Alex M.

The pickups are soldered to the volume potentiometers. By turning the potentiometers to maximum, the resistance is shunted by the pickup coil. A multimeter may read 4-20k ohms depending on the pickup. At 50% volume — DMM shows 2 halves of the pot folded in parallel, with a small addition of resistance from the pickup.

Check at the wiring diagrams for the Les Paul.

I have big questions about the level of your engineering education.    

The pup mounting plate — is nothing to worry about too much. Even the ashtray above the pup basically gets in the way of the hand when palm mute.

Right now I am unable to test the schematics. There are at least 2 types of superswitch that allow for a wide variety of combinations. The curtisa scheme looks fine.

19 hours ago, curtisa said:

Except that the bridge and middle pickups then end up swapped relative to the switch positions, which @Crusader wanted to avoid.

 

I noticed, but I don't care, nor do the people who asked me to do this.
They operate their guitars without any issue.  ;-))

 Sometimes I do it by simply swapping the middle and bridge pups. No soldering, just a screwdriver.
The super switch is not the usual 5-way switch that is installed on standard strats. But soldering while maintaining positions is also possible on a standard switch.

22 hours ago, Professor Woozle said:

Given that I'm keen to have the bridge pickup giving the classic Rick sound I'm going to start with 330K (or modified 500K) pots on that one at least. Having said that, I wonder how much the steel pickup surround influences the sound of it, and I can get a fair imitation of an overdriven Rick out of my Westone Thunder II with the coils split and pickups out of phase so  maybe I am worrying too much about what to put in.

I'll probably be using connectors  too so I can swap out parts of the wiring harness later if I'm not happy with the sound.

If you are talking about a plate over a bridge pup — then it is better not to put it, it will corny interfere with the playng.

On 11/23/2022 at 3:43 AM, spindlebox said:

So this is a thing, when I 1st took that measurement I hadn't magnetized the pick up yet. So I took the reading and figured it was good. Well I magnetized it and then I waxed potted it and then then decided to take another measurement for giggles.  So what was 9.6 so I think this estimator is OK. Maybe a little off but not as bad as I was thinking.Apparently a magnetic field can affect the resistance and I did not know that.

This is not a magnetic field, most likely it is the temperature difference during measurements.
Take the guitar out in the cold - it will show a very different resistance.

And note that — it is not the resistance that matters for output, but the number of turns.
The resistance only gives an experienced winder a hint of the number of turns, but for accuracy, you also need to know the thickness of the wire.

4 hours ago, Bizman62 said:

@SomethingNicer

I didn't even know about Gauss until now, having to Google for it. As this article says, hardly anyone has the ability to even measure the Gauss level of their pickups so we're in a very grey area. Not to mention the effect of various factors that may change the level.

 

Some boutique winders measure gauss, there are inexpensive meters for this.
But this is completely useless in my opinion — take any magnets with the greatest strength that you can find and everything will be ok. Lawrence D Marzio did just that in his time, and he also did not forget to wind as much wire into coils as there was room.  ;-))

To get noticeable negative effects on the strings, pups should be as close to them as possible — about 1.5-2mm for the neck and 0.5-1mm for the bridge. However, some heavy-style musicians tune this close and play without problems.

On 3/4/2023 at 5:00 AM, SomethingNicer said:

Does anybody have a chart or a guide that shows Gauss levels on different pickups? I keep finding conflicting information.

It doesn't matter.
If it seems to you that the magnets are too powerful — just lower the pups.

look fine.

Especially when applied to guitar electronics.

On 5/17/2023 at 10:43 AM, Diablothecat said:

I was wondering if using dc bias cap to decrease capacitance for finer tone control would work. I drew up a quick schematic for ilustration.

 

Long story short — nothing useful.

On 4/30/2023 at 12:58 AM, Professor Woozle said:

I'm edging towards starting my 8-string Rick build and have been looking up details of the electronics. The plans I've got say they use 330K pots but this turned up on a search - http://www.rickenbacker.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5047

I'd welcome some opinions from the electronics experts on here about what's been said in that thread - is it worth me spending the extra to get 330k pots, or should I instead just get good quality 250k and 500k as suggested in that thread? I've already got a Retrovibe bridge pickup, and the photos I've got of an 8-string show it's got a toaster in the neck position, though I was wondering about some sort of humbucker there - one of Lemmy's Rickenbackers was modded to have  Gibson T-bird pickup in that position.

Nothing to worry about it.
I often use whatever 150k to 500k pots are available. Nobody complained about the sound.