double neck wiring

[NyYankeehatr]

Nickster  had a double neck project came out great really loved how the project came out, im doing a double neck project also and was hopeing to get his wiring diagram and a question answered. Can you use a push pull  pot in place of a three way switch to switch necks and use the same volume and tone??

 

[curtisa]

Provided you don't have a need for a "both necks at once" option, then yes. A push-pull pot will work perfectly as a "one or the other" switch that is independent of the pot element itself.

Pickup selection across each neck will be the only limiting factor - ie, how many pickups per neck, and  do you want one pickup selector per neck or one pickup selector for the whole guitar?

[NyYankeehatr]

I have a E mega selector switch im hoping to use for both necks. its set up like a Strat Double neck

[curtisa]

That could be an issue then.

Putting the pickup selector switch downstream of the neck selector means that the neck switch needs the same number of 'poles' as the number of pickups in a neck. Each pole allows the selection of a pickup on the upper neck and its corresponding pickup on the lower neck to be passed to the selector switch for subsequent combining. The idea is that the pickup selector, instead of selecting a combination of pickups, selects a combination of pickups per neck. So instead of having a 5-way switch do bridge/bridge+mid/mid/mid+neck/neck, it does bridge (from neck 1 or 2)/bridge+mid (from neck 1 or 2)/mid (from neck 1 or 2) etc...

Three pickups in a typical Strat requires three poles on the neck selector switch, but I think you're going to struggle finding a push-pull pot with more than two poles on the switching element. Possible alternatives:

• Reduce the number of pickups in each neck to two instead of three.
• Use a different style of switch as the neck selector. A rotary switch should be available with three or more poles and mini toggles can be bought with up to four poles.
• Have a 5-way pickup selector for each neck. The push-pull then only needs to select the output of the upper 5-way pickup selector or the lower, which only requires a single pole on the push-pull to achieve.

The are other ways of achieving your original switching requirement, but they involve installing batteries and relays which I assume will be over-complicating the build too much.

 

[mistermikev]

correct me if I'm wrong but if you used the two sides of a 5 way strat switch as neck1 vs neck2 and just switched the live to either one side or the other side you'd really only need one pole and two throws. 

 

this does not allow for the typical multiple tone controls (at least not the conventional way of doing it).

[curtisa]

Ah, yes! Well spotted. And it will even work with the E-megaswitch that the OP is wanting to use.

[NyYankeehatr]

thanks really appreciate your help on this, be nice to work off a schematic but ill try and draw it out on paper and let ya"ll know how it goes.