Q for the electro-experts, what switch for dual tone circuts?

[stubhead]

My fetal but soon-to-pop newbie is designed for experimentation, everything's modular, on threaded inserts, I'm making multiple pickup-holder plates in various combinations.... first thing out is using some double-sided tape to find the perfect location for a single Lawrence L500 w/ it's own 4-way, front coil/series/parallel/back coil. And then - to two different sets of volume & tone controls, with different pot values, sweeps, different sized caps.... you can regurge stuff you read elsewhere till you're blue & covered with other people's (aural) vomit, like you actually KNOW anything? But to hear it, well.... dang. It's almost like work or something.

So Q: - to have two different isolated volume/tone circuits I want an "on-on" six pole switch, right? NOT an "on-on-on", right? Or an "on-on" three pole? Line6... hep!

 

[Jumble Jumble]

If it's just master volume and tone then yes you would use an on/on DPDT to switch it. One pole is used to switch the pickup output from one volume control's left lug to the other, and the other pole is used to switch the jack's hot connector from one volume control's center lug to the other.

 

[line6man]

What is the switch for? Coil splitting or pickup selection?

 

[stubhead]

First is the four-conductor Lawrence L500L pickup, which runs to a 4-way Tele blade switch - front coil, both coils in series, both in parallel, and back coil. Then that output goes to the switch in question. That switch will choose between two completely separate volume->tone->output circuits. I mean, you know the rigamarole people go through trying to describe the effect of their vintage secret Czechoslovakian Cold War paper-in-oil capacitor w/ "enhanced upper-middle midrange, moderately gritty at low volumes but blooming with a kerrangey spunk not heard since Canadian Prime Minister Peirre Trudeau's hot young wife Maggie famously counseled "swallow, not spit" blah blah etc.

No one actually knows 80% of the stuff that's regurged all over the internet. "Oh use a smaller pot and a larger cap! Treble bleed! Q-filter! I've memorized 14 different guitar blogs!" And you can (in theory) do the thing with alligator clips and bits of cardboard hanging out of your guitar - but nobody ever really does. I want to leave things in place for a few weeks while I play music through it... radical, I knw.

The main parameter-to-be-dicked-with is trying to get a relatively full range signal out from all tone knob settings, with that knob rolling off just the higher, "presence" or "bright switch" range of frequencies - say 3K to 4K and above. I suspect that will come from a relatively restricting volume pot - 300K? But then a big tone pot (500) and a real little (.015uf? even .0068, al la Wacker below). This should give me that pinkly-blushing neo-muscular scream while retaining the hairy little tentacles in the middle lower upper mids.

But soldering up a bunch of stuff, stand in front of an amp - "Brang, brang brang" - then removing it and soldering up another bunch - "Brang, brang brang" - Roll Over, Chuck Berry I have forty-dollar capacitors - nah.

http://www.premierguitar.com/magazine/issue/2008/mar/auditioning_tone_capacitors.aspx

 

[line6man]

First is the four-conductor Lawrence L500L pickup, which runs to a 4-way Tele blade switch - front coil, both coils in series, both in parallel, and back coil. Then that output goes to the switch in question. That switch will choose between two completely separate volume->tone->output circuits. I mean, you know the rigamarole people go through trying to describe the effect of their vintage secret Czechoslovakian Cold War paper-in-oil capacitor w/ "enhanced upper-middle midrange, moderately gritty at low volumes but blooming with a kerrangey spunk not heard since Canadian Prime Minister Peirre Trudeau's hot young wife Maggie famously counseled "swallow, not spit" blah blah etc.

No one actually knows 80% of the stuff that's regurged all over the internet. "Oh use a smaller pot and a larger cap! Treble bleed! Q-filter! I've memorized 14 different guitar blogs!" And you can (in theory) do the thing with alligator clips and bits of cardboard hanging out of your guitar - but nobody ever really does. I want to leave things in place for a few weeks while I play music through it... radical, I knw.

