middle tone

[Jumble Jumble]

I think when I get a few minutes I might have a go, just for the challenge of it.

 

[Jumble Jumble]

Right, how's this? I think I got it right.

 

[Updown]

:dontknow:  Can you go back to your other cartoon pic's.

That one's all jibba jabba jibba jabba blar blar blar bla ....... to me  :icon_biggrin:

 

[Cagey]

See? Now that makes perfect sense to me.

 

[Jumble Jumble]

It's interesting: it's quite clear as to what's happening, clearer than a cartoon, but absolutely useless when it comes to opening up a guitar and getting the soldering iron out.

As for checking which coils are active - I just tap the poles with a screwdriver. They click if they're active and you can check your volume and tone controls work too as they change the cound of the clicks. I guess it wouldn't work very well if you were checking your series/parallel/out of phase stuff was working as planned, but for that stuff really you have to string the guitar up.

 

[AutoBat]

I think I can actually follow that schematic! (granted I stared at it for well over 5 minutes)

 

[Cagey]

It's interesting: it's quite clear as to what's happening, clearer than a cartoon, but absolutely useless when it comes to opening up a guitar and getting the soldering iron out.

Right. You often need both drawings to do a job. The schematic tells you how it works, the wiring diagram reduces it to practice. For something as simple as a guitar, you can generally get away with one or the other, but most people prefer wiring diagrams because they don't care how it works, only that it does. Plus, they may not be familiar with symbology so paint-by-numbers is the way to go in those cases. But, if you've drawn up something new and are questioning its operation, pictures are difficult to work with.

 

[Jumble Jumble]

I usually work straight from brain to wiring diagram, but I can imagine drawing myself a schematic if I was trying to come up with something really complex. Two humbuckers on a five way superswitch gives you an amazing number of possibilities so I can see that a schematic might be helpful to get the logic of it planned out.

So ANYWAY, can you read that schematic? And do you see what I mean, that you can't get two tone controls active at the same time?

 

[Cagey]

Yes. You've accomplished what you set out to do. Give yourself a cookie <grin>

 

[Jumble Jumble]

Phew.

 

[Cagey]

Hey, if it was easy, we'd get girl scouts to do it <grin>

 

[Jumble Jumble]

I've not done it yet, but one day I'm going to use a super switch to create a scheme where the tone controls apply per position, rather than per pickup. So I might have gone 1 apply to neck, neck+mid and mid, and tone 2 apply to mid+bridge and bridge.

A friend of mine brought his FSR 50s Classic Strat round for me to put new pickups in yesterday. Surprisingly, it was wired for:

1. Bridge / Tone 2
2. Bridge + Mid / Tone 2
3. Mid / Tone 2
4. Neck+Bridge / Tone 1 + 2
5. Neck / Tone 1

At least according to the papers that came with it. He wanted regular Strat wiring and I was a little worried I'd open it to find there was some sort of custom PCB-based switch in there. But, opening it, there was a super switch. So, no problem doing the wiring then.

Weird, though, that using the superswitch you can have any tone control active in any position, and they specifically wired it so that in one position, both tone controls were active in parallel. Why? There's not even any way you could claim that each tone control applies to one pickup - you're just selectively wiring in master tone controls. So... I have no idea why they did that.

So anyway I finally put this plan into action. We wired the pickups in the regular strat configuration, but then we had tone 1 active in 3, 4 and 5, and tone 2 in positions 1 and 2. Works great, no positions with two active tone controls. Definitely going to do it to my Strat next time I have it open.

 

[Dan025]

two tone controls in parallel makes more sense than ya think. on a Gibson, if you mix the volumes just right and if its the vintage setup with the tones connected to the volume input not the output you don't get completely discrete control of the pickups but you can effect one more than the other.

with a single volume you are effecting the whole signal for sure but that doesn't make it pointless. one thing to look at is the inductance. parallel pickups are brighter. there may be some comb filter effect that cuts some frequencies but there is generally more presence. having the two tones in the parallel positions helps bleed some of that treble so it sounds slightly more balanced between positions since its effectively like rolling a linear pot down to 5 or an audio pot to about 7.

having two knobs means you can make a quick switch from a warm tone to a jangly start tone with the pickup selector. the single vol single tone may look like the most logical way to go but the artist can make use of the extra knobs, then again a really good player can also make changes in tone with picking technique and may be able to work around a lack of controls.

what is wrong with the start wiring is there is no tone on the bridge. the fact that the tone is switched with the pickup selector and yet is not wired to the bridge pickup makes zero sense. there is no excuse. they have everything they need to use 2 tones on 3 pickups but they don't.

 

[tfarny]

Master tone, and the third knob used for blending or adding the middle in series gives loads more tonal versatility and is easier to use, than a normal wiring.

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

Wait, it has to work. Every Jazz Bass has one tone for two pickups.
Thanks guys.

:icon_scratch:

That might be a flawed analogy.  A jazz bass has a master tone.  It also has separate volumes, no 3rd pickup, and no 5 way switch.

 

[Jumble Jumble]

Yeah two tones on a LP is different. On a strat whenever both controls are active, they're just both directly connected to the input lug on the volume control. Two master tones the same.