mo biscuits Posted January 25, 2004 Report Share Posted January 25, 2004 im wanting to use toggle switches to turn on and off pickups and get rid of tone and volume controls altogether, is this possible and if so are there any downsides to it such as tone degredation. any help is much appreciated Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnnyG Posted January 25, 2004 Report Share Posted January 25, 2004 this would be entirelly posable and really not that hard to do get 1 switch for each pickup. a on/off micro switch would be fine. solder the hot wire from a pickup to one tab on the switch and then have a wire from the other tab that goes off and joins the tabs form the rest of the switches....lemme rephrase that since it isnt clear imagine the switches have an input tab and an output tab. the hot wire fronm the pickups goes to the input tab, the output tabs are then joined together and would go (in this case) straight to the jack socket on the guitar when the switch was flicked on the 2 tabs of the switch would be connected, when it wasnt they would be disconnected meaning that you werent getting any output from that pickup. i hope thats clear lol, i cant think of an easy way to describe it atm 2 things to take into account 1) if you use switches get decent quality ones, otherwise you will get some crackles and pops from the switches when you flick them on and off 2) from what ive heard, if you have pickups without tone and volume controls then they can sound really bright. you might want to have a small resistor capacitor circuit inside the guitar just to take a little bit of the edge off them, course you may want bright pickups in which case ignore me hopethis is helpful man. if you dont get what i was rambling on about then tell me and ill draw a picture lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
westhemann Posted January 25, 2004 Report Share Posted January 25, 2004 sure...go for it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbkim Posted January 25, 2004 Report Share Posted January 25, 2004 2) from what ive heard, if you have pickups without tone and volume controls then they can sound really bright. you might want to have a small resistor capacitor circuit inside the guitar just to take a little bit of the edge off them, course you may want bright pickups in which case ignore me This is a good idea. I currently have a guitar wired with no pots... and it's just way too much of a good thing. Well, in my tube rig, it's too much, too much output, WAY too bright. On my office pedal board setup it kinda sounds pretty cool. If you're going to be playing different guitars (one w/o pots vs. ones w/ pots) in the same amps, it'll sound too different when you switch guitars with the same amp settings... even more different than when switching from a HB vs. SC guitar in the same amp. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
westhemann Posted January 25, 2004 Report Share Posted January 25, 2004 i like the extra bit of signal that you get that way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbkim Posted January 25, 2004 Report Share Posted January 25, 2004 i like the extra bit of signal that you get that way. It is cool in a way... but having it up ALL the time is too much, IMO. I've wondered if there'd be a way to wire a switch to bypass all the electronics, pots, etc. to use the "extra bit" selectively... sort of like a "passive boost" I guess . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnnyG Posted January 25, 2004 Report Share Posted January 25, 2004 (JohnnyG @ Jan 25 2004, 04:08 PM) 2) from what ive heard, if you have pickups without tone and volume controls then they can sound really bright. you might want to have a small resistor capacitor circuit inside the guitar just to take a little bit of the edge off them, course you may want bright pickups in which case ignore me This is a good idea. I currently have a guitar wired with no pots... and it's just way too much of a good thing. Well, in my tube rig, it's too much, too much output, WAY too bright. On my office pedal board setup it kinda sounds pretty cool. If you're going to be playing different guitars (one w/o pots vs. ones w/ pots) in the same amps, it'll sound too different when you switch guitars with the same amp settings... even more different than when switching from a HB vs. SC guitar in the same amp. [\QUOTE] wow someone agrees with me guess i dont talk crap all the t ime It is cool in a way... but having it up ALL the time is too much, IMO. I've wondered if there'd be a way to wire a switch to bypass all the electronics, pots, etc. to use the "extra bit" selectively... sort of like a "passive boost" I guess . thatd be really easy to do. just get a Double Pole Double Throw micro switch. if you look at the switch from the bottom with the 2 rows of legs facing you lined up vertically then you just hook it up like this hot input lead from the pickup selector into the middle pole on the left side and then the output to the jack on the middle pole on the right side. the top 2 legs would be joined together (thats the bypass wire) and then the bottom left leg would go to the start of the tone/volume controls, the other end of the tone/volume controls would go to the bottom right hand leg. mount the switch and there's your control pot bypass switch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saber Posted January 25, 2004 Report Share Posted January 25, 2004 I've wondered if there'd be a way to wire a switch to bypass all the electronics, pots, etc. to use the "extra bit" selectively... sort of like a "passive boost" I guess . Of course it's possible. If you post your circuit, I'll re-post it with the added switch. EDIT: ... if JohnnyG doesn't beat me to it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mo biscuits Posted January 25, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 25, 2004 wow guys thanks for the quick answers, ill draw up a bitmap later with diagrams of what im actually trying to acomplish Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbkim Posted January 25, 2004 Report Share Posted January 25, 2004 I've wondered if there'd be a way to wire a switch to bypass all the electronics, pots, etc. to use the "extra bit" selectively... sort of like a "passive boost" I guess . Of course it's possible. If you post your circuit, I'll re-post it with the added switch. Hey! Thanks for the offer! The guitar in question is a Steinberger, i.e., there's no room for an extra switch, not even a push/pull pot. I'd probably try it on another guitar. I usually wire all my guitars with a single vol and tone pot wired after the pick-up selector switch (some have coil-taps, some don't)... so the bypass switching circuitry'd be somewhere after the pick-up selector switch I guess. