I have no idea what I am doing (Warning Rotary Switches Ahead)

[ihasmario]

So, I don't play electric guitar, never seen a guitar, etc. Here's the thing, I figure that if I am going to build a guitar, I might as well overdo it on the electronics sides of things. The problem is, I don't have any knowledge about this outside of general physics.

So pickups are essentially electromagnetic inductors, and we want the electrons to travel to ground, and have conventional current flowing into the circuit, right? How do we know which is which? I think I have deduced this from the presoldered wires from the factory - which I believe is operating in series (diagram below). This would mean that in my case RED is the hot wire, GREEN is the ground wire and White (represented as BLUE) is the direction of electron flow, right?


http://www.pitbullguitars.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/k43xq-Factory.png

So basically, I want to do my own control plate now that I am changing hardware colour, cap and pot values to get in line with manufacturer specs(I'll source the materials later). In this I want, in addition to the regular selection of pickups (bridge, neck, both), the ability to swap between Top, Parallel, Series and Bottom in the bridge pickup. For this I have used a rotary switch because I can't find a suitable switch that is less than $30 that isn't rotary.

So basically here's the diagram I have come up with. I have no idea what I am doing, and no idea where it comes into the guitar circuit relative to the other selector (as I haven't worked that out yet).

How did I do? Are there any electrical options I have missed, besides phase which I have no idea how to do for this (though I guess I just reverse how the two connect)?

I don't even know if I have the right idea about how rotary switches work :D
http://www.pitbullguitars.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/dy201-rotary.png


If we define the coils as N and S and the Red as + and the Blue as - they are;
P1 = N+ to output, S+ to Ground, N- to Ground (Do I need to worry about S- here? Should I be grounding it?) = Top only?
P2 = N+ to output, S+ to N+, N- to ground (Do I need to worry about S- here?) = Parallel?
P3 = N+ to output, S+ to N-, S- to Ground = Series?
P4 = S+ to output, S+ is S+, S- Is ground = Bottom only?

The other thing I am concerned about is volume/tone loss because of the multiple paths of the wires. The loss should be minimal/non-existent when only one of the paths is a closed circuit, right?

What would be the best way to get the wires going around like this with minimum spaghetti?

Thanks m80s

[dingobass]

I feel your pain..... I am sure that either Weirdbits or Lawry will be along soon to sort you out :)
Weirdy made a ripper of a diagram for me for a three pup setup with three volumes and one tone. Worked a treat!

http://www.pitbullguitars.com/community/?mingleforumaction=viewtopic&t=1068

[ultpanzi]

For starters, youre going to need to buy an pickup with 4 conductor wires cos the pickups that come with the kits are 2 wire conductors (Mine at least). Unless you want to split the coils and make it a 4 wire conductor yourself which is possible but a lot of work. Spaghetti wire....youre going to have a lot of it cos your configuration would require multiple wires coming off each of the 5 pickup wires. Also, I wouldnt recommend grounding any of the 4 conductor wires, only ground the braided one, simply because the ground will always be in the circuit so even if it doesnt full steal your signal in the grounded conductor wire, the signal reaching your output will be dramatically increased.

Its great to see such an ambitious project though, so if youre interested, Id recommend reading online about what each wire in a four conductor pickup actually does and then creating your own schematic so that you can have the controls you want, rather than what someone else thinks you want (cos thats always a pain). Also, Id recommend shielding the interior cos thered be a lot of signals without a path which may or may not cause excess electromagnetic signals, so shielding is always a nice safety net.

http://www.stewmac.com/freeinfo/Electronics/Misc/i-4000/i-4000_2.html
This site here explains the basics of how a pickup works and how to wire some setups, you probably already know a lot of this, but still, the wiring table at the bottom might help. Have fun!!

[ihasmario]

Thanks guys and thanks for the link.

I've continued the wiring diagram with how I think a guitar works for master volume and master tone. I haven't shown the switch wiring since it's a standard selector switch (on a smaller switch type), and I don't know how that works yet.


http://www.pitbullguitars.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/n4gf0-wholeguitar.png

But I was thinking maybe it would be neater (in both senses) to have three volume controls for each coil and have the switch simply swap whether the dually was operating in series or parallel.


http://www.pitbullguitars.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/d2aa3-IndividualVolume.png

In this case pup 2 and 3 go to vol 2 and 3 after a switch that controls the mode

What do you reckon would be niftier and neater? Obviously all subject to how much I can fit into the guitar, but I reckon I have space for some extra stuff when I get rid of the big lever switch in a regular tele...

[stan]

another great resource for wiring:

http://www.guitarelectronics.com/category/wiring_resources_guitar_wiring_diagrams/

[WeirdBits]

Hi Chris, as ultpanzi stated, if you want to do coil splitting and series/parallel switching on a humbucker pickup you will need it to be a 4-wire plus shield type, whereas the Pit Bull humbuckers are typically only 2-wire. This means you'll either have to buy 4-wire pickups, or have a go at converting your PBG humbucker to 4-wire (http://www.pitbullguitars.com/community/?mingleforumaction=viewtopic&t=962#postid-16663) (can be challenging).

You can get 1-4 pole switches in toggle, slide and rotary format, with up to 6 'throws' or positions on rotaries and some toggles. So, you need to work out what you want to do, how many poles and positions the switch(es) will need to achieve that, and then how you want it to look on the guitar. Toggle switches are easy to flip but limited in positions, rotaries can have more positions but can be awkward to change settings quickly.

