Epiphone Special Ii

[DreamSeller]

I have a special II by epiphone and im wondering a couple of things.

With the stock pickups is there any half decent mods, What i would really like to do is be able to use just a single coil of the bridge pickup and control it with a push pull pot. Im not sure if i can though because the pickups only have two wires, so im assuming the coils cannot be split.

Does anyone have a wiring diagram of this guitar?

-Dream

[George Brown]

unfortunatly you are correct, you cannot split the coils if there are only two wires.

you may want to replace the pickups with ones that have four conductor wirring this will enable you to split the coils as well as many other things, i mod i like is by where one of the tone controlls are replaced with a pot the fades one of the coils out to ground, so on 10 you have full humbucker and 0 full single coil and everything inbetween

here is a schematic for you guitar as it should be stock

Edited May 7, 2006 by George Brown

[DreamSeller]

Any El Cheapo pickups that have the extra wires. I would invest in some EMGs but they would be worth as much as the uitar itself so I think I will wait until i get a better guitar for that.

-Dream

[George Brown]

if you're just going to buy cheapo pick-ups dont bother.

if you want emg's go for them, just keep the epiphone pick-ups electronics (emgs need 25k pots) then when you get a better guitar put the old electronics back in the epiphone and the emg's in the new one.

[weezerboy]

i always thought it was possible to add a coil tap to a two wire pickup, but it involved taking the tape off and soldering an extra wire in?

im pretty sure it's been talked about on this forum, so search and ye shall find.

[Robert_the_damned]

You're right weezerboy you can convert any 2 conductor to a 4 conductor as long as you're careful. I've done it and its not to difficult. The stock epiphone pickups will most likely sound nasty as single coils though, depending on what output they are you might get some ok tones but they're likely to hum a lot.

If you're going to have a coil tap I suggest you use the push-pull pot to tap both humbuckers so you can use the middle possition to get the two singles in parrallel to get rid of the hum (plus that combination just sounds cool).

Robert

[George Brown]

this should save you some time

link

the middle positon of the john petrucci model has the two inner coils selected of the two humbuckers and it does sound really good

for the middle position make sure the coils are reverse polarity both electricaly and magneticly at least i think thats right

Edited May 7, 2006 by George Brown

[DreamSeller]

Thanks for all your help everyone, I now have a basic idea of what I want to do.

Firstly I would like to make the bridge pickup a four conductor, then I would like to make the pickup switch like this. down=lower single coil, up=higher (neck) single coil and centre=humbucking.

Then since I never use the tone knob anyway I would like to make the tone knob a blend pot between the neck and bridge pickups.

Can this be done or am I dreaming?

Thanks

-Dream

[DreamSeller]

*Bump*

Sorry To Be Impatient

-Dream

[Robert_the_damned]

I think it might but not with a conventional 3 way les paul switch. I think you'd need one of these. I believe one would fit into the electronics cavity of a special II but the switch would probably have to operate up/down rather than forward/back. here's the digram to do what you want:

Unfortunately I've not been able to get the switching in the same order. this one works humbucking/neck single/bridge single if you take the right hand coil to be the bridge side coil.

I have to warn you the two single coil sounds are likely to sound exactly the same because they're 'identical' coils and they're in basicly the same place. I believe you'd be better off buying a push pull pot or a small toggle switch and just have simple coil tap and keep your standard switching for pickup selection. If you want blending then why not set your guitar up so its dual volume control and no tone control and then you'll still be able to switch between settings as well as blending.

Robert

Edited May 11, 2006 by Robert_the_damned

[DreamSeller]

The two volume pot idea would be fine too. What I was initially looking at the blend pot and somthing to use the switch for.

-Dream

[DreamSeller]

Tryin to think of something to use the switch for.

Any ideas?

-Dream

[Robert_the_damned]

you could still use it for pickup switching and just have blending on the 'both' setting. There's not a lot else you can do with it I don't think...you could get a switch that fits the same size whole that's a DPDT on-on and use that for your coil tapping...can't really think of anything else to suggest!

Robert