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saber Posted January 25, 2004 Report Share Posted January 25, 2004 ill draw up a bitmap later with diagrams of what im actually trying to acomplish Try making it a jpg or a gif if you can. I'm only on dial-up! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mo biscuits Posted January 25, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 25, 2004 ok im not an artist by any means but this should be some idea of what im wanting to do http://profiles.yahoo.com/mobiscutts go into "view my photos" section ok the first toggle will be to go between the 2 single coils, and the second toggle will change the humbucker to single, and i plan on using active emg's Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saber Posted January 26, 2004 Report Share Posted January 26, 2004 go into "view my photos" section I don't see any photos. Please don't tell me I have to register to see them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mo biscuits Posted January 26, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 26, 2004 ok should be working now Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Page_Master Posted January 26, 2004 Report Share Posted January 26, 2004 i have often thought about doing the same thing. no pots, just an on/off switch for my pick up. now remember, potentiometers are variable resistors. now with your current electronics schematics, i am guessing all you would have to do is replace the pot with a resistor of the same value. i am not sure about this. corrections anyone? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbkim Posted January 26, 2004 Report Share Posted January 26, 2004 and i plan on using active emg's How would using the active EMG's affect this project? Would it affect the active circuitry not having any pots there?... and would it experience that "extra bit" that a passive setup would have? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnnyG Posted January 26, 2004 Report Share Posted January 26, 2004 all Active picups actually do is to have less wire wound round the bobbin on the pickup and so a lower resistance (normally about 4 to 5 Kohms for a humbucker i think) this means they have a much cleaner signal but that its much weaker, (im not too sure on the clearer signal but i remember it has some pretty good things about having lower resistance) because the signal is weaker there is a built in pre-amp that is situated in the guitar. so what happens is the hot wire from the pickup goes into the preamp inside the guitar and then the output from the preamp goes to the pickup selector etc like a normal pickup. thats the only actual difference from passive pickups so they should get the extra "boost" if they were to have no volume or tone pots N.B. if ife talked bull anywhere in this post then please feel free to corect me iof anybody knows better. im not too sure about active pickups so i may not be quite right Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saber Posted January 26, 2004 Report Share Posted January 26, 2004 and i plan on using active emg's How would using the active EMG's affect this project? Would it affect the active circuitry not having any pots there?... and would it experience that "extra bit" that a passive setup would have? The overall signal would be a bit louder evenly across the spectrum. You wouldn't get the benefit of a brighter sound like with passive pickups. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saber Posted January 26, 2004 Report Share Posted January 26, 2004 because the signal is weaker there is a built in pre-amp that is situated in the guitar. so what happens is the hot wire from the pickup goes into the preamp inside the guitar and then the output from the preamp goes to the pickup selector etc like a normal pickup. The active EMGs have the pre-amp built into the pickups themselves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnnyG Posted January 26, 2004 Report Share Posted January 26, 2004 aaahhh ok i see now, many thanks my man Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lovekraft Posted January 27, 2004 Report Share Posted January 27, 2004 If you're going to use EMGs without a volume, I'd still use a fixed resistor of the same size (25K?) across the output just to make sure the preamp has a load on it when you unplug the guitar. I don't know what kind of preamp EMG uses, but I do know that running any amp without a load is not good for it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saber Posted January 27, 2004 Report Share Posted January 27, 2004 If you're going to use EMGs without a volume, I'd still use a fixed resistor of the same size (25K?) across the output just to make sure the preamp has a load on it when you unplug the guitar. I don't know what kind of preamp EMG uses, but I do know that running any amp without a load is not good for it. Unlike a power amp that drives a speaker, there's no danger of damaging a pre-amp output if you remove the load. I would however add the resistor just to keep the overall output at the level that it was designed for, or maybe increase the value to 50K or 100K to get a little boost. The reason they recommend 25K pots instead of the 500K used for active pickups is because: 1. The pickup's pre-amp is not affected by low impedance loads like a passive pickup is. 2. Using 25K pots lower's the guitar's overall output impedance especially at mid-volume so that it's unaffected by long guitar cables (less treble loss). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ansil Posted January 30, 2004 Report Share Posted January 30, 2004 i took out the pickup selector in my yngwie copy and replaced it with a 100k slide pot. to balance the outer pickups. and use push pull pots on the three controls to do things like select phase, booster, and middle pickup ps if you wish to put a switch in there fro a freq roll off and you need a specific freq.. like for instance you want to make a mid notch... heres a great rc filter calculator.. for all the math wizards the actual fromula is as follows F = 1/(2PiRC) http://www.muzique.com/schem/filter.htm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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