please help me finally finish my double neck

[parmo]

I built a double neck guitar over two years ago, every thing went ok until the wiring. It is a bass and lead guitar i built it from scratch making and shaping everything myself, then the wiring part which made me put it back into the attic for another year due to not getting anywhere with parts I thought would work, I have followed several different ways of wiring Outside of the guitar only to find things work and others don't, i know about earthing everything through string buzz but I am obviously not wiring this correct, can you please advise how to wire this so one day I can plug it into my combo and hear what it sounds like.    I have two humbuckers and two bass pickups already cut out of body to fit

i have took pictures of the parts I have got, a very basic diagram will be extremely greatful  

[mistermikev]

well... idk what controls you have available... but my suggestion would be this: wire up as two completely separate guitars but don't wire either to the jack.  temporarily hook each to a jack and get it working... once you've got that... then you just need a spdt on/on to select between the guitar or the bass.  middle lug to output jack... one side to live gtr, one side to live bass.  both grounds should connect together at the output jack.  

[parmo]

Thank you for your reply, i am grateful for your advice I have tried the way you explained the pickups and volume/tone works ok but when i try to connect the 5 way switch seperating the bass/lead through this i get buzzing through all of the system, it seems to be when i connect the common connector

I have been on several guitar wiring sites showing lots of single necks with two pickups with volume and tone which is what i have but twin, wiring them independantly all works fine But connect both through one jack plug it all seems to go wrong, i know it is the switch from bass to lead or the 5 way

I just cannot seem to get it to work with the parts i have, i know it Should work but i know i must be wiring it wrong also i have shaped the body so the space between the connections are close also it is fully painted so i do not want to cut out any of the body to fit more parts, so any circuits diagrams of the working parts available will be very thankfull

[parmo]

https://www.fralinpickups.com/2018/11/12/understanding-guitar-grounding/

I have just found this web page about grounding a guitar, it seems to explain one of my problems hopefully it may help others

[curtisa]

It may help if you can describe what controls you want to install and how you'd like them to function in the guitar. It's a little unclear how you're wanting the 5-way switch to operate, especially given that you only have two pickups for each neck.

[parmo]

Sorry to be confusing, my whole idea I thought was straight forward but obviously not, i would like to use one vol and tone for  bass and the same for lead when i use the switch it would change from lead to bass, the 5 way to change to  which pickups like a strat/telecaster or most other guitars.

hopefully you can understand what i am after and it is possible  Thank you for your help

[curtisa]

8 hours ago, parmo said:

5 way to change to  which pickups like a strat/telecaster

A Telecaster would traditionally only have a 3-way switch to combine the two pickups, giving the combinations of <bridge>, <bridge+neck> and <neck>. The 5-way switch you've posted a picture of is usually used to allow the additional middle pickup on a Strat to be included to the possible switching combinations; <bridge>, <bridge+mid>, <mid>, <mid+neck> and <neck>. You can use the 5-way if you want, but you'll end up with a couple of positions on the switch that won't do anything or even give no output.

The EMG-X bass pickups you've posted a picture of also require the use of a 9V battery for onboard power. There's also a requirement to use their much-lower value volume and tone pots to get effective control of them. If you're wanting to use one set of volume and tone pots for both necks it may not give the results you're expecting. Using the EMG pots you'd probably find that the guitar neck would have very weak, dull output. According to EMG if you were to use more traditional high-value pots (250k? 500k?) that would normally be used with your humbuckers, the bass pickups would work but you'd might find that the volume behaves more like an on/off switch rather than a gentle control across its rotational range.

From a wiring perspective it sounds like you're essentially creating two Telecasters in one guitar, and instead of passing the output of the pickup selector directly to the volume pot, you feed it to the extra mini toggle switch to select between one neck or the other. The output of that switch then goes to your volume pot as per normal. All grounds in the system would be tied together and be fed directly to the output jack.

Where you may be coming unstuck is the use of that particular 5-way switch and/or the disparate pots for each type of pickup, but photos of your actual wiring would help us provide more clues for you.

[parmo]

thank you for all your advice But a friend of a friend wanted it to finish it, so i gave him it. It was great fun making the necks and body but by what you say i bought all the wrong electrics so he is going to show me it when its finished and hopefully let me have a go of it

so my next guitar making is going to be semi acoustic so i can plug a complete pickup system like electro acoustic.