Daf Posted November 9, 2001 Share Posted November 9, 2001 New to the forum- Hi! I don't care for the standard strat wiring, I have no need for the tone controls as I am a recording guitarist these days and if I need tone control I have banks of parametric EQ. I'm not really that sharp at electrical wiring schemes but I had a thought and here's what I came up with: Each pickup has it's own volume control- three pickups- three knobs. The volume pots are push/pull - I've got them wired to different legs of a stereo jack depending on the position of the push/pull switch. So if a pickup's volume control is "pushed" it would go to the "ring" and if it's pulled it goes to the "tip". This way, say the neck pickup, could be sent to the left channel with a smidgen of middle pickup while the bridge pickup dominates the right channel. So by adjusting the volumes of the idividual pickups I can build a stereo mix from the guitar. It seemed like a perfect plan! I could, more or less, mix my sound then send signals to the actual mixer for processing and hopeful a "3d" sound. Here's the rub- it's quirky! Why is that! LOL! When one pot is shut off the others shut off, too. Only by "cracking" the pot open a bit will the others come on. Then there is what I assume is some phasing problems when certain combinations are reached. I installed phase reversal switches but that just made it harder for me to tell what was going on. Also-there seems to be a lot of "dead roll" in the pot's travel- this may have to do with the taper- I don't know- but there's no difference between say "8" and "3" on the knob. I just get the impression that there is something going on in this scheme that I don't understand My question to you is this- is it possible to "passively" emulate a 2 channel stereo mixer using the guitar's volume pots only?? Wth stereo jack? Or would there have to be an active circuit in there somewhere? I would appreciate any thoughts on this. Thanks Daf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chipotle Posted November 9, 2001 Share Posted November 9, 2001 You might try using the push/pull switch as the phase switch for each pickup and replacing your current phase switches with 3 position on/off/on toggle switches. The output of the volume pot would go to one of the 3 position switches. With one side of the switch wired to the tip and the other to the ring of the output jack, you could use the toggle switches to assign the pickup to the left,off, or to the right. Essentially, you would set the blend of pickups with the volume knobs and assign each pickup as you like with the toggle switch. Your pots are either the wrong taper (linear when they should be audio) or too large a value. Unless you're using extremely hot pickups 250k for single coils and 500k for humbuckers usually works well. Hope that helps... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daf Posted November 9, 2001 Author Share Posted November 9, 2001 thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timrocker Posted November 10, 2001 Share Posted November 10, 2001 Hi Chipotle; Now I'm curious about the pickup deal. How hot would a pickup need to be before you would recommend a different value of pot? And what value pot would you then recommend? Has this been done very much, and by whom? What results did they get? I'm very curious about these things, as it seems to me there are some very interesting and different guitar sounds on record. Some of them sound very unusual and unlike the "stock" guitar sounds of factory shipped guitars off the rack. Thanks for more info. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chipotle Posted November 12, 2001 Share Posted November 12, 2001 [quote]Originally posted by timrocker: [b]How hot would a pickup need to be before you would recommend a different value of pot? And what value pot would you then recommend? Has this been done very much, and by whom? What results did they get? I'm very curious about these things, as it seems to me there are some very interesting and different guitar sounds on record. [/b][/quote] I've messed with many passive pickups in many guitars, but I still would hesitate to quote some definitive rule. The theory behind the value of the pots is that if it is too high, there will be a range in the pot that doesn't reduce the volume (ie your guitar is on ten and you have to turn the pot to 7 before the volume diminishes). If it is too low, you could be choking some of the high end (ie similar to the high end roll off when you compare your guitar on 10 to say 7). Generally, Fender guitars have 250k pots and Gibson humbucking guitars have 500k pots. If you're replacing strat or tele pickups with another alnico magnet single coil, you probably don't need to change the value of the volume pot because the output of the pickups is relative. If you put a humbucker in your strat, you might try a 500k pot since a humbucker's output is much greater than a strat pickup. If you try a Seymour Duncan Invader or some kind of high output ceramic magnet pickup, you could consider a 1 meg pot. I've tried 1 meg pots and found the play in the volume control to be annoying. You might try a higher value pot to see if you can hear the difference. If you don't do a lot of volume swells, there's not much to lose in having the extra "headroom." Dan Torres at http://www.torresengineering.com sells a 1 Meg pot "kit." He also has 4 pole 5 position strat switches which can be quite interesting for alternate wirings. If you are a strat player, you might try Lindy Fralin's bass plate which you solder under your bridge pickup for that extra push over the cliff. [ 11-11-2001: Message edited by: Chipotle ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stanner Posted November 12, 2001 Share Posted November 12, 2001 i dont care for strat wiring either-here is what we do: remove all pots--send each p/u to a separate amp,which is setup w/ different(duh...) eqs.-place vol.ped in efx loop of amps and bring each in when neccessary-it is the most killer setup i've ever heard,but hey thats me... s AMPSSOUNDBETTERLOUDER Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the stranger Posted November 12, 2001 Share Posted November 12, 2001 [quote]Here's the rub- it's quirky! Why is that! LOL! When one pot is shut off the others shut off, too. Only by "cracking" the pot open a bit will the others come on. [/quote] My first guess would be a ground problem. I've done a good bit of improvisational guitar wiring, too. Everytime I've had a problem, it was lack of a ground somewhere. I would open it back up and make sure you have every single opportunity to ground grounded. [ 11-12-2001: Message edited by: dr destructo ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daf Posted November 12, 2001 Author Share Posted November 12, 2001 Thanks for all the replies! I like the idea of removing the volume pots all together. Thanks Daf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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