Two seperate pickups selectors?

[Dan025]

it happens to the best of us. lol.

 

[Cagey]

You're completely right! I was visualizing the whole thing wrong. Consider everything I said redacted.

Quit visualizing and forget about wiring diagrams until you have a schematic. Wiring diagrams are for assembly lines where they don't need to know how things work, just where things go. If you're designing a circuit, you need to draw a schematic or you're just fantasizing.

 

[AutoBat]

My inability to understand schematics is the main reason i haven't built a Ted Weber 5E3x2.

 

[Cagey]

My inability to understand schematics is the main reason i haven't built a Ted Weber 5E3x2.

Schematics are very abstract. They require a great degree of internal visualization based on understanding of what's actually happening. I know that sounds counter-intuitive, because what could be more real and obvious than a picture or representation of how something is put together? But, it's true. I imagine it kinda depends on how you think. I know myself, I can look at wiring diagrams all day long and have little or no idea what's going on. But, gimme a schematic and I can tell you anything, plus a few things. Ask me how to do something and I can draw you a schematic, but probably not a wiring diagram unless I have a fixed inventory of parts.

Not that wiring diagrams are useless. Far from it. They're necessary. Very necessary, if you want somebody else to reduce your ideas to practice. But, they're an adjunct to data, kind of like meta-data, that you use to communicate proof to product, vision to reality. The problem with them is they're quite often not reversible. That some people can do it readily only speaks to intimate familiarity with specific parts, such as some switches and pots, where a lot of things are able to be simply taken for granted.

You go to any engineering house, and the guys who design circuits are often not the same ones who lay them out. It's a different mindset.

 

[line6man]

Alright, here is what we're looking at, assuming one volume and one tone, which are in the circuit at all times, and humbuckers with series coils that split to the outer coils when the five-way switch is selected.
"S1" is a 4PDT On-On switch (A Fender S1, if you want.)
"S2" is a SPDT Center-On switch. (A Gibson toggle.)
"S3" is a DP3T "Strat style blade switch."
"P1" is the tone pot. Its value should be appropriate to pickup impedance/to taste.
"P2" is the volume pot. Its value should be appropriate to pickup impedance/to taste.
"C1" is the tone capacitor. Its value should be appropriate to pickup impedance/to taste.

 

[Cagey]

See? Now that's useful.

 

[bagman67]

i got yer wiring diagram right here:

 

[Strat Avenger]

You pick the 5 tones you will actually use, write them down, then find a way to put them all on ONE mega-switch, with at most one extra option on a push-pull.

You don't need parallel out of phase options, you don't need a tapped neck bucker by itself option if you have a single in the middle, etc. Most of the "weird" options you can wire up don't actually sound all that great.

More controls = more things to screw up on a dark stage.

+100

 

[Cagey]

You pick the 5 tones you will actually use, write them down, then find a way to put them all on ONE mega-switch, with at most one extra option on a push-pull.

You don't need parallel out of phase options, you don't need a tapped neck bucker by itself option if you have a single in the middle, etc. Most of the "weird" options you can wire up don't actually sound all that great.

More controls = more things to screw up on a dark stage.

Perzactly. Wild-assed overly-complicated control schemes are a nightmare in real life, and are more often than not completely useless. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

 

[line6man]

You pick the 5 tones you will actually use, write them down, then find a way to put them all on ONE mega-switch, with at most one extra option on a push-pull.

You don't need parallel out of phase options, you don't need a tapped neck bucker by itself option if you have a single in the middle, etc. Most of the "weird" options you can wire up don't actually sound all that great.

More controls = more things to screw up on a dark stage.

Perzactly. Wild-assed overly-complicated control schemes are a nightmare in real life, and are more often than not completely useless. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

As much as I hate to agree with you, I've been saying that forever! When you go too far with switching, you end up with three settings you like, five that sound terrible, fifteen that don't wow you, ten that sound identical to others, and two or three that suddenly make you go silent at the wrong time. (And those are the ones you accidentally stumble upon most frequently when you bump the guitar the wrong way and ruin all your switch settings.)

I can actually see this particular setup being useful in functional terms, however. Basically, you put a switch one way and you've got a Gisbon style switch between two humbuckers. Flip it the other way, and you can use a Strat style switch to select between the usual SSS selection, with the humbuckers conveniently switched over to singles. The problem comes in with the fact that it requires excessive switching and solder joints/wire runs. There are seven poles of switches interconnecting. That's a lot of soldering and a lot of wire, and of course, the higher risk of failure. I still say the best way to go about is with one DP3T/4PDT On-On-On to split both humbuckers, and then a single five-way. It would be simple and practical, yet versatile. (Assuming the coil splits are of any value. Could yield a bunch of useless sounds. HSH is already one of the most versatile pickup combos to begin with, so why do anything else?)

