Wiring Question for Non-Warmoth guitar

[reluctant-builder]

I wasn't sure whether this should go here or in Off-Topic, so I apologize in advance.

All I'm looking for is a beneficent soul to turn this schematic (http://www.hagstrom.org.uk/Schematics/Schempics/Swede2.jpg) into a wiring diagram.

Sadly, the schematic is totally useless to me; I can't make sense of it without the graphical representations of the pots, pups, caps and switches.

Thanks in advance.

 

[line6man]

I'll do it later today, unless someone else beats me to it.

That is basically Les Paul wiring, plus a switch to place a capacitor in series or parallel with the signal. Very simple.

 

[line6man]

I don't normally label parts, but in this case, everything is labelled out.
C1 is the neck pickup's tone pot's capacitor, 0.047uF.
C2 is the bridge pickup's tone pot's capacitor, 0.047uF.
C3 is the high pass filter capacitor on the tone switch, 4700pF.
C4 is the low pass filter capacitor on the tone switch, 0.015uF.

Note that I have made a couple of changes.

1. The schematic depicts a 2P3T switching pattern on the tone switch. This switching is accomplished with a DPDT On-On-On/SP3T mini toggle switch.
2. The pickup selector switch is shown for Strat/Tele style blade switches, Gibson style toggles and DPDT mini toggles.
3. The schematic shows that for each tone control, the signal goes to one side of the capacitor with the other side going to the pot, and the pot going to ground. I've switched it around so that the signal goes to the pot and the capacitor goes to ground. Since the components are in series, neither having any polarity, there is no difference between the two methods. I find the way I've drawn it is easier to diagram and also easier to wire up, especially with radial lead capacitors.
4. The schematic shows the unused side of each tone pot's resistive track shunted to the wiper terminal. I omitted this, but you can do it if you would like. Some argue that it gives less noise when the pot is adjusted, but I have rarely ever seen anyone do it. It really doesn't matter in practice, for this application.

 

[reluctant-builder]

Cool, thanks!

Believe it or not, though I get that the tone-filter switch should be a DPDT, in my Swede it's actually a 3-way LP-style toggle switch ... exactly like the pup selector. I have no idea why it is that way, however.

 

[line6man]

Cool, thanks!

Believe it or not, though I get that the tone-filter switch should be a DPDT, in my Swede it's actually a 3-way LP-style toggle switch ... exactly like the pup selector. I have no idea why it is that way, however.

A standard SPDT Center-On?

 

[reluctant-builder]

My camera really is an abject piece of shit, but here's a shot of the tone filter switch, inside the control cavity. No, I didn't confuse it with the pup toggle, either.  :icon_biggrin:

It's probably pretty hard to make out any serious detail without having seen the switch with your own eyes, but there are two green caps with one leg soldered on the outer lugs of the switch and the other soldered to the middle lugs along with the bare wires from two sets of wires fed from elsewhere in the guitar. There are white wires soldered to the ground lug of the toggle.

 

[line6man]

My camera really is an abject piece of shitee, but here's a shot of the tone filter switch, inside the control cavity. No, I didn't confuse it with the pup toggle, either.  :icon_biggrin:

It's probably pretty hard to make out any serious detail without having seen the switch with your own eyes, but there are two green caps with one leg soldered on the outer lugs of the switch and the other soldered to the middle lugs along with the bare wires from two sets of wires fed from elsewhere in the guitar. There are white wires soldered to the ground lug of the toggle.

I can't tell worth a shit, but that clearly has more terminals on it than a standard toggle.
The average SPDT Center-On won't work here.

 

[reluctant-builder]

So. I took a stab at trying to represent the wiring in my Hagstrom as it looks in the control cavities. If it looks backwards, it's because I'm left-handed and that's what I saw when looking at my guitar from the back.

I hope this makes sense to the trained eye because, to me, there are some things I couldn't quite discern. That red wire in the image isn't actually red, I just isolated it because I have no idea where it comes from nor what is its purpose. I hope the rest of it is straight forward. I left out the bridge ground wire and the wire that runs to the jack. Additionally, that wire on the left of the diagram, soldered to the back of each tone pot ... it's a hard wire, not copper, not insulated, and it's just soldered to the back of those pots. I have no idea what is its purpose, either.

Thanks for any insight in response to my first ever attempt to depict a wiring scheme...

 

[Cagey]

Looks like you might have an extra ground on the lower volume pot.

 

[reluctant-builder]

I wouldn't know. I just represented what was there. Checked and double-checked. If there is an extra ground wire, it's because it's there from the factory.

Not that the attached image will be of any help because it's a grainy, over-expoised six megapixel load of shit, but maybe it offers some semblance of context for comparison.

 

[Cagey]

Sorry, no help. And 6 megapixels will return a fine image. I've taken much more detailed pictures than that with a 2 megapixel camera. But, you've got to hold still when you shoot, and if the thing autofocuses, you need to set it to "macro" if you're going to shoot that close to something.

 

[reluctant-builder]

Then I am simply the world's worst photographer. I did set it to macro. I guess I should be checked for Parkinson's...

