CTS Push Pull for master coil split

[Timmsie95]

so i'm ordering most of my stuff from the almighty Stewart Macdonald, and I found these beautiful push/pull's

So I'm going to use one as my master tone knob, to coil split both pickups.
The solder terminals are different, and this diagram shows how they relate:

I am using this diagram from Seymour Duncan:

So if I did it right... this should be the correct way to wire it, right?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Timmsie95]

also, they have this diagram, so I'm thinking I'm right.. in the up position, it sends the coil signal to ground, "cutting" the coil. in the down position, it's not sending it to ground, and the tap wires are left unaltered, giving the full output of the pickup.

(my brain hurts...)

 

[BigSteve22]

I've been looking at these too. Opens up a LOT of possibilities.

 

[Timmsie95]

I wish they had long shaft 250k ones, though. I'll be using lace alumitones, and they sound a bit better with 250k's.
I'm thinking if i use a 500k pot with a .047 capacitor on the tone, it should be alright? I don't really know..

 

[Cagey]

.047 µF caps are overkill to my taste, but that's just it - it's a matter of preference. There is no "right" value. Personally, I feel a .047 µF part rolls off far too much too soon to be useful, while .022 µF works for everything. But, it also depends on the pot it's used in conjunction with, which in my case are always 500K audio taper parts.

As for long-shaft pots... it might be worth a $5 experiment. Buy a long shaft pot from that same manufacturer (CTS?) in the value/taper you want, take that and and your switched pot apart, and swap parts until you end up with what you want. Sometimes you can do it, other times not. But, a $5 lesson in pot construction is relatively inexpensive.

Another thing you can do is look up CTS' data sheets and see if they have a "selection grid" that allows you to spec out a pot (taper, resistance, wattage, shaft style, etc.). Often with switches and pots a manufacturer can source a wide variety of configurations of roughly the same part by mixing/matching sub-components. Spec out the part you want, then see if another vendor sells that derived part number. Generally speaking, specialty resellers (like guitar parts vendors) will only stock a few popular configurations of a part that can come many different ways.

 

[Timmsie95]

Never thought of that. I don't know if i'd trust myself to take it apart though.

 

[Cagey]

What trust? Find some junk pots to tear up for practice. They're common as dirt. Even if you have to buy one, It's $5. If you trash it, you've lost less than a 6 pack of Pabst Blue Moosepiss  :laughing7:

I found a very instructive video you may want to watch, even if you never take a pot apart. Tells you how they're constructed, how to take them apart,  how they work, etc. It also inadvertently shows why you shouldn't solder to pot bodies.

[youtube]rUkrpqEmXb8[/youtube]​

 

[Timmsie95]

That is helpful, thanks!


As a side note, i looked further into splitting alumitones, and apparently it's done much differently. I found this article

http://guitarworks.thestrandbergs.com/2015/05/27/lace-alumitone-5-way-mod/

Which clarified it for me, so if i read that right, this is actually how i should wire it. Left side is from one pickup, right side is from the other.

Then id just adapt it for those cts pots.

 

[Timmsie95]

In short, that article states that with alumitones, to get the split sound, you're lifting the ground from the black and white wire, and sending the white wire to ground instead.

 

[amigarobbo]

That is helpful, thanks!


As a side note, i looked further into splitting alumitones, and apparently it's done much differently. I found this article

http://guitarworks.thestrandbergs.com/2015/05/27/lace-alumitone-5-way-mod/

Which clarified it for me, so if i read that right, this is actually how i should wire it. Left side is from one pickup, right side is from the other.

Then id just adapt it for those cts pots.

Pretty much

http://www.lacemusic.com/pdf/13.pdf

I'd be tempted to use a 3 way switch and two separate push pulls to 'split' (or is it tap?  :dontknow: ) each pickup, to give more tone options than a 5 way, but that's just me.

 

[Timmsie95]

That would be cool too.

I don't even know if it's splitting or tapping...
On their colour code diagram, it labels the white wire as the "tap" wire, but in their wiring diagrams, it shows "Splittable Alumitone" wiring.
So which is it, Lace? Huh?  :laughing7:
Either way, I don't think it works like a traditional split or tap, because it's changing the voicing by sending a different part of the signal to ground (if I understand correctly).

 

[line6man]

That would be cool too.

I don't even know if it's splitting or tapping...
On their colour code diagram, it labels the white wire as the "tap" wire, but in their wiring diagrams, it shows "Splittable Alumitone" wiring.
So which is it, Lace? Huh?  :laughing7:
Either way, I don't think it works like a traditional split or tap, because it's changing the voicing by sending a different part of the signal to ground (if I understand correctly).

There is a lot of misinformation about splitting and tapping on the internet, because some people use the terms interchangeably, when they actually refer to entirely different things.

Splitting is when you have a pickup with multiple coils, and you remove one or more of them from the circuit. For example, switching a dual coil humbucker into single coil mode. Sometimes people also use the term to refer to series/parallel switching of a dual coil pickup. The basic concept, in any case, is that you are playing around with the wiring of the coils.

Tapping is when you wire a switch to select between a full coil, and one or more tapped portions of the coil. To do tapping, you have to have a pickup that has taps in its windings. What this means is that there are several "outputs" corresponding to different amounts of wire, on the pickup. For example, you could have a single coil pickup with one output for 100% of the winding, one output for 95% of the winding, and one output for 90% of the winding.

 

[Timmsie95]

Yeah, but the Alumitones don't have windings at all...

 

[Timmsie95]

I did a more professional looking diagram for my split/tap (what the hell is the right term... haha)

 

[line6man]

Clearly we are dealing with a coil split. Those are splittable humbuckers, not tapped single coils.

 

[Timmsie95]

Yeah, but there aren't really coils. The Alumitones are completely different from wound pickups.
I think it is more like a tap than a split. cause changing the ground from white to black and white striped, sends a different amount of the signal to ground.

 

[Cagey]

Yeah, but the Alumitones don't have windings at all...

Well, they do, but it's not obvious. That little black blob you see is a coil wrapped around the stacked core that's visible from the end. It forms the secondary of a step-up transformer whose primary consists of the aluminum bar that's running though it.  The coil itself is almost certainly tapped, and they don't want you to ground either output wire because the finish winding and the tap are both outputs, with the start winding as a common ground. If you grounded either of the finish (output) wires, you'd either short out most or all of the winding and have little or no output at all.

The thing works on the same principle as a clamp-on ammeter...

 

[Timmsie95]

Well, they do, but it's not obvious. That little black blob you see is a coil wrapped around the stacked core that's visible from the end. It forms the secondary of a step-up transformer whose primary consists of the aluminum bar that's running though it.  The coil itself is almost certainly tapped, and they don't want you to ground either output wire because the finish winding and the tap are both outputs, with the start winding as a common ground. If you grounded either of the finish (output) wires, you'd either short out most or all of the winding and have little or no output at all.

The thing works on the same principle as a clamp-on ammeter...

Once again, Cagey to the rescue!

Thanks, i understand it so much better now.
So with the way it's tapped, why do you lift the ground on the black and white wire? I'm assuming it would cut the signal if you didn't?

 

[Cagey]

I don't know; I'm just speculating. If I could see a schematic I'd know more, but I'm not finding anything but wiring diagrams everywhere.

 

[stratamania]

Whether it is a tap able or splittable pickup I can't tell for sure either.

But here is the wiring that you need.

http://www.lacemusic.com/pdf/13.pdf

Lace describe it as split-able, but whether that is technically correct or just nomenclature who knows without taking one apart ?