5 way switch issues....

[tylereot]

Hi, guys:
Just completed my jazzmaster build, and I've got lots of good things to say about the guitar, and the pickups by Roadhouse.
What I'm less happy with are the tones I'm getting out of combining the pickups in various ways with the superswitch.
The neck pickup is sweet.  I can do a lot with that alone.  The humbucker in the bridge is sweet, and with distortion, it's all I could ask for.  It's a little twangy clean, but rolling off the treble a bit brings it right together.
Two issues:
1) the way this is wired, both tone controls are like master tone controls.  I might be able to use more positions if I could assign the tone controls to each pickup independently.
2) The combined position 3 (both neck and bridge pu together) is somehow weaker and thinner than either position independently.  :icon_scratch:
Here's a little video to show you what I mean...
http://youtu.be/7cDBdIBVozk

Positions:
5-Neck Full
4-Neck tapped + Bridge single
3-Neck Full, Bridge series
2- Bridge Single
1- Bridge series

Here's the wiring....

Thanks again everyone for your help.

 

[Hobosaur]

1) Both tone controls are directly wired to the master volume pot. If you don't separate them and isolate them to each individual pickup, they're going to affect any signal going out of your guitar.

2) When you combine two pickups together in parallel, like you're doing, the signal is always going to be weaker than either pickup. That's just the way it is.

 

[tylereot]

1) true.  But the question is HOW.  Is it feasible to run hot from the pickups directly to the tone, THEN through the switch?  Or I could easily simply eliminate one tone circuit altogether.

2) Not so true of my other guitars. 
What I notice is that anywhere we've combined stuff in parallel, the bass frequencies vanish.  Never good, in my world.  I'm thinking to just eliminate the tapped part of the JM pickup altogether, unless I can find a way to run it in series with the single coil from the Bridge pickup.
Playing around with that single bridge coil sound this morning, it's actually pretty nice.  It's just the parallel sounds I guess I don't like.

 

[reluctant-builder]

I've got a number of two HB guitars, which I assume have the pups running in parallel when the toggle is in the middle, and I've never noticed a decrease in output. The same is true of positions two and four on my Strat.

 

[tylereot]

I've got a number of two HB guitars, which I assume have the pups running in parallel when the toggle is in the middle, and I've never noticed a decrease in output. The same is true of positions two and four on my Strat.

Exactly.  Perhaps some electronics wiz has been following this build and will step in with the key to it.

 

[Jumble Jumble]

Firstly, try swapping the green and white wires from the HB - maybe your middle position is out of phase.

Secondly, you appear to be tapping the single by selectively grounding out one part of the coil. Is that right? Usually a tapped single coil has two hots, rather than two grounds.

Thirdly, this is crazy wiring, especially regarding the tone controls. Give me a few hours, and when I get home I'll do you a new diagram.

 

[tylereot]

Thanks, Jumble.  That's an interesting analysis on the polarity issue.  The drawing (up to the point of the blue and purple wires) was Ken's (he wound the pickups), so I'm inclined to think he might have gotten it right.  But folks do make mistakes, and he's been under a crunch lately.

I appreciate your input on the tone pots, too.  Looking forward to seeing that.
I'd like to have a fairly good plan of action before I go back into that guitar.  Saving the strings once I take them off is going to be a PITA.

 

[Cagey]

1) Both tone controls are directly wired to the master volume pot. If you don't separate them and isolate them to each individual pickup, they're going to affect any signal going out of your guitar.

That's always true in multiple-control guitars where you have switch selections that tie pickups together. I've stopped doing it, since it makes little sense to have multiple controls if that's how they're going to behave. You often end up with situations where you don't know what to expect when you switch to a mixed pickup configuration. Better to have 1 volume and 1 tone and call it good. It's easier to wire and easier to use. The pots are always in the same place and there are less of them, so there's less to get used to. There's nothing to think about. Just adjust as necessary. And if you're one of the vast majority that consistently leaves the tone on "10", you can actually improve your sound by simply leaving any tone control off the guitar altogether.

 

[reluctant-builder]

And if you're one of the vast majority that consistently leaves the tone on "10", you can actually improve your sound by simply leaving any tone control off the guitar altogether.

I've been thinking about this ... because with all of my tone settings it seems like 2 - 10 is "on" and 0 - 1 is "off" ... or, more accurately, the former is "bright" and the latter is "muddy" ... if I'm backwards, remember it's because I'm backwards; left-handed.

The point, though, is that the tone controls on many of my guitars seem to be merely a treble cut. Full treble for most of the taper and then no treble for the last little bit. Feels pretty useless to me.

 

[tylereot]

And if you're one of the vast majority that consistently leaves the tone on "10", you can actually improve your sound by simply leaving any tone control off the guitar altogether.

I've been thinking about this ... because with all of my tone settings it seems like 2 - 10 is "on" and 0 - 1 is "off" ... or, more accurately, the former is "bright" and the latter is "muddy" ... if I'm backwards, remember it's because I'm backwards; left-handed.

The point, though, is that the tone controls on many of my guitars seem to be merely a treble cut. Full treble for most of the taper and then no treble for the last little bit. Feels pretty useless to me.

Well, that's because of the pot and cap values, I imagine.  I'm used to rolling a little treble off a bright bridge pickup when I want the two P90's (..on my Gibson, for instance) on a lead sound.  Otherwise, it's a twangmaster.

 

[Cagey]

Well, that's because of the pot and cap values, I imagine.  I'm used to rolling a little treble off a bright bridge pickup when I want the two P90's (..on my Gibson, for instance) on a lead sound.  Otherwise, it's a twangmaster.

