Telecaster Contact Mic And Humbucker Wiring Problem

[farfisacontinental]

Hey guys!

I've been building my first project guitar for a few months now and have finally got around to the wiring.

I'm using a catswhisker t-bucker (tele bridge shaped humbucker pickup)

and the neck pickup has been replaced with a contact mic to pick up sympathetic resonances of some chimes I have stuck into the guitar.

My wiring is below, the top part is the volume knob for the contact mic and a modified version of a big muff tone circuit I got from the 'Audio Beavis' website.

Where am I going wrong? I plug the guitar in and get no sound what so ever.

Help would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

N

[Tim37]

the wiring on the switch doesnt look right to me. i may be wrong but double check that.

[farfisacontinental]

the wiring on the switch doesnt look right to me. i may be wrong but double check that.

What do you think is wrong with it?

[Keegan]

Why are you grounding to screws on the switch?

And the volume shouldn't be connected to one of the middle lugs on the switch, it's definitely hooked to one of the switch positions there, you need to have it on the common terminal, whichever one that may be for this switch. Look up wiring for a 3-way with two single coils, that's essentially what you're doing here, except one of your pickups is the contact mic circuit.

Edit: Actually it should be exactly the same as the SD wiring diagram you started with...

Edited April 19, 2010 by Keegan

[psw]

I don't see any battery or preamp...this is going to be a fundamental flaw as the mismatch between the piezo pickup and the magnetic pickup and normal guitar amps are going to load tings down a lot and make for all kinds of problems.

A tone circuit of resistors and caps is passive, so there is no gain there. Not familiar with it, but in a stompbox there is an active circuit that can make such tone networks effective and might be effective with a preamp in this design, but taken on it's own without a battery powered circuit, probably not. Remember, passive circuits can cancel frequencies, not boost them.

I have not checked the wiring, for these reasons, no sound at all would imply a short of some kind...check the logic, better yet, test each system completely interdependently and as you wire so you can find the problem as it occurs.

Good luck...I have a project that uses something like this, an LP with Khaler with piezo under the bridge to add the magnetic pickups. The plan is to use a basic preamp and activate it with a push pull switch and single volume control to fade it into the magnetic sound.

Mixing mags and piezos can work, but always require at least some preamp on the piezo and for best results a proper mixing circuit in the guitar. I have done them with piezos in the neck pocket of strats, they can be sensitive to handling noise, but even with a very basic preamp sound surprisingly good.