JohnH

Hi Ashley - Im in Sydney, and also shop at Jaycar for switches. You can get a two position DPDT minitoggle for around $3, and that will do two options, like series in phase/series out of phase, or Seies in phase/ coil cut or, series in phase / paralel in phase the 3 positions switches have a center all off position - not much use for coil switching options. THe US web sites have diagrams for series/parallel/single, but it needs a special on/on/on switch which I have not found here in Aus. Id be interestsed if you find one. Before you spend $27.50US on a Black Ice, buy a Schottky diode (1amp 40 volt) from Jaycar - for 45cents Aus. Put it where a tone cap would go and try it out. You could switch the cap/diode with a single pole toggle. John

Good luck with that. If it turns out that the out-of phase is too thin for your taste, a resistor from the lowest switch lug (as shown on the diagram) to ground will partly bypass one coil, meaning they will cancell out less of the fundamental, giving a bit more weight to this setting. Other settings wont be affected. Its easy to add this after trying it. John

You have probably got too much info by now, but here is what I would do, with a 3P4T rotary, to get series, parallel, single coil and series out of phase. This would be like a powerful tone control, ranging from deepest series humbucker, to ultra-bright out of phase. The series out of phase is not common, but I quite like it and it is a useful texture for strumming. Unlike in-phase settings, it is not hum canceling though. The switch is one of the standard types of rotary, from any electronics store. http://people.smartchat.net.au/~l_jhewitt/...uits/1H4way.gif cheers John

I agree with that - I have two guitars, one (a Shergold with fairly low output humbuckers and 100k pots) sounds just fine with the original 0.047 cap. My other, a recently rewired Hondo Strat, with quite dark sounding ceramic single coils and 500k pots, was dead sounding when I put in a 0.033 cap, and is much better with a 0.01. I couldnt have guessed the best values without trying them. John

Theres plenty of switching schemes you could do, with less than $20-$30 in parts. If the pickups are a bit feeble, giving an option for series wiring makes a huge boost. My favorite current scheme for brain-transplantig Strats involves taking out the five way switch, and putting in 5 toggles for on/off on each pup, series/parallel and phase, and gives a vast range. There are simpler schemes you can do that keep the 5-way, with fewer options. If a switching solution would interest you, Ill post some links John

Yes mate - Now THATS what i'm talking about!

All I can think of further, short of lining your apartment with kitchen foil (hey - theres an idea!, a sort of retro b-movie sci-fi look!), is: Check your apartment grounding - may need an electrician for this, or: to really look closely at your cable / guitar screening. I know you have done this, and that it works OK elsewhere, but something is putting more pressure on it than normal, and if you cant solve it at the source of the interference, then screening it out may be the only way. A screening job that is adequate for most cases, may reveal that it is not 100% when interference is very high Make sure your cavity screening really is electrically continuous. The following is a view I have - any electro-folk please correct if disagreed: I believe screening really needs to be acting as sealed can - rather than a series of seperate pieces, even if they are connected. THe idea is to allow loops around and within the screening to occur, hence induced currents circulate around the screen and are dissipated. Although pieces of screening may not need to be absolutely continuosly connected, they should be at close intervals Any wires outside of the screen (eg wire to jack), should be screened wire. If you have un-shielded pickup wires outside of the cavity screen, maybe they could be wrapped in foil, and grounded. With all of that radiation - you might want to think about wearing a hat made of kitchen foil (oh -have I just blown my credibility?- oops!) John

Just a couple of shots in the dark - from some recent experience of hum that Ive had, short of replacing pickups: With the amp turned on, and no lead plugged in, do you get too much hum? I had this recently on a new amp, and the answer was a bad valve (tube) With a guitar chord plugged in but no guitar, do you get the hum? My son got a guitar with free chord, which hummed like crazy. We 'recycled' it (it is now used as a piece of string), and replaced it with a budget, but properly designed chord and all is OK. Shielding the inside of the guitar helps, particularly with the hum that is not removed by using humbuckers, being picked up by the wiring. I managed a neat job with kitchen foil recently (I wanted to see how little I could spend), using spray contact glue to cover the back of the pick guard and a rubber glue to fix it to the cavity. EDIT - Ive just noticed you are a regular and experienced member - appologies if the above is missing the point! John

Further to my post above, I just blew 90 cents on two Schottky diodes, to try that test again, with my three fairly hot single coil pups in series. This is much better! (than I expected) - some credible smooth distortion, and possible to play on solos. It takes a strong touch - its not subtle. But I even got some good sounds out of bridge and middle series out of phase. I might find a way to wire them in. With two back to back across the output, you lose some volume (so turn it up), since the whole point is that it clips. Another option is to use just one diode - keeps the volume, with a different sound. Worth a try John

i had a look at the Dimarzio diagram here: http://www.dimarzio.com/media/diagrams/4Conductor.pdf It looks like if you have wired that coil cut diagram, then just swap the red and green wires, leaving the switch the same. See if that works, and let us know! John

