Hairbrained wiring idea of the day........

[ChristopherG]

So as I ulceriously await the arival of my Warmoth orders I contemplate wiring options. Here is one idea I have been molesting.

Pickups: Lace Red/Blue in the bridge. Lace Emerald/Purple in neck. Lace Alumitone Single in the middle.

The bridge neck humbuckers each go through on/off/on toggles to allow for north/both/south. Then blend pot --> master volume --> master tone --> jack

The alumitone would go through a "blend" knob--which kind of seems like a plain old volume/tone pot to me--straight out to the jack.

The idea was to be able to mix in the hi-fi freakiness of the Alumitone in whatever portion seems appropriate at the time.

Any major pitfalls here? It is basically the Nashville Strat set up with a couple of complications.

 

[line6man]

As I understand, you want two blend pots?

A major problem with blend pots is that they generally behave in a rather odd fashion when you are trying to mix pickups of dissimilar output impedance. The behavior of one blend pot will strongly be determined by what the other is set to. For example, if the neck or bridge humbucker is soloed, then the blend pot that adds in the single coil will cause a volume drop when the single coil is brought in, because the single coil will most likely have a lower output impedance than the humbucker, allowing its resistance to load on the humbucker's signal.

Another issue is that adding blend pots tends to darken the tone, because of the extra resistance parallel to the signal path. With two blend pots, you have the equivalent of four volume pots worth of loading. You might consider an "ungrounded" scheme, where the blend pots only introduce resistance in series with the pickups. The downside is that you cannot completely solo a pickup, but most people report that it is close enough for rock and roll, and you can only hear the unwanted pickup when tapping on its polepieces.

A third issue is that blend-based schemes do not tend to be very practical on guitars. You see them a lot on basses, where it is necessary to dial in the right balance of pickups to get a good tone, but on guitars, the priority is to quickly jump between different tones. This is why pickup selector based schemes dominate. You might find that the versatility of a blend pot is not as useful as you would expect it to be on paper, and that it isn't worth sacrificing a pickup selector switch for.

 

[ChristopherG]

Ah. I see

Wel in the Nashville strat wiring diagram shown here -->http://www.premierguitar.com/articles/21112-three-must-try-guitar-wiring-mods?page=3 the middle pickup doesn't interact with the other two except at the jack. Or am I missing something?

 

[line6man]

Ah. I see

Wel in the Nashville strat wiring diagram shown here -->http://www.premierguitar.com/articles/21112-three-must-try-guitar-wiring-mods?page=3 the middle pickup doesn't interact with the other two except at the jack. Or am I missing something?

Firstly, that is not a blend. That is simply a volume pot.
Second, that diagram is not functional. The "blend" volume pot is wired as a master volume, which means that you have to blend in the middle pickup at all times, to get any sound. If you were to roll the pot down to silence the middle pickup, the wiper terminal of the pot would reduce the impedance at the jack to zero, resulting in total silence. To make that scheme work, you would need to reverse the first and second terminals on the pot, so that the wiper terminal can vary input impedance on the coil, rather than output impedance on the jack.

As a side note, the other volume pot is wired the same way, so you would need to reverse that pot, as well, if you want to be able to solo the middle pickup. Most people don't solo their middle pickups, though.

 

[ChristopherG]

Firstly, that is not a blend. That is simply a volume pot.

I understand that which is why I wrote.

The alumitone would go through a "blend" knob--which kind of seems like a plain old volume/tone pot to me--straight out to the jack.

Thanks for the advice. This was just a musing on my part.

 

[Cagey]

With a few exceptions, what most guys learn is the simplest solutions are the best. If you can't get exactly what you want out of a simple setup, chances are very good that simply changing a pickup or two will get you there and you're done. If that's not enough, then what you often need is another guitar. Trying to nail 180 bajillion tones out of a single instrument is not only an exercise in futility, it's not practical. You gotta play the thing, after all. You don't want to have to memorize and try switching to numerous different arrangements while you're playing. There often isn't time, anyway.

