Warmoth routing
- Thread starter primi
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Yeah, I gotta vote with the original poster on this. The only way to know what something sounds like is to build it and try it.
This is Cagey's view. I don't know how much he's playing with bands anymore, but there are a whole lot of people who do like the 3 switch combination, and make it work for them. I don't think I could get used to the Steve Morse guitars - the real ones that he uses with the four pickups, one blade and two toggle switches, not the pimpy purply ones with the quilted nar-nar,e people's minds. "Oh, I just use pedals to get my tone." Ernie Ball did the same thing to Petrucci too - somebody in marketing said "Wait! How come we aren't selling any quilty lushly bound with the aroma of real cash guitars?
I can't think of a better way to figure out what sounds he does want, that to have them all. And he'll probably boil it down to four - but - who's four? Somebody else's choice? And even then, once he knows where those four are, I'd bet he can find them quickly. I mean, I am a die-hard fan of the four-knob, three-way Gibsonian setup, where each pickup acts as an inductor to the other when the volumes are different and a tiny little bit of movement on the volume knobs can make a big difference. That's the whole point....:icon_scratch: And it boggles some minds.
The care and feeding of the modern pedalboard is one of the more hilarious things that's come about the past decade or so, people who absolutely can't play their way out of a wet paper bag have got the enormous 12-pedal board, and really no hope of ever figuring it out because they don't like to practice in the first place, much less figure out the polarity and ground loop problems inherent in plugging a dozen different preamps into each other. These are the same people who can authoritatively lecture about Strat quack only, they can't play it. And all you have to do is listen to Duane Allman's solo on the live "Elizabeth Reed" to find out what can be done with four knobs and a guitar cord. And I personally can do without quack far more easily than I can do without a basic "Little Wing" neck single coil sound and a basic "Abraxis - Live at the Fillmore" humbucking sound. And though I like"Sultans of Swing" and "My Old School", Knopfler himself hasn't quacked in two decades (another stone-cold-deaf Englishman, if you ask me) and Jeff Baxter now makes his moola lecturing his adoring neoconservative throngs about better living through outer-space laser death rays shooting down the ICBM's about to rain down upon us from the commie menace. Oops, there he goes again...
And, the third time through (first two weren't good enough) I wired my "tele" with concentric tone/volumes, one for each of the two pickups, and a three-way tweenum; AND a double-wafer 24-lug SuperSwitch just so the bridge L500XL could spit up the front coil, back boil, and both coils in series, parallel and out-of phase. Shortly after I got back from the asylum, I figured out I really only need the back coil, series and parallel. But I'll be dog-damned if I'm going back in there without a SWAT team, Adriana Lima and a death ray of my own.
But seriously - SO MUCH "conventional wisdom" regarding electric guitar sound is such utter malarky I can only applaud someone who wants to try something to see what happens. It worked for Christopher Columbus and Albert Einstein and Douglas Engelbart and Tiger (major-)Wood, so who knows what weasels irk in the farts of hens? :dontknow: fo' reel...
This is Cagey's view. I don't know how much he's playing with bands anymore, but there are a whole lot of people who do like the 3 switch combination, and make it work for them. I don't think I could get used to the Steve Morse guitars - the real ones that he uses with the four pickups, one blade and two toggle switches, not the pimpy purply ones with the quilted nar-nar,e people's minds. "Oh, I just use pedals to get my tone." Ernie Ball did the same thing to Petrucci too - somebody in marketing said "Wait! How come we aren't selling any quilty lushly bound with the aroma of real cash guitars?
I can't think of a better way to figure out what sounds he does want, that to have them all. And he'll probably boil it down to four - but - who's four? Somebody else's choice? And even then, once he knows where those four are, I'd bet he can find them quickly. I mean, I am a die-hard fan of the four-knob, three-way Gibsonian setup, where each pickup acts as an inductor to the other when the volumes are different and a tiny little bit of movement on the volume knobs can make a big difference. That's the whole point....:icon_scratch: And it boggles some minds.
The care and feeding of the modern pedalboard is one of the more hilarious things that's come about the past decade or so, people who absolutely can't play their way out of a wet paper bag have got the enormous 12-pedal board, and really no hope of ever figuring it out because they don't like to practice in the first place, much less figure out the polarity and ground loop problems inherent in plugging a dozen different preamps into each other. These are the same people who can authoritatively lecture about Strat quack only, they can't play it. And all you have to do is listen to Duane Allman's solo on the live "Elizabeth Reed" to find out what can be done with four knobs and a guitar cord. And I personally can do without quack far more easily than I can do without a basic "Little Wing" neck single coil sound and a basic "Abraxis - Live at the Fillmore" humbucking sound. And though I like"Sultans of Swing" and "My Old School", Knopfler himself hasn't quacked in two decades (another stone-cold-deaf Englishman, if you ask me) and Jeff Baxter now makes his moola lecturing his adoring neoconservative throngs about better living through outer-space laser death rays shooting down the ICBM's about to rain down upon us from the commie menace. Oops, there he goes again...
And, the third time through (first two weren't good enough) I wired my "tele" with concentric tone/volumes, one for each of the two pickups, and a three-way tweenum; AND a double-wafer 24-lug SuperSwitch just so the bridge L500XL could spit up the front coil, back boil, and both coils in series, parallel and out-of phase. Shortly after I got back from the asylum, I figured out I really only need the back coil, series and parallel. But I'll be dog-damned if I'm going back in there without a SWAT team, Adriana Lima and a death ray of my own.