If the bridge pup sounds OK on its own in whatever coil cut, series etc settings you have, then you can fix it if you know which wires go with each coil. Basically, swap the north coil wires with each other, and swap the south coil wires with each other. that will reverse everything on the bridge, which wont change its own sound but phase swap it with the other pups. If that does not work, thats where we need to know how you have wired it, and what wiring colours you have - also what type of pickup is it? Do you have a diagram? John

To fix a phase problem, you need to swap some wires either in the bridge pup or in both the others. Will need to see your wiring diagram and wiring colours to advise further. Would you happen to have an analogue multimeter (ie with a needle)? If so, heres a definative 'pull - off' test for a phase problem: Set it to the most sensitive dc volt setting - eg 0.25V Plug in a guitar lead, but dont plug into amp, instead, connect the meter between jack sleeve and jack tip. Set vol and tones to max. Pick each single pup in turn with the selector switch Put a scredriver tip on one of the pup pole pieces, and then pull it straight up The needle will move either left of right For in phase settings, the needle should move the same way for all pups (doesnt matter which way) You can check again with the problem combo setting - whether you do it on the mid or bridge the needle should move the same way. If you have movement in different directions, a phase problem is indicated. John Place the tip a

A worthy notion. I have a setting for three pups in series on the old Hondo Strat that I have been upgrading. So in the interest of science and making loud noises, I have just rigged this idea up with aligator clips. Unfortunately I only have silicon diodes to hand. I found that with my three fairly powerful ceramic SC pups in series, it does work. It needs a strong signal though, power chords work best, and the bass notes do it more that the high notes. Single string solos cant get enough output to drive the clipping. The sound is a muted sort of distortion, like a loudspeaker about to blow up. Once the signal decays a bit, the effect goes, so the sustaining distortion for searing solos will not happen. It is not a very great effect, at least with these silicon diodes. The germanium or shottkey ones may be better - but only slightly is my guess. But it is so easy to put together a one or two transistor circuit, using diodes for feedback that sounds a lot better. John

Could it be out of phase? - ie low volume, very little bass with mainly high harmonics? John

[i thought of this recently. I am upgrading a solid but boring old Hondo Strat to kick-ass series/parallel phased wiring. The original had a 3-way switch which could select only each single coil, but no combinations. Hence I did not expect any attention had been paid to pickup polarity. Im sure someone has done this and can advise definatively. I opened up the pups and it looked like if I turned the (ceramic) magnets upside down, and then used the coil wires in reverse (no need to actually amend the coil), I wouild end up with reverse phase, reverse polarity, which is what you want. So it would depend on the extent to which you can take your pups to pieces without wrecking them. I didnt do it, tapping tests and probes with another magnet coninced me that my bridge pup was in fact RWRP, for no good reason relative to the original design. In fact, by balancing the switch, you could get the usual Strat 2 and 4 BM and MN combos, but they hummed like mad. So I swapped the bridge and middle pups and all was OK. John

It sounds like it should work, provided it is a two pole two position switch, with 6 lugs. If so, use one line of 3 lugs, and ignore the other. Your N and M pickup grounds go to ground (not through the switch), and one hot wire goes to each of the outer lugs of one half of the switch. The central pole lug goes onward to the tele selector switch. It is beat if the switch nody is grounded, either to the screening or by a wire wrapped around the shaft to ground. This is not in the signal path, but I found it gets rid of noise when you touch it. (I have 5 mini toggles on one of my guitars, for on/off of each pup, phase and series/parallel) This arrangement will let you pick one of N or M, but not both at once, unless you get hold of an on-on-on switch or Gibson switch John

Now that's a mighty bold statement, and almost impossible to prove Well if you cant make a bold statement on an internet forum, where can you? - we'd all have to hang out in bars where fishermen and golfers congregate! I know theres always a bit of hum, but I found that my missmatched combos ancell as well as a conventional HB setting on the same guitar, and that got me puzzled. My main point is that there does seem to be some compensating effects going on. Hum cancelling between mismatched pickups works better than you might think it should. I found this happening and got interested to try to figure out why. So I hope what I did is at least thought provoking, and maybe useful. cheers John

this is an interesting one. Opposite polarity is the starting point, but the coils dont have to be identical. I have two Hb,s which when cut to single coils have different resistances (ie different number of turns), of 4k and 6k respectively. They cancell out all hum. It also worls if an SC is in parallel with a series twin-coil with coils out-of-phase with each other. This worls for me, and a 12k out-of-phase Hb camcells out hum with a 4k Sc. It also works on a Strat. Wire your neck and bridge pups in series, all in parallel with the middle (which is RWRP), and one pup cancells hum from two!. Its magic! The sounds are very close to that of the lower impedance pup, but no hum. Hence these arrangements,are very useful. Why does it work? My theory is on my site http://au.geocities.com/guitarcircuits find the page called 'Cancell that hum' and the heading 'Hum cancelling with three active pickups' Clearly there must be some limits to how different two pups can be and still cancell. I think it needs both pups, or pairs of coils to be wound with similar wire, on a similar core geometry. That way, the more turns you have, the proportionallly more hum it picks up, but also the more impedance the coil has, all in proportion and these two effects compensate. regards John