Mostly right. The real problem is most builders (and even manufacturers) use audio taper pots throughout for their controls, and the tone pots should be linear. But, for manufacturers it means more inventory and assembly line complications, and since hardly anyone uses tone controls it's not a huge issue. Regular folks either don't know or don't care, either. Just buy all the same pots and call it a love story.

Of course, values matter as well. Some use huge caps (like .047uf) and small pots (like 250K), so you end up with a roll-off point that's too dramatic and in the wrong place. But, that's largely a matter of taste and so is subjective. One guy's tone control is another's "strangle" switch.

 

[reluctant-builder]

Yeah, I've got a .015 uF on the neck and a .022 uF on the bridge of the guitar I've been playing and tinkering with the most ... 500 kOhm pots ... so I think it's more an issue of the taper. Blast.

 

[Cagey]

Yeah, I've got a .015 uF on the neck and a .022 uF on the bridge of the guitar I've been playing and tinkering with the most ... 500 kOhm pots ... so I think it's more an issue of the taper. Blast.

Well, it's partly that, partly your wiring, and partly the reality of putting controls in parallel.

Caps in parallel add, while resistors in parallel divide. Pots are just fancy resistors.

So, if you select the "middle" position (or any position that brings both pickups into play), you end up with a pretty wide variety of filter ranges that are difficult to predict. In your case, you could adjust things so that you have as much as .037µf in series with 0KΩ, but no more than 250KΩ (500K/2) in series so you've got more load on your pickup than is ideal, and all points in between adjusted by two pots so they interact. It's doable, and certainly people get used to it, but it's difficult to predict and in your case, you end up with far too much cap in the circuit so you roll off the vast majority of what your pickups are producing. You might be wanking along doing a lead run with the bridge pickup so your tone is wound up to "10", but your rhythym (neck) is set soft so you fade into the background when the singer or another instrument comes up. Then, you select a combo spot, and whatddaya got? Who knows? Next tune, the opposite is true, and your "combo" selections are off again.

Simple is best. You have tone controls on your amp and stomp boxes on the floor; don't make a mess of your guitar. That's for the kids who are impressed with dozens of knobs and switches. Makes 'em feel like they're in control when nothing could be farther from the truth.

 

[Jumble Jumble]

Right, I've done you a new diagram. A few things about it:

1. I've gone with my instincts on the tapped pickup. I've literally never heard of the two grounds thing, so I'm going to assume that it's a minor misunderstanding. I don't know what colors your wires are on that pickup, so I've coded them as follows:

Black - ground
White - hot
Red - er, warm.

I'm going to assume that you know which wire is the ground wire on the pickup. To see what the other two are, measure the resistance from each wire to ground. The one with the highest resistance is your "hot" - shown on the diagram in white - and the other is "warm" - the red one.

2. I've totally changed how the humbucker is wired. This is a much more conventional way of doing it. I have used the Roadhouse colors for this pickup so hopefully there shouldn't be anything to change. What this does is, each time the pickup is switched to single coil mode, it's disabling whichever side of the pickup it is that has the red and green wires connected to it. This should be fine.

3. The tone controls. In this diagram I have wired them as follows:

5 (Neck Full) - tone A is active
4 (Neck tapped + Bridge single) - tone B is active
3 (Neck Full, Bridge series) - tone B is active
2 (Bridge Single) - tone B is active
1 (Bridge series) - no tone control is active.

Now, hopefully from looking at the diagram you will be able to see how to decide for yourself what control, if any, you want active in each position. Note that despite what Cagey says, with this wiring there will never be more than one tone control active at any time. So this means you can set your tone controls how you want them and know exactly what you're going to get in each position on the switch.

4. In this diagram I've done everything right-handed. No doubt you're used to swapping pot wires to fix that, so I thought I'd leave it the standard way to make sure I didn't accidentally get inconsistent.

5. Finally, if after wiring it your middle position is weak, reverse the white and green wires to the humbucker.

Here's the diagram. No doubt you have questions - fire away.  :guitaristgif:

 

[tylereot]

Wow, thank you SO much jumble!  Nice work! 

The tapped wire, as I understand it... is a ground at about 60% of the coil.  Does that make you change the diagram, especially for the Neck ground?

I guess I don't quite get how you've got the switch laid out, as you've got the orange wire from Tone A attaching at 5, but the neck pickup looks like the hot's attached at 1 and bridged to 3????  :icon_scratch:
Maybe I don't understand how this switch works.
I also thought all the "0" leads were connected.

 

[Jumble Jumble]

OK, fixed the thing with the tone controls. Sorry about that, you were right.

What do you mean by the "0" leads?

 

[Jumble Jumble]

In the end, a tap is just a wire that comes in part way through the coil. My recommendation is to try it as I've shown for now and get back to me if there's a problem.

If there is, then to make the wiring scheme still work we'll need to swap the phase of both pickups but let's leave that for now.

 

[tylereot]

I just talked to Ken.  He suspects he did the colors backward!  He suggested I substitute the Black for the white, and the red for the green.

And yes, indeed, the tap wire is a ground, not a hot wire.  But I still like your tone control solution.

Slug coil is Black (+) and white(-), Screw coil is Red (-) and Green (+).  Oy.  :doh:

 

[TroubledTreble]

Sorry for the confusion. I have been working very long hours this month and have been extremely tired. (which is why I suspended orders this month) I made yours at the same time as a custom order and yours got wired the same it would seem. (humbucker)

Remember: I do warranty all I do.

 

[Jumble Jumble]

Ok, I can fix up the diagram but not till later on today.