Your Master Vol and Master Tone wiring (top image) in your previous post looks right. Your second diagram with the multiple volumes isn't quite as straightforward. Because you have the 'output' of the circuit connected to the 'sweep' middle lug of the pots it means that if any pot is turned down to zero it will short the output to ground... which means no sound at all, regardless of which pickups are 'on'. This is fine if that's what you want. But, generally, with multiple volumes you want to wire the pickups to the middle lug of the pot and the output to the left lug (marked as 'in' on your diagram). That way when you turn a pot down to zero it shorts that pickup to ground, thus muting it, but leaves the rest of the output unaffected.

Having separate volumes for each coil on a humbucker can work, particularly as a single blend/balance pot, but things get rather complicated if you then want to also switch the humbucker coils between series and parallel. In this case, you either have to have a way to switch bewteen one volume pot for series mode and two volumes for parallel, or have a multi-pole switch capable of changing the wiring on the coils' volume pots from a voltage divider configuration for parallel mode to rheostats across the coils for series mode (I think that would work). But, Lawry is the expert ;)

I guess the best thing to do is to work out exactly what you want, what parts you want to use, and then we can help you work up a plan of how to achieve it.

[ihasmario]

Back to the drawing board.

[ihasmario]

Alright so I spent some hours learning about how each of the components work, and spent some time messing around with push/pull pots, but I couldn't get anything in particular. I also couldn't find a way to have individual volume controls for the humbucker coils without having one of the volume controls grounding the other if I eventually reconnected the coils to function in either series or parallel. I think this is the case anyway, I am not sure if the general direction of the circuit will prevent the current from seeking the ground further back in the circuit or not.

So I've settled on Two Volume (one neck, one humbucker). I also had the possibly disastrous idea of making the guitar stereo (one channel per pickup), with a pot sweeping the humbucker between the Ring and the Tip. I've used the rotary switch wiring from before here, because I couldn't find a way to replicate it in a reasonable number of push/pull pots.

I've a few concerns with the wiring I decided on now;
1) Is there any way I can make this more space efficient and still have the same features (eg better switch types?)
2) I am particularly interested having a master tone control before the output, which I couldn't work out just yet, as I think it would make the signals cross.
3) Does the Stereo Blender actually work? It will function as a second volume control when plugged into a regular amp unfortunately. Do you think it would be better to have a push/pull on the Hum Vol that swaps the humbucker out between the Tip and the Ring of the output? This would have the added benefit of grounding the humbucker when connected to a TS if I move away from the rotary switch.
4) Is there a way to kill both channels (L/R) with a single button (Monentary 2x(1x2)? I don't know the names sorry as I just learned this today)
5) Is there a way to have individual volume for the humbucker coils without grounding everything?

I don't know much about switch types so there could be some options I am missing that could help me.

I'll try again tomorrow, brain is dead now. PS I fixed the volume wiring, thanks weirdbits ;)
http://www.pitbullguitars.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/b76q5-Stereo.png


/</p>[/<\\/p>[]<\\/p>/]</p>/Edit: By the way, will changing the "stereo sweep" to something more functional and immediate like this (so it swaps left and right channels for stereo, which means grounding one of them when connected to TS) cause grounding problems, or will it work? This way I could get rid of the rotary and use a push pull for parallel/series as well, I think?

http://a.pomf.se/wqaujt.png

[Brendan]

Chris - all is not lost - the humbuckers from PBG (Toneriders and Entwistles) are all coil split I think. They're also a cost effective way to put high quality pickups into an axe. I haven't seen anyone who can compete on prices with Adam.

[ihasmario]

Duplicate post please delete.

[ihasmario]

Alright, so I've finished the wiring scheme. It allows me to swap between a stereo output (bridge and neck in either combo) and a mono output. I may be removing some features pending how well I can handle the parts when I select their size.


One thing I can think of that I have a question about; is there going to be any practical problem of soldering the tone before the volume? The tones still seem to operate separately when running a mono output as well, which is awesome...

Don't worry about the switch diagrams, I couldn't find a better way to lay them out and they're terrible to view, but they work as intended.

So in total that's 4 mini pots, 1 rotary, and one (or two) tiny switch. Here's hoping we are all good for space. I may end up swapping the final switch for two push pulls.

Actually, I decided I am going to use two concentric pots instead of the 4 minis. This means I will be able to adjust both channels of tone and volume at the same time. Just need to find the knobs and the pots.


http://www.pitbullguitars.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/crvyr-Wiring.png

[ihasmario]

... Rotary switch doesn't fit.

Is there an alternative way to do this? Or does anyone know of any particular brand that is compact?

EDIT: I managed to find a compact 2P4T rotary switch. Would I damage anything by having the ground "pole" on a simple toggle switch? Or would I just have an open circuit if it was in the wrong position?

Otherwise, I can have two 2P4Ts turn simulatenously.

Could someone give me a hand working out how to wire this when they get the chance?

2p4t (up to 2x). Single 4 conductor humbucker pickup. Looking 4 positions: North, Series, Parallel, South.

It's really messing with me and unfortunately I don't have hours to sink into it while I have to research how each switch works again.. :(