But seriously - SO MUCH "conventional wisdom" regarding electric guitar sound is such utter malarky I can only applaud someone who wants to try something to see what happens. It worked for Christopher Columbus and Albert Einstein and Douglas Engelbart and Tiger (major-)Wood, so who knows what weasels irk in the farts of hens? :dontknow: fo' reel...
Re-Pete
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primi said:
Don't need Bill Bailey to satire The Edge, he does a reasonable job of demystifying his tone himself!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeupLXuoWko
Jumble Jumble
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Having been in the situation myself of creating a multi-sound guitar (the most I've ever done is 17), I've ended up in the position that what I do is give myself massive flexibility through either switching or easily-accessible solderless wiring, decide on which sounds I like the best and will use, and then design a wiring scheme to get me those sounds as quickly and simply as possible. This usually boils down to a super switch and maybe a mini-toggle or push-pull.
One of my two-humbucker guitars has a switch setting on its 5-way that is one coil from each humbucker, in series, with a small capacitor in parallel with the neck coil. I imagine if I'd floated that idea on here, everyone would have poo-pooed it and tried to discourage it. But instead, I just tried it, and guess what? I like it and use it a lot. You know why all those 50s guitars have simple wiring? To make it so untrained monkeys can do it for peanuts. Not because they tried a load of stuff and decided which sounded best.
Discouraging someone from even trying it is just cranky-old-man behaviour. Seriously, if primi doesn't like his eventual result, he will get over it. But at least he'll know why he doesn't like it. And if he does like it then he will have proved everyone wrong, like the guy who took his black gloss off the gorgeous piece of black korina despite the forum forbidding it.
Oh yeah and this:
One of my two-humbucker guitars has a switch setting on its 5-way that is one coil from each humbucker, in series, with a small capacitor in parallel with the neck coil. I imagine if I'd floated that idea on here, everyone would have poo-pooed it and tried to discourage it. But instead, I just tried it, and guess what? I like it and use it a lot. You know why all those 50s guitars have simple wiring? To make it so untrained monkeys can do it for peanuts. Not because they tried a load of stuff and decided which sounded best.
Discouraging someone from even trying it is just cranky-old-man behaviour. Seriously, if primi doesn't like his eventual result, he will get over it. But at least he'll know why he doesn't like it. And if he does like it then he will have proved everyone wrong, like the guy who took his black gloss off the gorgeous piece of black korina despite the forum forbidding it.
Oh yeah and this:
Makes no sense. At all. So, 5 is plenty, unless you have a guitar synth, in which case 26 is fine, but 26 on a guitar is still wrong, because synths are, I guess, "allowed" more sounds than guitars? Er... right.
If some is good, more is better!
I have a cheap Tele copy that I use as my test-bed guitar.
The pickup switching I use gives me 156 possibilities from two 4-wire humbuckers, a 4-way Tele switch, two 6-way rotary switches, and a phase switch.
It stacks up like this:-
bridge humbucker, coils in series, coils in parallel, one coil, the other coil, coils in series but out of phase, coils in parallel but out of phase.
as above, but using the neck humbucker.
That gives us 12 different sounds.
Then we put the pickups in parallel and that gives us another 36 different sounds.
And then you do them again but out of phase and get another 36 sounds.
Repeat with the pickups in series and you get another 72 sounds giving a total of 72 + 36 + 36 +12 = 156 different sounds.
Do they all sound good?
Depends. For recording where you might be searching for the exact nuance of tone, then yes, they are all good. For live work, it's a no.
Are some of the sounds very similar unless you have bionic ears?
Yes.
The coils are identical in a normal humbucker so some differences were very subtle.
So I bought a pair of Seymour Duncan P-Rails. NOW the coils sound different!
The upshot is my Warmoth build will have a P-Rails humbucker with the 6-way switch in the neck position, 4-way Tele switch, phase switch, and a Tele bridge pickup.
I might use a P-Rails for the bridge but that will just be 3-way switched for humbucker-P90-single coil.
There are about 30 of the 156 sounds that I really like.
A simpler way of doing the switching would be nice.
I have a cheap Tele copy that I use as my test-bed guitar.
The pickup switching I use gives me 156 possibilities from two 4-wire humbuckers, a 4-way Tele switch, two 6-way rotary switches, and a phase switch.
It stacks up like this:-
bridge humbucker, coils in series, coils in parallel, one coil, the other coil, coils in series but out of phase, coils in parallel but out of phase.
as above, but using the neck humbucker.
That gives us 12 different sounds.
Then we put the pickups in parallel and that gives us another 36 different sounds.
And then you do them again but out of phase and get another 36 sounds.
Repeat with the pickups in series and you get another 72 sounds giving a total of 72 + 36 + 36 +12 = 156 different sounds.
Do they all sound good?
Depends. For recording where you might be searching for the exact nuance of tone, then yes, they are all good. For live work, it's a no.
Are some of the sounds very similar unless you have bionic ears?
Yes.
The coils are identical in a normal humbucker so some differences were very subtle.
So I bought a pair of Seymour Duncan P-Rails. NOW the coils sound different!
The upshot is my Warmoth build will have a P-Rails humbucker with the 6-way switch in the neck position, 4-way Tele switch, phase switch, and a Tele bridge pickup.
I might use a P-Rails for the bridge but that will just be 3-way switched for humbucker-P90-single coil.
There are about 30 of the 156 sounds that I really like.
A simpler way of doing the switching would be nice.
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