Favourite wiring mods?

[jonwhitear]

Hello all,

I've just ordered some Tonerider Alnico II humbuckers for my AG1. They come with the four wires, which got me thinking (and googling) wiring mods. Obviously, there's the potential to coil split the humbuckers using either one to two push/pull pots, but I was wondering what other wiring mods people have made and found useful.

I was contemplating an active boost circuit, but I'm not overly exciting about batteries running out, and I'm not sure I've really got the space in my control cavity. I'm also thinking about using my two tone pots as master bass and treble a la G&L PTB. Possibly also with a push/pull tone pot to bypass the tone circuit altogether.

What are your "go to" mods?

Cheers,

Jon

[skajae]

Series/Parallel for each pickups coils is usually the first I do

[Dedman]

I once built a super strat with Armstrong muthabuckers ,a humbucker and a single, however as each "coil" was actually a separate humbucker I used a Freeway switch and could have between 1 and 6 coils working. Yea, it worked but I never used it. Now I keep it simple with coil splits at most, not keen on the out of phase sound, so I guess it depends on what you play and the sounds you like.. My current strat build has a push/push that gives "everything on" in positions 2 and 4.

[fender3x]

I usually have a switch to go from series to single coil. I have mostly done basses, but for an SG type build, I might be tempted be this Peter Green-ish mod...

https://www.premierguitar.com/articl...ke-it-variable

My G&L bass has a PTB tone stack. Passive MFD pickups used on most G&L basses have lots of highs, and a ton of booty. I almost always have a little treble rolled off so that they are not harsh, and a little bass rolled off so they don't sound too boomy. It never occurred to me that you might need this on a guitar--or even on most basses. I have read, however that if you play with a lot of distortion this might be useful.

If you do the PTB mod like they do at G&L you'll need to find a source for a 1meg reverse audio (C) pot for the bass tone roll-off. If push comes to shove, when I did my mod, I got one directly from G&L.

[jonwhitear]

Thanks all - I think I'll try both the split coil and parallel wiring and see which one sounds better to me.

I'm still thinking about doing the PTB mod, and I've found C1M pots at Element14.

[WeirdBits]

A pair of inter-linked push/pulls (vol & tone) for each humbucker will give you all four options on each: series humbucker, parallel humbucker, inner coil, outer coil. It’s a good way to experiment with different combos to work out which sounds work for you.

Then, if needed, you can potentially tweak and simplify the layout to focus on the variations you like/use, ie. neck series/para and bridge series/inner coil etc.

[jonwhitear]

Thanks WeirdBits, that sounds like what I need. Do you have a diagram I can follow? The closest I can find is a jimmy Page mod

[WeirdBits]

This will hopefully have you covered:


It’s a layout using P-Rails with standard SD colours: black +, white/red, green -. The neck pickup has a little extra with capacitor switching: series humbucker & P90 uses a 0.015uF and it swaps to 0.022uF for the parallel humbucker & rail. If you don’t want cap switching just use the bridge pup configuration for the neck as well. Here’s the relevant post in my build thread.

If you need something more specific for your build, just ask.

[Simon Barden]

Linear pots on the volume, Weirdy? Not normal. I’ve got one P-rail pickup on a guitar and that works just as expected with audio/log taper.

[WeirdBits]

Yep, not normal... was experimenting with older style values, flatter curve pots etc. I actually forgot the B volumes were spec'd on that diagram, thanks for pointing it out. Jon, if you do go for something like this, stick with the standard 500KA push/pull pots for both volume and tone.