Series/parallel Blending?

[j. pierce]

I've been thinking of experimenting with series/parallel combinations, both in the humbucker in my guitar, and the two single-coil p'ups in my bass.

Browsing through Myka's site the other day, I've found a couple of references to what I belive are Sires/Parallel blend controls? I'm curious how you would go about wiring up something like that. (mostly be cause I always seem to prefer knobs to switches whenever possible) Is this only possible with active pickups? I'm just not getting my head wrapped around how you'd do this. Seems like it would be either series or parallel, not both.

[JoeAArthur]

For a series/parallel blend control you want to use a passive pickup. Washburn uses this wiring for their VCC (Voice Contour Control) that replaces the tone control for each humbucker. It does need to be a 4-wire humbucker.

To blend between series and parallel you want to use a 500K dual linear pot. This is just a plain old ordinary dual pot.

By using a "Pan Pot" instead, you wind up with a control that will blend in a coil in series, parallel, or shut that coil off completely in the center detent - with the other coil.

In the diagram below, coil #1 and coil #2 is your choice. As it is shown wired, it will give series fully clockwise and parallel fully counter-clockwise for the series/blender.

For the series/single/parallel option, the detent will have coil #2 only, rotating clockwise will blend in coil #1 in series, rotating counterclockwise will blend in coil #1 in parallel.

EDIT: Note for the pan pot, make sure which section provides a resistance change when. Some are backward from what I assumed here and so the wiring to which pot section would need to be reversed.

Edited June 6, 2006 by JoeAArthur

[Sambo]

That's very clever i like it

Is that how washburn do it? never had the opportunity to open one up to see!

[George Brown]

thanks for the diagram, been thinking about it for a while but could never come up with a diagram, iv also heard those pots refered to as dual ganged pots so if your buying some you may want to check if there refered to as that

[j. pierce]

Hey Joe - thanks! Makes sense now. I've done my share of electronics work and have little problem understanding schematics, but making the leap to figuring things out on my own always seems to elude me.

Much appreciated.

[Mattia]

Schweet! That's pretty darn nifty. Going to have to try that. In fact, going to have to try that with the 'coils' being the entire pickups. That'll give me a 'dead' switch position (mute), but still, should be kinda nifty.

[m0b1liz3]

Don't suppose you drew up a schematic for SSS strat??

I had seen the schematic for a blender at http://electron.tailfeatherz.com/c21.html

and had thought that you could use a dual gang pot and still have a master tone control.

The only problem is that it seemed as though you would get 100 series and 0 parallel at one end and the opposite at the other with 50% of each in the middle. That wouldn't be good with a strat cause you would still want the traditional single pickup sound too.

However it sounds as though this could be done with the Pan pot. I just don't want to jump into that without a schematic since this is the first time I will be wiring a strat!

[JoeAArthur]

Don't suppose you drew up a schematic for SSS strat??

I had seen the schematic for a blender at http://electron.tailfeatherz.com/c21.html

and had thought that you could use a dual gang pot and still have a master tone control.

The only problem is that it seemed as though you would get 100 series and 0 parallel at one end and the opposite at the other with 50% of each in the middle. That wouldn't be good with a strat cause you would still want the traditional single pickup sound too.

However it sounds as though this could be done with the Pan pot. I just don't want to jump into that without a schematic since this is the first time I will be wiring a strat!

There are 7 different combinations of 3 pickups in parallel alone. No, I don't happen to have any schematics lying around incorporating this idea into a Strat.

I'm not sure what you are looking for. What do you want your SSS Strat to do? I understand one master volume and tone control - so let's take that as a given.

It's the other things like the switch, number of positions and how you expect them to function with a series/parallel blender that I seem to be confused about. Tell me what you would like and maybe I could help.

[m0b1liz3]

[JoeAArthur]

No, no, no, no, no - you are not telling me WHAT it is you wanna series/parallel blend.

For example, if you told me you want to series/parallel blend in the middle pickup ONLY - it would be relatively simple to do something like:

Three way switch - selects neck, both, bridge pickups

Master volume

Middle pickup series/off/parallel blender knob

Master tone

I know you want a blender - I know you want a master volume and a master tone.

I don't know WHAT you want to blend and WHEN you want to blend it.

[m0b1liz3]

No, no, no, no, no - you are not telling me WHAT it is you wanna series/parallel blend.

For example, if you told me you want to series/parallel blend in the middle pickup ONLY - it would be relatively simple to do something like:

Three way switch - selects neck, both, bridge pickups

Master volume

Middle pickup series/off/parallel blender knob

Master tone

I know you want a blender - I know you want a master volume and a master tone.

I don't know WHAT you want to blend and WHEN you want to blend it.

Oops ok here it goes. Neck and mid in series and/or neck and bridge in series. Neck and bridge in parallel.