The main parameter-to-be-dicked-with is trying to get a relatively full range signal out from all tone knob settings, with that knob rolling off just the higher, "presence" or "bright switch" range of frequencies - say 3K to 4K and above. I suspect that will come from a relatively restricting volume pot - 300K? But then a big tone pot (500) and a real little (.015uf? even .0068, al la Wacker below). This should give me that pinkly-blushing neo-muscular scream while retaining the hairy little tentacles in the middle lower upper mids.

But soldering up a bunch of stuff, stand in front of an amp - "Brang, brang brang" - then removing it and soldering up another bunch - "Brang, brang brang" - Roll Over, Chuck Berry I have forty-dollar capacitors - nah.

http://www.premierguitar.com/magazine/issue/2008/mar/auditioning_tone_capacitors.aspx

Ok, so is that two volumes and two tones, or four volumes and four tones?
If you want a master volume and master tone setup, you simply need a DPDT On-On. If you want individual volumes and tones, you would indeed need a 6PDT switch.

For four volumes and four tones, your best bet is to lay out your controls Les Paul style, but with concentric pots. That will keep things neat and tidy, both aesthetically, and functionally.

 

[Jumble Jumble]

And you can (in theory) do the thing with alligator clips and bits of cardboard hanging out of your guitar - but nobody ever really does.

Ahem. I do!

I had an idea for a pickup config a while back and needed to see if it was even viable. One coil from each of two humbuckers, connected together in series, with a capacitor in parallel with one of the coils. Dangled croc clips out of the guitar to test/decide on the capacitor value and settled on .01uF.

It's such a good sound I'm going to dedicate another position on the 5-way to the same thing, but with a different capacitor value. The clips will have to come out again for that.

 

[stubhead]

One coil from each of two humbuckers, connected together in series, with a capacitor in parallel with one of the coils. Dangled croc clips out of the guitar to test/decide on the capacitor value and settled on .01uF.

Well this is a really good idea, if I understand it you've basically put one coil to work as a hum-canceller, but the biggest part of the tone will come through as a single? Kinda like the dummy coil pioneered by Alembic, or the low-output coil hidden inside a "noiseless single" type pickup.  But... but... (see buttbutt note below).

One thing I know for sure is that the Lawrence L500's have a really good tone when split to single coils, And I have been using the blade switch on them for... dang, a long time. Most humbuckers sound pretty weak by themselves when they're dumped down to a single coil, and that sound works best if they're both engaged. And if

It's such a good sound I'm going to dedicate another position on the 5-way to the same thing, but with a different capacitor value.

you should chase it around for sure. Of course, if any one coil can be a "main" and another the dummy, you've got twelve possible variants, before you even GET to different cap values...  :toothy10: but the world needs it's mad scientists, if only so the villagers can run around with pitchforks and torches now and then.

It always strikes me as comical when somebody bangs together a Warmoth or mods some Epiphone to conclude with something like:

"The choice of a SD '59 paired with a JB at the bridge proved to be the best of all possible worlds!"

Umm... actually, to "prove to be the best" you have to try ALL the 72,000 other possibilities available from Seymour Duncan. Then start in on the DiMarzio's. :laughing11:

One of the reasons I want to wire two possibilities on a switch is because the Buttbutt Factor, which states:

THINGS THAT SOUND GREAT IN YOUR BEDROOM SOUND AWFUL WHEN PLAYING WITH OTHERS, AND THINGS THAT SOUND GREAT IN A BAND SOUND AWFUL IN YOUR BEDROOM.

Even if you could bypass the razzing that would happen if you showed up to play with little bits of cardboard and wires sticking out, and even if you could avoid bumping into them, when you stop the band practice and say,

"O.K. - that was my solo through the 300k Gibson pot wired with a paper-in-oil .033 capacitor! Now let's play it all over again, only this time I'm gonna use this foil cap with..."  try that will all six capacitors, then announce

"O.K., now we're going to try each capacitor with this next potentiometer, an early-60's Allen Bradley 485K... don't worry, we got six down, only forty-two left to go!"

