Active Pickups, Wiring Ideas/plans/mods

[wickerwolf]

Hi all, after some googling ive decided on 2 simple mods to do to go with my new active pickups, but before i do them could somebody look at the schematic and check it all looks right?

The 2 mods are;

Solo mod - SPDT toggle, which takes the signal from the 5 way selector and then sends it to either volum\tone or directly to the jack (bypassing the vol\tone circuit)

Cap selector - SPDT toggle, with a cap on each possiton connecting to the tone pot, giving me 2 choices of cap.

Heres my schematics (both are the same just 1 is neater looking)

If theres any other mods that people think would be usefull please chip in, also im sure i recall a user here who did a simmilar tone\cap selector but also put trim pots before the caps, if i wanted to do this what value trim pots would i need?

Thanks.

[Tim37]

i dont know about iron gear but i have delt with emg's and here is what i would do. forget the bypass switch and cap swtich use the larger capacitor actives react different to the tone circuit i would do 18v and use a higher value pot 500k is fine it will give you nearly the same effect as a bypass swtich without anouther switch to mess with.

[wickerwolf]

Well after a days testing and playing around the actives are now back out the axe and will be listed on gumtree, there not nesseceraily bad sounding but theres something about them, i dont like, the mix of bridge and neck pickup gave a nice lead tone. But for rythm, i just couldnt warm to them.

Before taking them back out i rewired them to both stock and moded (tried an 86 cap and a 33 cap) to see if i could get the tone i wanted but no luck.

So now i've got a set of bare knuckle black hawks ordered and they will be going in on tuesday.

[Tim37]

I just traded off my strat loaded with emgs because i never did warm up to them but a lot of people love them, when i was laid iff i cant tell you how many i wired up.

[wickerwolf]

They didnt feel alive, the notes were all thick and clear but the dynamics were lacking, very compressed kind of sound, glad i didnt drop more money on emg's or blackouts now. Took the plunge and invested in the bare knuckle black hawks, and a new oak 5 way switch. The guitars got a tone and volume pot in it, and hooked up using cloth covered and waxed wire, using a .22 cap on the tone. So it should be a simple drop in of the new pickups when they arive.