 

[Cagey]

I suspect most of the people who come up with these bizarre, frantic control schemes have never been on stage. It's a little different than playing in the bedroom/basement where you have time to grab another beer, light another cigarette or play with the baby's mommy in between chord changes. In real life, you often only have milliseconds to do things. "Thinking" goes out the window. You gotta slap that switch or adjust that pot RFN or sooner.

 

[stubhead]

I'm not sure if mine is one of the ones that qualifies as bizarre and frantic, I did say

70% of the time the three-way's in the middle and I just use three positions of the humbucker's switch and fiddle with the volumes and the bridge PU's tone. If you're not used to a Gibson setup and all the nifty things available with both pickups on, this would have a steep learning curve.

And I don't have a middle pickup and since Lawrence knows how to make a HB that sounds great tapped, I don't need a middle PU. Mine has worked for me for a long time... I actually tried to play a Steve Morse Music Man for three years or so, and it was a bit much, but the trite and trusty old argument that

"I'm a seasoned road warrior and believe me, switches and knobs are too complicated when you're feetsies' in the fire"

are sort of belied by the fact that Steve Morse could out-tone any other three guitarists - all at once? Remember the old Dixie Dregs tune, "Ice Cakes?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pihI5GBNS58&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PLE3102D1C0F7954D3

I had owned this video for  several weeks before I remembered you need a violinist & keyboard player to play this.... And the other famous notion that Gibson wiring is nasty and inductive and too complicated under pressure is sort of contradicted by a few thousands of examples. If you listen - really listen - to the solo in "Elizabeth Reed" or the pre-heroinized takes of "Since I've Been Loving You" you may notice that those tones just aren't there on a two-knob guitar. You can learn to do these things if you "need" or want to; unless my memory fails, one of the posters right above here who's assisting in making the argument that "I'm too stupid to do anything but blast away" recently posted a picture of his pedalboard, which appeared capable of stomping the entire Polish Army. They used to say "tone is in the fingers" but it clearly has gravitated southward to the toes! :laughing3:

I don't know if you've seen this video -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_GzNPT_8vk&feature=player_embedded#
but it actually seems to be copping the feel from the Hothand "Soundblox" pedals with the sensors.
http://www.sourceaudio.net/products/hothand/wah.php
This stuff is inevitably leading to an "instrument" that's just a leotard with a few dozen sensors, and you'll stand in front of a bank of synthesizers and twitch and undulate. You won't even need any guitars or knobs, just learn yer Lady Gaga licks by wiggling.

Knock knock:
Who's there?
Lady Gaga licks.
Lady Gaga licks who?!?
and so forth, fifth...

 

[Cagey]

If you think Steve Morse's guitar is complicated, then you're worse off than I am. He does a ton of adjustment on the fly, as exemplified by the videos you provided, but it's not complex. It's just frequent and pretty focused on level control. In that area, he and I agree - less is more. 1 volume and 1 tone knob in a convenient place and call it good.

 

[mwbjr13]

I suspect most of the people who come up with these bizarre, frantic control schemes have never been on stage. It's a little different than playing in the bedroom/basement where you have time to grab another beer, light another cigarette or play with the baby's mommy in between chord changes. In real life, you often only have milliseconds to do things. "Thinking" goes out the window. You gotta slap that switch or adjust that pot RFN or sooner.

I've been on stage plenty of times and you're right you do only have about a milisecond to think about what you're doing. But, my thing is I rarely change pickups during a song. I mess with my volume and tone before I touch the pickups. That being said I've also noticed that I carry about six "standard" tuned guitars to each gig I've been to in the past year, so I want one guitar that acts like many.
And yes, the more complicated things are the higher the chances are of things breaking. And yes, over complicating things for the sake of over complicating things doesn't make much sense but if no one ever over complicated something we wouldn't be where we are as musicians.

 

[stubhead]

There are also two differing "philosophies", if they are deserving of such a title. I have never, ever been in a bar band where we had four hours worth of cover tunes worked out so that we were playing as exact a duplicate in tones to the originals as possible. By the time you get to hour three we're doing everything possible to pad them out with whatever B.S. comes to mind.... :laughing3: I have seen bar bands polished up on the Florida->East Coast circuit that could do exacting Beatles covers, or if they did a "ZZ Top" set it sounded right, Pink Floyd tunes sounded like Pink Floyd etc.

But I've never been in one, and I specifically like to leave room open for new things to happen on stage. And you'll never get a job as the "American Idol" guitarist, but you'll never bore the crap out of intelligent listeners, either. I love really weird, "wrong" cover tunes... what that means is a guitar that can do lots of different things, and you know what they are and you're not afraid of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6djLCzi3foA

- this whole album RIPS, imo