Oh goody. Sounding bad within a band context is surely the second-biggest impediment most guitarists will face, besides just plain sucking. But at least you are trying some things, which is more than most people can say. The whole reason I'm designing this thing with removable pickup plates is so that I can have four or five of them with different combinations of single coils and humbuckers. I'm sure it will end up with a P-rails eventually; and I'm sure it will end up with an Alumitone eventually; and I'm sure it will end up with a Troubled Tele eventually; there's bound to be a Fernandez Sustainer in there sometime, mebbe EMG's, etc., etc., etc.

Again with the pitchforks, I think it was Chuckles Darwin who said that 99% of all spontaneous mutations were bad ones, or,  at least, being able to whistle "Dixie" backwards was no help with the sabre-toothed tigers. But if that first brave, hongry Cro-Magnon fellow hadn't trapped, killed, butchered and roasted a slowpoke Neanderthal, we'd probably ALL still be running around oongah-boongahing in caves somewhere.

 

[Jumble Jumble]

One coil from each of two humbuckers, connected together in series, with a capacitor in parallel with one of the coils. Dangled croc clips out of the guitar to test/decide on the capacitor value and settled on .01uF.

Well this is a really good idea, if I understand it you've basically put one coil to work as a hum-canceller, but the biggest part of the tone will come through as a single? Kinda like the dummy coil pioneered by Alembic, or the low-output coil hidden inside a "noiseless single" type pickup.  But... but... (see buttbutt note below).

Yeah, that was kind of my idea, but actually.... it doesn't sound anything like that at all. Originally that position on the switch was one coil from each humbucker, in series. But it actually sounded almost identical, and at the same volume, to just having the two humbuckers active in parallel (the middle position). So I looked around for some ideas, and saw the Strat S-1 switching stuff. One of those configs is two pickups in series witha cap across one, so that's where I got the idea. The actual sound is kinda like a normal Tele middle position, with a hint of quack.

And if

It's such a good sound I'm going to dedicate another position on the 5-way to the same thing, but with a different capacitor value.

you should chase it around for sure. Of course, if any one coil can be a "main" and another the dummy, you've got twelve possible variants, before you even GET to different cap values...  :toothy10: but the world needs it's mad scientists, if only so the villagers can run around with pitchforks and torches now and then.

Yup. My idea is just to create a darker version of the same sound in position 4.

When it's all done, I'll probably do a video or something.

Good luck with your experiments. I'm doing it mainly for fun. I'm not in a band at the moment, but I do try to keep most of my playing at least approaching "a band situation" - I almost always play with backing tracks. Of course, in the privacy of my own home I'm allowed to have the guitar loud enough that if the backing tracks were a real band I'd be pissing everyone off, but screw it, it's fun. When I record sound for video I notice that it sounds much better with a thinner, brighter sound, and the volume lower. I can usually fix that with a quick EQ tweak though.

 

[Dan025]

you really only need a 2 pole on/on (6 pins). put it after the pickup selector. output from the selector that usually goes to volume goes to one common of the on/on. one of the lugs goes to tone/volume circuit #1 and the other goes to tone/volume circuit #2, let the grounds all be connected all the time.  wire the volume outputs similarly with the output jack connected to the common on pole #2.

stub i love your scientific approach. testing/empirical data trumps all even if you end up using subjective terms to describe it, well i guess you can put it on a scope or spectrum analyzer to get real data as well. theory is a nice brain exercise though. the results are still gonna be individualized though because not only the players taste, but the rig effects the results. if an overdrive pedal has a 500k input stage (many do) then a 500k or 1 meg volume pot will be effected by the pedal more than a 250k. and if the rig lack presence then that effects the apparent tone pot taper. a tone circuit that appears linear and starts working imediately on a fender amp with the bright switch on may sound like only the last 1/4 works on an amp with a 15in speaker or the treble turned down. i mean you can't really hear the tone circuit cutting treble if the amp cant reproduce treble..