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[Tweed]

I'm planning an Esquire build later. Looking at youtube vids about different pickups. I saw one guy who says this:
"No resistors. The switch chooses between no tone control, .022, and .047."

I'm not great about imagining circuits; I can only put together from existing plans. Can anyone help explain what would be going on in that particular case?

 

[line6man]

That sounds terrible, to me. The guy is likely referring to a switch that places a 0.022uF capacitor or 0.047uF capacitor parallel to the signal path. This is like a tone pot rolled all the way down. Personally, I would either throw in trimmer pots to adjust the amplitude of the cut, or use lower capacitances to shift the cutoff frequency up a bit. Wouldn't want my guitar sounding like mud.

 

[Tweed]

Again, I have nothing to base this on, but my guess was that he wired the caps to separate positions of switch.

And I might as well as this now: Is it possible to wire separate tone pots to a single pup? Like a different pot for each position?

 

[line6man]

Again, I have nothing to base this on, but my guess was that he wired the caps to separate positions of switch.

And I might as well as this now: Is it possible to wire separate tone pots to a single pup? Like a different pot for each position?

I don't know why you would want separate pots. Why not just twist one pot to the settings you like and switch capacitors?

 

[Dan025]

I'm planning an Esquire build later. Looking at youtube vids about different pickups. I saw one guy who says this:
"No resistors. The switch chooses between no tone control, .022, and .047."

I'm not great about imagining circuits; I can only put together from existing plans. Can anyone help explain what would be going on in that particular case?

i gotta look up the esquire wireing but my understanding is that the switch goes 1. tone bypass, nothing but a volume knob, 2. tone control is active, 3. tone control is active and an additional cap is inserted into the circuit, supposedly in series to the pickup, not so sure about that detail because it is supposedly also a very fat sound meant to use the guitar as a rhythm/background instrument like a bass. normally adding a cap in series would cut low end not give the beefy sound in an esquire.

but maybe all the people talking about esquires are mistaken on which positions/wiring is giving which sound.

 

[Tweed]

Yes, I completely agree that the glonky bass sound is useless.

What I want is to learn HOW to make it switch between caps. I have no background in electronics. I had to follow the diagram to do my Strat's wiring. I want to learn things so that 83% of my threads are NOT about electronics.

The "switching pots" idea was more for a single pup SG, so I could keep the switch and all four knobs.

 

[Dan025]

Well wiring is part understanding electrical components, Part reading diagrams, part familiarity with conventional methods and occasionally part creativity.

First thing you gotta know how you want it to function. Do you want it to change the capacitor value in the tone control? Or just make it a full time cap to ground in parallel to the tone control?
Edit:
There are often many ways to do the same thing. One thing to understand is the switch construction. For a fender 3-way there are 2 poles, basically two independent switches that do exactly the same thing at the same time hooked to the same lever. Each pole has a common which is a contact that is used in all switch positions. Then there is one contact on each pole for each switch position that connects to the common So you can see how it changes the path of electricity, well possibly two paths since there is two poles.

 

[Tweed]

Quality reply!

I'm thinking that I would want to change value when switching.
It sounds like I need to do some extracurricular reading rather than whine Nobody Gets Me.

Of course, the most realistic answer would be volume>tone>jack. But learning the options is valuable.