Fitting a Varitone Switch into a Jazzmaster Circuit

[Gojaco]

Hello fellow guitar enjoyers,
a few days ago I asked about drilling holes with pot sizes and I have explored further options that make me have to drill less holes in weird places. This made me run into another idea. THE RHYTHM CIRCUIT! Why didn't I think of that earlier? lol
Anyway this helps me solve the issue of having too little space for knobs or having to put them in strange places. However it comes with some additional challenges. For anybody who isn't up to the lore:
I'm putting together a Jazzmaster and there are some things I want to do but I am pretty inexperienced with actually making my own wiring schematics. Right now I have the following parts I want to put in the circuit and limitations due to parts I already have/want to use or that fit:

- I want to use a passive humbucker (Seymour Duncan SH-5) in the bridge position and a P90 (Seymour Duncan Phat Cat) in the neck
- I want to use a 3-way switch to switch between the bridge pickup, both pickups combined and the neck pickup alone (normal stuff lol)
- The switch usually used to engage the rhythm circuit will be used by me as a coil split for the bridge position (It's an on-on switch)
- I want to use the roller knobs as seperate tone knobs for the bridge and neck position (as far as I know the fitting knobs are only available as 50k or 1meg pots)
- The volume pot is a 500k pot with a treble bleed mod
- The other hole for a knob will be fitted with a 6-way rotary switch to have a Varitone type circuit I bought off reverb. There is a wiring diagram that came with it but it's for a 2vol/2tone+varitone circuit guitar

A friend of mine will help me wire this up since he has wired up a lot more circuits but I want to make his work as easy as possible and make my own wiring schematic. He has installed some coil splits before so if worst comes to worse he would probably know how to do this but with everything going on I feel a lot more at ease having a wiring diagram prepared.

Now my questions are:
- How would I have to modify this circuit to account for having only 1 master volume knob and a coil split for the bridge pickup?
- Would it be a problem to have mismatched tone and volume knobs? If so does anybody know what 500k tone pots work for roller knobs? If it's not a problem using the 1meg-ohm pot is probably a better idea if I want to have a modern sounding guitar right?

Any help is appreciated

 

[stratamania]

To achieve a master volume  - the black wires from the pickups go to the inputs of the three way toggle switch. The output of the toggle then goes to the input lug of the volume pot.

However to have two different tones with the switching arrangement you have would not work as there is no way with a three way toggle to connect a different tone depending on pickup selection to the master volume. It does not have enough poles.

Perhaps consider instead looking at a Freeway toggle style switch which will give you many more options.

The red and white wire of the bridge are joined together and connect to the switch you will use for coil splitting. In the coil split position of the switch the signal is sent to ground. In the other position it just joins those wires to form the series link of the humbucker.

If you use a 1meg pot for a master tone (which would be the only option with a normal toggle and master volume) you could put a resistor of a similar value between it and ground so that appears about 500k.

 

[Gojaco]

To achieve a master volume  - the black wires from the pickups go to the inputs of the three way toggle switch. The output of the toggle then goes to the input lug of the volume pot.

However to have two different tones with the switching arrangement you have would not work as there is no way with a three way toggle to connect a different tone depending on pickup selection to the master volume. It does not have enough poles.

Perhaps consider instead looking at a Freeway toggle style switch which will give you many more options.

The red and white wire of the bridge are joined together and connect to the switch you will use for coil splitting. In the coil split position of the switch the signal is sent to ground. In the other position it just joins those wires to form the series link of the humbucker.

If you use a 1meg pot for a master tone (which would be the only option with a normal toggle and master volume) you could put a resistor of a similar value between it and ground so that appears about 500k.

Thanks a lot, this makes a lot of sense. So a resistor I would put in there would also be 1 meg? What could I expect if I didn't do that? Would my signal be slightly/significantly brighter?
Not being able to use both tones sucks but it's fine. There isn't enough stuff I would want to do with a freeway switch to justify it. I will just have to find something else to do with the second wheel. Worst case I'll just leave it in for looks.  :yourock:

 

[stratamania]

The higher value the pot is the brighter it will tend to be.

Oh also the hot to the varitone could not be from the toggle, it would have to go to it from the volume pot output. So you could just use that as the master tone.