strings evenly, or do you only use that setting on either the high or low strings?

 

[luca9583]

Black wire (of both pups) to tip, red + white wires (of one pup) to the ring, green to the barrel and to ground.
That would give you both pups in humbucker mode, each in series (both pups in parallel) to the tip of the output jack, screw coil (outside coil) of one pup to the ring of the output jack.

So i've wired it all up as follows:

black of both pups to tip
red and white wires of one pup only to ring, red and white wires of other pickup together and covered,
green and bare of both pups to ground

For some reason i just get a duplicate of the humbucking of both pickups going to the ring output. I'm sure something has been wired wrong.

 

[MikeS]

What does the wiring look like at footswitch? The corresponding ring terminal in the footswitch will need to be switchable between output and open in order to complete the coil split circuit.

Presuming the foot switch is a simple SPDT switch, the middle terminal would go to the tip of the mono output jack in the foot switch, while the tip and ring terminals from the stereo input jack would go to the outside lugs on the SPDT.