Simple. Did I say simple? Yeah, I think I did. Make it simple. You'll be much happier.

 

[line6man]

With a few exceptions, what most guys learn is the simplest solutions are the best. If you can't get exactly what you want out of a simple setup, chances are very good that simply changing a pickup or two will get you there and you're done. If that's not enough, then what you often need is another guitar. Trying to nail 180 bajillion tones out of a single instrument is not only an exercise in futility, it's not practical. You gotta play the thing, after all. You don't want to have to memorize and try switching to numerous different arrangements while you're playing. There often isn't time, anyway.

Simple. Did I say simple? Yeah, I think I did. Make it simple. You'll be much happier.

Huge +1 here. There is a reason that wild wiring schemes don't catch on. They are impractical, and usually lead the player to more frustration than satisfaction.

For a HSH pickup configuration, I would stick to a 5 way Strat style switch, and maybe throw in a couple of series/parallel switches if I was feeling fancy. There isn't any need to go further.

 

[ChristopherG]

No, I generally agree. The Alumitone in the middle is one of the combinations rolling around in the old brainpan and I was trying to think of ways to keep it from being completely overpowered by the proximity of much hotter pickups.

I will most likely be using a six throw four pole rotary since A. I would miss my bridge/neck humbucker sound otherwise and B. I hate, hate, hate the look of blade switches on rear routed guitars.

 

[line6man]

No, I generally agree. The Alumitone in the middle is one of the combinations rolling around in the old brainpan and I was trying to think of ways to keep it from being completely overpowered by the proximity of much hotter pickups.

If you are trying to prevent the middle pickup from being overwhelmed by louder pickups, then this "blend" idea is the last thing you would ever want to incorporate into your wiring scheme. You would want the middle pickup running at full volume, with some attenuation on the other pickups.

 

[Cagey]

I'll tell ya - Alumitone pickups are somewhat unique. I'm not sure they "mix" with anything. They're very accurate devices, so they're best suited for situations where you're going to be doing a lot of post-processing, if you do anything to them at all. By themselves, they're super-clean, but that works to your advantage if you're looking for an innate raw tone OR if you're feeding a lotta sfx. Sounds counter-intuitive, but that's what you get. You can do a lot with them because they're a great signal source.

If I was only going to install one in a group, I'd put it in the neck position, where you get the most string action. If it was the only pickup, I'd put it in the bridge position. But, I'd probably change my mind later. I guess what I'm saying is buy into the Alumitone solution wholeheartedly, or leave them alone. I can't imagine them working or playing well with others.

 

[ChristopherG]

You're right Cagey.

I think I will save the Alumitones for my AX7 rehab project.

Probably go with the aforementioned lace duellies plus a chrome dome in the middle or .....................maybe active EMGs. My favorite shop has a H/H strat with a 57/66 set in it that always leaves me wondering what all the hate is about.

 

[Cagey]

Active pickups can sound very good, but people's idea of "good" varies widely. Often, though, the pushback comes from as simple an idea as having to install local power and its unreliability. What if your battery dies, or leaks all over the inside of your favorite axe? That's enough to piss off a saint and a lotta people are afraid of it.

Of course, modern batteries don't leak like they did in the past, but it does still happen. Only takes once to drive you to get out your gun. But, it's easy enough to buy units with 4 or 5 year shelf lives. If you leave a battery in that long, you probably deserve anything you get. Kinda like ignoring tooth decay.

 

[line6man]

Active pickups can sound very good, but people's idea of "good" varies widely. Often, though, the pushback comes from as simple an idea as having to install local power and its unreliability. What if your battery dies, or leaks all over the inside of your favorite axe? That's enough to piss off a saint and a lotta people are afraid of it.