yes that was what I meant, but it sounds like you know what you want, and thats fine. For your in-phase SC combinations, you want north from one pup and south from the other. When you flick the phase switch, youll get either two norths or two souths out-of-phase, which will hum-cancell. If it doent work out, swap the ground and hot connectiosn on the neck pup (assuming the bridge has the phase switch). I have a drawing of your circuit on my site. See: http://au.geocities.com/guitarcircuits and look at the page on 'two twin coil pickups' - the one with three switches is yours (or its four switches if you want to keep independent coil cuts). Theres also a page on hum cancelling. cheers John

That’s basically a good circuit You need to add the ground and hot wire to the pup on the left (neck pup), as you have with the other. The coil cut switch S1 just goes to ground, not to the pup selector. ie the left pup should be wired the same as the right, just without the phase switch. With that fixed.it is the same as my favorite simple version of a versatile switching for two humbuckers, with a very wide range of sounds. You may well have thought of the following, but this circuit has a few tricks up its sleeve that you can take advantage of: • If you want to simplify the operation, you can combine the two coil cuts into one DPDT switch, using half the switch for each pickup. It is then like a overall Fender/Gibson switch, 90% of the worlds guitars with one toggle!. Fine to keep them as separate however, but I find that combining single coils and full humbuckers sounds very similar to the SC alone, and combining like with like works best. • When you flick the phase switch, it also changes which bridge single coil gets cut, so it gives you another SC bridge sound which will be a little different, due to its position, and also if you are able to adjust the poles. • Provided you pick the correct coil to be cut on the neck, you will get hum-canceling on both your in-phase and your out-of-phase combos. (if you get this bit wrong, it will all be hum adding!). If this does not happen, just reverse the outer neck leads.

Im very sorry if this has not worked out for you. An on-off-on is fully disconnected in the central position, so it cant ground the hot wires . Having a shorted out kill switch can be slightly quieter, but when I tried a similar arrangement the difference was not much, and not as bad as you describe. Heres some ideas Presumably you have the volume control after the switch, so that it is directly wired to the jack?. This would provide some grounding to the jack hot lead in the off position. A very cheap guitar lead will cause noise if not connected, at least a reasonable average one should not (which I assume you have). Screening in the guitar will help. If you do not have a screened interior, that is worth doing to reduce all types of noise, including this problem. Also, if the wires from switch, to volume to jack are all screened, that will help. Use the inner core as the connection wire, and attach the outer braiding to a ground point. With hindsight however, all that may not be enough to fully fix it with the noise you describe. The series/parallel diagram has one of the coils always connected with one wire to hot, so it may be picking up some noise even when off. Appologies again.

Heres my theory: Position 1 is the one on the right side of the diagram? in which you want the pup selector to be able to select: main jack: neck or bridge or both, with middle always on 2nd jack: bridge and middle Is that right? If so, looking at the diagram - The bridge would always be connected to main jack in this position, because it is also connected to the 2nd jack. The middle pup is connected to both jacks - hence the wiring for the middle pup provides another path for the bridge pup to the main jack - bypassing the selector switch, putting bridge always on in position 1. Can I take another 'shot in the dark'? Your diagram looks very similar (in drawing style too) in several respects to those of Shergold guitars (I have one) - including the use of 100k pots for everything and 47nF caps - wired with 3 coonections to the tone pot with outer lugs from output to ground, instead of having only the cap connected to ground as in most other designs. That puts with all pups in use, 5x 100k resistances in parallel with the output, which may cut down significantly on your treble. Also, with the way the volume pots are wired, if you have more than one activated, turning one volume down to a low setting will cut down the volume of the other pups too. For that reason, guitars with more than one volume pot often put the wiper on the pup side rather than the output side. These last too points I raise in case they are an issue for you, although not realted to your question. If they are, the fix is to use 500k pots, with wiring adjusted as above. regards JOhn

I did not grow up with a Strat, and although I know most players love the 5-way switch and stock appearance, I like to explore more versatility. My SSS design has a DPDT toggle for on/off of each pup, and a 4PDT toggle for series/parallel connection of whatever you chose with the on/offs. A phase switch for the bridge pup (can be a push-pull) completes the set.

Thanks very much for the replies. Yes it is the Behinger 'Strat' - comes with a V-tone guitar and amp pack. The wire wool sounds like the way to go. cheers John

I have bought an inexpensive Behringer guitar for my son. It plays OK, but the neck has some rough edges. It has a matte finish, but I dont know if this is some sort of Matte laquer or just natural wood. Id like to do a little fine sanding to improve it. Does anyone have any advice? with thanks John