guitz Posted August 19, 2012 Report Share Posted August 19, 2012 have a guitar with a bridge humbucker and a neck p-rail...the idea of blending , say, the parallel bridge humucker sound with the p-rails trifecta of sounds, single coil (blade), P90, and humbucker has me scratching my head how to incorporate the blend pot with the grigsby 4 way switch....I want to keep the wide open series bridge humbucker at position 1 on the switch, with either no blend option or blend the humbucker's parallel sound (is that even possible?) here....position 2, I'm thinking bridge humbucker parallel sound ...position 3 I'm thinking p-rail neck P90 and bridge humbucker, series or parallel....position 4 I'm thinking either p-rail P90 alone or p-rail humbucker alone.....Trying to decide if , how , when and where to wire the blend into each position has officially overloaded my brain lol....the volume pot also has a push/pull switch to give even further, complicated wiring possibilites that I haven't figured out yet....if anyone wants to take a shot at this, I'm all ears...been awhile since I've tackled any from scratch wiring, so I'm rusty on what's possible or not,etc... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ansil Posted August 20, 2012 Report Share Posted August 20, 2012 what kind of music will you be playing with this guitar. i am pretty darn sure i can figure this out for ya but it may be a little unorthodox so a push pull volume a 4 way switch and do you have a tone control? utilizing a tone control with a push pull would help as on the upside it can be out of the circuit. plus have you tried just wiring these sounds up in the guitar first and seeing what you like about them? i haven't played with the p rails as much as i would like too. however i do have a real p-90 Duncan in my neck of my guitar. which is a godin les pual style. and a dimarzio humbucker in the bridge. and what i found actually worked on a three way was the two pickups together didn't really do much for me sonically. most people agreed with me. for my style i am doing a nice crunchy rhythm with some lead fills and harmonics on the bridge pickup and most of my sustaining liquid leads are all on the neck pickup. and for me neither works well as a clean tone the p-90 is too dark and lets face it after piezos in guitars humbuckers just don't cut the clean stuff anymore so i wired up where you would normally coil cut the guitar to be wired in parallel with the p-90 minus the filter circuit i build into the necks of all my guitars. this gave me a nice clean tone and an interesting distorted tone. as well as the other two. so maybe that will help you out in figuring it out for ya. but from the looks of the circuit in my head you will have to do the series parallel stuff with a push pull since you need to get a ground connection and lift a ground connection at the same time. that would be the easiest. a far as the pushpull is concerned i set it up like this. now you could forgo going straight into the grigsby and go to the blend pot first then the grigsby theres the beginings for ya. series down parallel up. obviously for simplicity i drew the pot as you would see it being wired and the orange connections are all to ground and the top of the pot here is not finished being wired but it is for a standard volume the way i left it. i thought it would behoove me to point out the way i did it since it was a quick and dirty sim Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guitz Posted August 20, 2012 Author Report Share Posted August 20, 2012 what kind of music will you be playing with this guitar. i am pretty darn sure i can figure this out for ya but it may be a little unorthodox so a push pull volume a 4 way switch and do you have a tone control? utilizing a tone control with a push pull would help as on the upside it can be out of the circuit. plus have you tried just wiring these sounds up in the guitar first and seeing what you like about them? i haven't played with the p rails as much as i would like too. however i do have a real p-90 Duncan in my neck of my guitar. which is a godin les pual style. and a dimarzio humbucker in the bridge. and what i found actually worked on a three way was the two pickups together didn't really do much for me sonically. most people agreed with me. for my style i am doing a nice crunchy rhythm with some lead fills and harmonics on the bridge pickup and most of my sustaining liquid leads are all on the neck pickup. and for me neither works well as a clean tone the p-90 is too dark and lets face it after piezos in guitars humbuckers just don't cut the clean stuff anymore so i wired up where you would normally coil cut the guitar to be wired in parallel with the p-90 minus the filter circuit i build into the necks of all my guitars. this gave me a nice clean tone and an interesting distorted tone. as well as the other two. so maybe that will help you out in figuring it out for ya. but from the looks of the circuit in my head you will have to do the series parallel stuff with a push pull since you need to get a ground connection and lift a ground connection at the same time. that would be the easiest. a far as the pushpull is concerned i set it up like this. now you could forgo going straight into the grigsby and go to the blend pot first then the grigsby theres the beginings for ya. series