Of course, modern batteries don't leak like they did in the past, but it does still happen. Only takes once to drive you to get out your gun. But, it's easy enough to buy units with 4 or 5 year shelf lives. If you leave a battery in that long, you probably deserve anything you get. Kinda like ignoring tooth decay.

I've never heard of anyone leaving a battery in a guitar for long enough to allow leakage. The usual internet chatter about active components is more like "OMG! OMG! IF I DON'T CHANGE THE BATTERY EVERY THREE HOURS ITS GOING TO DIE IN THE MIDDLE OF MY GIG! SWEET JESUS HELP US ALL!"

 

[Cagey]

You're right, of course. Most active pickups/active EQ widgets draw so little power that a battery would last 100 years if it didn't just age out and self-discharge. But, I'm old enough to remember how batteries used to be, and it wasn't that long ago that you had to keep an eye on things or that kind of damage was a real thing that happened in no time flat. I can't tell you how many flashlights, radios, toys, etc. I had ruined due to batteries puking all over the interior of the things, and it usually only took a couple/few months.

These days, the battery manufacturers have got their game down pat. I've got a stash of batteries in the supply closet where some of them have "fresh" dates that run to 2019 or so. It's amazing.

Still, call me paranoid, but once bitten, twice shy. You gotta watch the little rascals.

 

[Cagey]

As an aside, I said "most active pickups" in the last post when talking about power draw, but surprisingly the new "Fluence" pickups from Fishman are apparently some power-hungry little bitches. You get 200 hours out of a set of batteries if you're lucky. Not that that's a horrible number, but it's definitely something you wanna keep an eye on if you do performance work.

Certainly not as bad as wireless units, though. I get about 5 or 6 hours out of my Line 6 G90 transmitter if I sacrifice a chicken or a cat and pray to the gods of electrochemical reactions with great sincerity.

 

[ChristopherG]

Cagey, these nine volts aren't the Galvanic jars of your youth.

Nobody who uses them ever leaves them in that long because you actually only have till the battery is 2/3 gone before the reduced juice starts to seriously affect your tone. And yeah, anyone who puts their axe in storage without removing the batteries deserves what they get.

What gets me is that people listen to the sound of the EMG 81, then declare all EMGs "sterile" crap as if all of their pickups were voiced the same way.

Edit:

Yeah, some of these new gizmos suck the juice. The active tone controls required by EMG's X series reduces projected life to 250 hours. Still a lot of hours but it is a quarter of what the plain jane line gets. Throw an Afterburner on the same buss and you are looking at some serious drainage.  A buddy of mine has EMG loaded axe and he keeps 4 9 volts in his. Two for the pickups and two just for the Afterburner.

I am not thrilled about the battery situation but the 57/66 strat that I mentioned sounds like what must have been in someone's head when the PAF was designed.

 

[rgand]

With a few exceptions, what most guys learn is the simplest solutions are the best. If you can't get exactly what you want out of a simple setup, chances are very good that simply changing a pickup or two will get you there and you're done. If that's not enough, then what you often need is another guitar. Trying to nail 180 bajillion tones out of a single instrument is not only an exercise in futility, it's not practical. You gotta play the thing, after all. You don't want to have to memorize and try switching to numerous different arrangements while you're playing. There often isn't time, anyway.

Simple. Did I say simple? Yeah, I think I did. Make it simple. You'll be much happier.

I also agree with this. When I was configuring my Strat, I tried every possible combination I could think of, including the center pickup on a volume pot. I couldn't just adjust one pot and have what I wanted. It was a continuous dance of adjusting at least two of the controls all the time. In the end, I just eliminated the center pickup and went HH with one vol and one tone. Like the man says, keep it simple.

 

[line6man]

A buddy of mine has EMG loaded axe and he keeps 4 9 volts in his. Two for the pickups and two just for the Afterburner.

That is just completely absurd. Unless you are saving up batteries for a nuclear war, you don't need more than two batteries.