Eliminating 3-way Switch

[unclej]

i can't quite wrap my brain around this...a customer brought me a great old beat up les paul on which he paid someone to remove the tone pots. the wiring is like a rats nest and he's getting bleed over from one pup to the other when one volume is completely down.

my first thought was if you're going for simplicity why not eliminate the three way all together and just blend with the volume controls..my concern, and the part that i can't quite visualize is this: if you wire both humbuckers up to one volume pot each and then run both hot leads to the pos side of the output jack will they truly function independently or will each volume pot control both pups?

[thegarehanman]

No, but if you're getting rid of the 3 way toggle, you'd better go for the input on the inside lug and output and ground on the outside lug configuration to avoid having the signal cut out when one pickup is turned to zero. Have you considered a blend pot and a volume pot? Then he has the option of volume swells with more than one pickup.

[JoeAArthur]

I would do a blend pot as thegarhanman suggested... but if you're going to stick with dual volume controls take a look at the wiring for a jazz bass for how the volume controls are connected.

http://www.seymourduncan.com/support/schem.../jazz_bass.html

[unclej]

thanks guys..both good suggestions but i actually finally found what his problem was and fixed it..whoever had worked on it before had the hot lead of one pup wired to the center lug of it's volume pot and the other hot lead to an outside lug which was causing it to bleed over a bit and what finally led me to the solution was that when you turned down the neck pup when the switch was in the middle position it would shut off both...

anyway, all is good and i appreciate the advice.