 

[reluctant-builder]

Here are four more, hopefully better, shots.

 

[Cagey]

Ok, what I thought was a ground is actually a hot line from a pickup. They've soldered the shield so close to the pot that it looks like the hot wire is soldered to the pot, then to the hot terminal of the pot. I'm surprised they didn't melt through the insulation with that little stunt.

 

[reluctant-builder]

OK, so I think I misrepresented one of the wires on the back of the bridge volume pot because I misinterpreted that it was grounded.

Looking at Line6Man's diagram, which he made based on the schematic I posted, the caps should be .047 uf on the tone pots but, in reality, they appear to be .022 uf based up on the 2A223J stamp they bear (it's surprisingly clear in my re-shot photos. Thanks for the photographic direction, Cagey). I sussed out the pot value based on the stamp by looking at this chart: http://www.csgnetwork.com/capcodeinfo.html

In my understanding of capacitors in guitar circuits, their purpose is to bleed treble. Is that right? If so, then the lower the value, the less treble they discard? Meaning that a tone pot with a .022 uf cap should be brighter overall than one with a .047 uf cap, right?

If so, why the heck -- when I'm using the neck pickup -- does my Swede sound like someone stuffed the speaker cone of my amp with soggy tissues and then wrapped the whole thing in a blanket? It has no such issues in the bridge position, and my Super Swede (which also has two Alnico 5 humbuckers and .022 uf tone caps) sounds like pure sex in every pickup combination. I always thought the Swede was muddier because of its .047 uf caps ... which I've discovered it doesn't actually have.

The Super Swede has pots that say JS A500KOhms on the back. I presume they are better quality pots than the ones in the Swede which have 450S2979 500K 0920 on their backs.

Any suggestions why one guitar is so amazing and the other only halfway so (bridge is sweet, neck is a dud)? Is it the quality of the solder joints, the electronics, both? Something else entirely?

 

[line6man]

In my understanding of capacitors in guitar circuits, their purpose is to bleed treble. Is that right? If so, then the lower the value, the less treble they discard? Meaning that a tone pot with a .022 uf cap should be brighter overall than one with a .047 uf cap, right?

The higher the value, the lower the frequency cutoff, and the lower the value, the higher the frequency cutoff.
For example, a 0.047uF cap would cut the treble at a lower frequency than a 0.022uF.

 

[reluctant-builder]

The higher the value, the lower the frequency cutoff, and the lower the value, the higher the frequency cutoff.
For example, a 0.047uF cap would cut the treble at a lower frequency than a 0.022uF.

I'm afraid I don't exactly follow. Does that effectively mean, with the 0.047 uf cap you will get less treble than you would with a 0.022 uf cap?

 

[reluctant-builder]

I think I've had a breakthrough. Third time is a charm.

So, the orange wire is the neck hot and the red wire is the bridge hot, each attached to the volume pots' outer lugs.

The black wires attached to the center lugs of the volume pots are the wires that run to the outer lugs of the 3-way SPDT pup toggle.

The common from the pup toggle runs to one of the outer lugs of the 3-way DPDT tone filter switch, with the center lugs of that switch running to the output jack. There is a wire soldered to the lug opposite the common, which I assume must be a ground, but I don't see where it goes, in the guitar and it's not in a position where I can manipulate it.

 

[reluctant-builder]

Hey, Joe and Cagey (since you two are the sole contributors to this thread). I decided to take the darned thing apart. The Swede. I desoldered the pickups and the hot wires from the volume pots to the switch, and also the common to the tone filter and the jack wire.

I removed the tone filter switch from the body and took some pictures. As usual, they're bad pictures, but they do seem to show all the pertinent bits. I've attached them.

Could you please explain how this thing works? It looks just like a pup toggle but it has two extra tags on the side where is the grounding lug, to which the two caps are soldered. On the other side, the tags that are analogous to the hot pup wires on a typical toggle are just linked together with a jumper wire. The common from the 3-way pup toggle was soldered to (in the photo with my fingers) the bottom left lug, to which the jumper wire is also soldered.

Finally, every wire in my Swede that runs from point to point has both a regular insulated hot wire and a bar ground wire. I have only 24 AWG copper wire with rubber coating, without any companion ground wire. To effectively duplicate this, if I don't reuse the wire, I have to run another wire concurrently with my hot wires to achieve the same effect, though it would be a rubber coated wire instead of a bare one ... correct?

Not sure if you saw, but I started a new thread about star grounding ... or rather, one about not grounding to the back of pots and not having a store of solder lugs to use, and what's a viable alternative: http://www.unofficialwarmoth.com/index.php?topic=17654.msg260651#msg260651

 

[Cagey]

It's tough to say without putting a meter on that switch to find out how it actually works. But, if I had to guess, I'd say when the switch is flipped to one side or the other, you get one or the other cap, then in the middle you get both in parallel. Assuming they're two different sized caps, you'd end up with three low-pass filter cutoff points. Not particularly useful, but it does improve the KPD (Knobs Per Dollar) rating of the guitar <grin>