Is This Guitar Wiring Possible?

[Aka Nameless]

I have a guitar that i'm building with h/h pickup scheme, I want to wire it up with one on/on/on switch for neck hb/inner coils as hb/bridge hb, then a on/on/on switch for series/parallel/killswitch. With 2 volume knobs, one active when in series mode, and the other active in parallel mode (so I can balance the volume of both and switch to any pickup config with little volume change), and one tone knob that is always active. Last but not least a kill button in addition to the one on the second on/on/on switch. So i'll esentially get 3 humbuckers (neck/inner coils/bridge) in either series or parallel mode (with a dedicated volume control for both), a killswitch, a kill button and a tone knob.

So, 2 humbuckers, 2 volume knobs, 1 tone knob, 2 on/on/on switches and a kill/silence button.

Everything seems straight forward until I get to thinking about thee series/parallelswitch, and I get all mixed up on how I would do it. Is this wiring scheme possible?

Is it's possible, does anyone know of a website with a schematic for this exact wiring or something close?!

I've done some standard jazz bass wirings and stuff before, but i'm still pretty new to this, sorry if this is a dumb question.

Thanks in advance.

Edited July 29, 2010 by Aka Nameless

[borge]

I have a guitar that i'm building with h/h pickup scheme, I want to wire it up with one on/on/on switch for neck hb/inner coils as hb/bridge hb, then a on/on/on switch for series/parallel/killswitch.

you want inter pup or intra pup series/parallel?

Anything is possible with enough poles but i'm not sure it can be done with standard/easily available toggle switches, and I'm not going to find out for you

Draw up as much as you can, post it up and we'll go from there. These resources may help:

http://guitarnuts2.proboards.com/index.cgi...amp;thread=3769

http://guitarnuts2.proboards.com/index.cgi...amp;thread=3760

[Aka Nameless]

I have a guitar that i'm building with h/h pickup scheme, I want to wire it up with one on/on/on switch for neck hb/inner coils as hb/bridge hb, then a on/on/on switch for series/parallel/killswitch.

you want inter pup or intra pup series/parallel?

Anything is possible with enough poles but i'm not sure it can be done with standard/easily available toggle switches, and I'm not going to find out for you

Draw up as much as you can, post it up and we'll go from there. These resources may help:

http://guitarnuts2.proboards.com/index.cgi...amp;thread=3769

http://guitarnuts2.proboards.com/index.cgi...amp;thread=3760

I want, like, if i have switch 1 in forward neck position, and switch 2 in series, it works as normal humbucker, if i switch to parallel on switch 2 but keep switch 1 in neck position its the neck hb coils working in parallel. Same with middle posion in switch 1 (inner coils "bottom coil of neck hb, top coil from bridge hb), and bottom position in switch 1 (bridge humbucker).

Was hoping someone would say "Oh, that's exactly how ________ guitar is wired, use this schematic for that wiring setup".

With past wiring jobs I picked standard wiring schemes that I had a schematic for, and I could just study the schematic to make sense of it. Reverse engineering sort of..

This one won't be as easy i'm guessing..

Edited July 29, 2010 by Aka Nameless

[borge]

It's not a very intuitive layout, it so i highly doubt it's been done before...

Doing up a truth a truth table (a table like in the bottom left of the below pic) of how you want it to work will make things clearer.

[Aka Nameless]

Ok, 2 on/on/on switches, one named 3 way = pickup selection, the other named switch2 = parallel/killswitch/series.

---------- Switch2 forward "parallel" - Switch2 Mid "killswitch" - Switch2 Rear "series"

3 way

1------------- neck hb parallel ---------- signal grounded -------- neck hb series

2------------- inner coils parallel ------- signal grounded -------- inner coils series

3------------- bridge hb parallel -------- signal grounded -------- bridge hb series

Exactly like that..

One of the 3 way selectors "on/on/on" will choose the pickup combo (neck hb, inner coils, bridge hb), the other on/on/on (maybe on/off/on?) selector will be parallel/killswitch/series. 2 volume 1 tone, one volume active when in series, and other volume active when in parallel mode, tone is a master tone.

I have found some vvt schematics, but they had the volumes dedicated to the pickups, one volume for neck and one for bridge... that is not what I want.

Still scouring the web to find a schematic close to what I want that I could tweak.

Edited July 30, 2010 by Aka Nameless

[Ripthorn]

A couple thoughts:

First, standard three way toggles are not on/on/on. Those kinds of switches are even less intuitive to wire up and harder to come by (and expensive).

Second, why a kill button in addtion to a switch?

Third, I think you are going to need a lot more poles than you anticipate.

Here are some rough guidelines to help you think through it. First, every coil is going to have to go to the neck/bridge switch, which will then come out and go in to series/parallel switch. Then the signal will have to routed (using a pole on the parallel/series/kill switch) to the correct volume knob. So far that is at least four poles on theneck/bridge switch (one each for the two coils, one for grounds, and one for volume, you might need one more for the other ground). Getting the right combinations on the series/parallel switch really only relies on getting the right coils to it, which just means you need a real on/on/on switch. Then you can route the output from both volumes to the kill button. You will need to get probably a pair of 4PDT on/on/ on switches, which are about 20 bucks a shot at mouser. It can be done, but you will have to draw schematics and trace every possible signal combination to make sure it works.

[Aka Nameless]

Pretty much this image below, but you see how he has a series/coil split/parallel for each pickup and a seperate series/parallel selector for when the pickups are both split? This is pretty much exactly what I want to do (except inner coils instead of outer), but it seems easier to select the pickup (neck hb/inner coils/bridge hb) on one switch, and a master series/parallel on the other switch. Also I want the volume controls to be one when in series, other when in parallel (so I can account for the drop in volume in parallel compaired to series).

Like I said i'm a newbie to the crazy wirings, maybe I just woont have enough poles unless I do it like the above picture..

Edited July 30, 2010 by Aka Nameless

[borge]

Pretty much this image below,

That's series split parallel, you want series/off/parallel don't you?

but you see how he has a series/coil split/parallel for each pickup and a seperate series/parallel selector for when the pickups are both split?

It isn't for when both pups are split, it switches inter pup series/parallel regardless of the intra pup series/split/parallel switches position/s.

This is pretty much exactly what I want to do (except inner coils instead of outer), but it seems easier to select the pickup (neck hb/inner coils/bridge hb) on one switch, and a master series/parallel on the other switch. Also I want the volume controls to be one when in series, other when in parallel (so I can account for the drop in volume in parallel compaired to series).

PIC

Like I said i'm a newbie to the crazy wirings, maybe I just woont have enough poles unless I do it like the above picture..

Well get drawing and find out

Edited August 1, 2010 by borge