Wiring help - SSS in series, three minis, phase switching

[komodo]

So, I'm building this, which uses one volume, one regular tone, and three mini switches. My goal was a simpler Brian May switching, with on/on/on switches resulting in phase/off/phase. 

And was using the attached diagram but with one regular tone and no solo switch.

My electronics knowledge is crap, and generally rely on diagrams where I can follow along. I get the general idea, but if we stray from the path I'm lost. My goals here are to: 1) have it wired in SERIES, 2) ability to individually switch on/off each pickup, 3) have phase options. Do not really want or need any series/parallel switching.

I understand the redundancy of having each switch phase, where there is then a lot of overlap. I'm totally open to maybe only one or two phase if it's opens options or makes it simpler. At this point I'm hoping someone can walk me through it, I've looked at a million related on the web but nothing the same.

Pups are two wire. My current minis are on-on-on but I can get whatever I need to make it work.

Red-Special-Wiring-On-On-On-Toggle-Switch-solo-switch.pdf

[curtisa]

Is that your diagram or someone else's?

As far as I can see that is series on/off switching with phase flips on each pickup, and should already satisfy your three requirements.

[komodo]

It’s not mine, I found it on a deep search for Red Special with three switches.

Hmm that is comforting. I’m not sure what got me questioning it. I’m nearly electronically illiterate, even though I’ve refurbed a couple amps, and built several pedals. It’s just not intuitive to me in any way. 

Can you explain the signal path? Maybe I don’t understand how these switches work.

[mistermikev]

the three pickups are in series.  depending on the pinout of the on/on/on the way this should work is if a pickup is in the middle position only the positive OR negative of it would be connected to live (ie it would be off) and the signal would be passed on the opposite lead to the next switch in the series.  it looks like there are two tone pots are both active and just giving sort of a coarse vs fine tune of the treble bleed off.  the solo switch bypasses the tone pots and the vol pot and sends the potential 3 pickups to the live.  I dunno if that makes it clearer for you but it's my best shot. 

 

probably important to note that the solo switch would just be an on/on dpdt... unless you want a full mute at the middle position of it.

 

[curtisa]

Either of @mistermikev's switch diagrams would actually work, although the one marked with the arrow is more likely to be the type you'll be able to buy, and is probably more likely to be the one used in the diagram.

At either extreme of operation, the mini toggle just behaves as a regular phase reverse switch.

In the middle position the mini toggle shorts the pickup signal out (connects the two pickup leads together) and bypasses it. This differs from a pickups-in-parallel situation where you want to disconnect the pickup to remove its contribution from the output.

Think of the three pickups in series as three people passing a bucket of water down the chain. The bucket needs to go from the top of the chain to the bottom. With all three people (pickups) present the bucket just passes from top to bottom, from person to person. If one person is missing (a pickup is bypassed), the bucket just needs to jump over the spot where the person is missing in order to continue down the chain.

I guess the analogy of the phase reverse position will be that one of the people on the bucket chain turns around 180 degrees, and instead of receiving a bucket in his left hand and passing it on with his right, he receives the bucket with his right and passes it with his left.

The two tone controls are...interesting. I assume PTB stands for "Passive Treble and Bass". The lower pot acts as a variable bass cut, whereas the upper of the two is the more traditional treble cut/tone pot you'd find in most any guitar, although as drawn there is a ground missing from the case of the upper pot.

[komodo]

Thanks guys, I think I'm actually starting to "see" it. I'll post my version of this later and maybe you can check that I've modified it correctly to remove the second tone and solo switch. @curtisa I believe you are correct that it is Passive Treble and Bass.

[komodo]

Unsure about ground from jack. 

My idea with the loop was maybe a post in there as a ground point. Open to all suggestions, I really appreciate your help.

[Bizman62]

Nonono, the loop is threre to prevent the solder joints of the long stiff copper wire to break under constant vibration caused by extensive playing. Sort of a spring. And that the reason you didn't use flexible wire was to route the wires without any drag or slack.

Other than that, the blue line looks like it should go to the jack but I'm illiterate when it comes to reading wiring. I can follow a diagram with realistic images of the components but that's about it.

[curtisa]

4 hours ago, komodo said:

Things I can see:

1. Unless you are relying on some kind of conductive layer on the inside of the control cavity to act as your ground connection to various parts of the wiring (eg, copper tape shielding), the tone pot case requires a dedicated connection to ground.
2. With the black wire on the tone pot connected to the righthand lug, clockwise rotation = reducing treble. Swap the black wire on the righthand lug of the tone pot to the left lug if you want the more conventional anticlockwise rotation = reducing treble operation
3. The blue wire from the bottom of the chain of mini toggles needs to go to the righthand lug on the volume pot. You'll end up with two wires there where it also connects to the black link to the tone pot.
4. The middle lug on the volume pot goes to the tip connection of the output jack and out to your amp of choice.
5. Once the output jack is in place, all grounds in the scheme will need to be connected to the sleeve/ring connection of the output jack. How you make all these ground connections marry up is entirely up to you, but I will say that your decision to use that big, chunky exposed copper link makes a good, easy-to-solder connection point for this purpose.

[komodo]

Thank you so much, clearly I was off the path. Does this look correct? Does that volume pot work as a sort of star ground? Also, I will have either copper tape or conductive paint.

 

[curtisa]

Yep, spot on

[komodo]

When it goes in, I’ll hookup the pups, and the jack ground. Thank you @curtisa and @mistermikev.

 

[mistermikev]

since I am not allowed a reaction.......

if by some stroke of luck you know what this unlikely chain of symbols means... lmk.

[komodo]

I do not! And will only try for a minute in case it’s actually a bunch of random symbols. Ha!

[mistermikev]

7 hours ago, komodo said:

I do not! And will only try for a minute in case it’s actually a bunch of random symbols. Ha!

well see there... you DO... because you correctly identified it as a sequence of random characters!  haHA!