down parallel up. obviously for simplicity i drew the pot as you would see it being wired and the orange connections are all to ground and the top of the pot here is not finished being wired but it is for a standard volume the way i left it. i thought it would behoove me to point out the way i did it since it was a quick and dirty sim thanks for the reply!....Yea, I should try these out first as I haven't yet installed them , just going over potential wiring ideas...I like trying to play nearly anything, and like a lot of guys, the idea of having 1 guitar that covers typical rock/metal sounds aka bridge humbucker in series is priority 1. The SD trembucker should take care of that nicely as it's based off a Duncan distortion , just F spaced and that is my favorite all time pickup...Next, the IDEA of getting those cool twangy vintagey single coil tele and strat sounds is also something that would be nice to attempt to approximate in one guitar...I know from past experience the single coil sound of a split humbucker will at best sound like a very weak strat tone, but, between the parallel sounds of the coils AND perhaps blending in teeny tiny amounts of neck P90/single coil/humbucer tone MAY give a sound that covers a choice sounding Fender single coil strat , which is easier and a tele bridge sound, which is harder , to get. Just total theory, it probably won't be exact, but if it's close and useable , I'd be happy... I want to keep the two knob look on the guitar also, and I found a schematic that could utilize the push/pull on the volume pot that doubles it up as the tone control(!) in the UP position, so that would free up the 2nd pot spot for the blend knob.....I'm going to spend quite a bit of time experimenting I'm sure and may find that what I thought I wanted doesn't quite cut it or find some other unexpected good things but that's ok..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ansil Posted August 20, 2012 Report Share Posted August 20, 2012 this is probably not an idea you would be interested in but a long long time ago. in a city not far away. [sorry couldn't resist] i was trying as many batsheit crazy ways of wiring my ibanez clone that i found in a flea market. i ran all the wires from the pickups through a home made shielded cable and all the way down to a dip switch board so i could just kind of flip dip switches and demo out certain tones with or without distortion and effects. i have found that some coil split modes are really cool on clean mode but suck butt trumpets on dirty mode. and visa versa. later it became a relay driven monster with the help of a friend and local tech so i could switch to anything and switch my rig as well. way to complex to even begin drawing up again but i am thinking of doing something similar and switching my drive characteristics with it on my new guitar. but right now i am having too much fun with my fet sims of my favorite amps in my guitar. sure its a little inconvenient having to set your eq on trimpots and forget it. but the characteristics of this mini fet amp set the way i like it and then running it into my pedals .. priceless. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
guitz Posted August 21, 2012 Author Report Share Posted August 21, 2012 (edited) this is probably not an idea you would be interested in but a long long time ago. in a city not far away. [sorry couldn't resist] i was trying as many batsheit crazy ways of wiring my ibanez clone that i found in a flea market. i ran all the wires from the pickups through a home made shielded cable and all the way down to a dip switch board so i could just kind of flip dip switches and demo out certain tones with or without distortion and effects. i have found that some coil split modes are really cool on clean mode but suck butt trumpets on dirty mode. and visa versa. later it became a relay driven monster with the help of a friend and local tech so i could switch to anything and switch my rig as well. way to complex to even begin drawing up again but i am thinking of doing something similar and switching my drive characteristics with it on my new guitar. but right now i am having too much fun with my fet sims of my favorite amps in my guitar. sure its a little inconvenient having to set your eq on trimpots and forget it. but the characteristics of this mini fet amp set the way i like it and then running it into my pedals .. priceless. way cool!....that sounds interesting...a sort of custom active on-board electronic setup IN the guitar? the most tantalizing thing about getting mutiple GOOD tones in one guitar, is that you pick up a strat, or tele or guitars with specific unique tones and you hear that nice tone and think.....it's wood, it's got a pickup....my guitar has those, how can I approximate it! ... I'm almost thinking about slapping a metal plate around the bridge humbucker to hear what that would do! Edited August 21, 2012 by guitz 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ansil Posted August 21, 2012 Report Share Posted August 21, 2012 Man I love atele neck pickup. Best neck tone ever. That in a strat and I am in love again . I love the 4 way switches I an putting one in the new bez clone. Active bridge hum neck single in middle to coil split Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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