Will this wiring/switching setup work?

rico

I want to get a loom made up for a tele project and require the following:

• neck humbucker (four conductor)
• push pull pot for coil split
• standard tele bridge pickup
• standard 3 way switch, vol and tone
• treble pass 

Is this achievable and what pot values and supplementary resistors and caps would I need?

Cheers!

Roland

Yes, it’s achievable.

There is not a single answer on resistance and capacitance values. The conventional thinking is 250k log volume and tone pots for single coils, and 500k for humbuckers. What you choose rather depends on which humbucker and which single coil you are using. A good starting point is 330k, and be prepared to change if you need it darker (lower resistance) or brighter (higher resistance). With a 250k log pot as a tone control I like a 220 capacitor. For a 500k pot I use a 330, or even 470 cap. Treble bleed capacitor on the volume control is also a matter of choice. The bleed is there to maintain brightness as the volume is turned down. I like the sound to be brighter at lower volume, and use an 003 cap without a resistor. Some people prefer the opposite, and use a lower value with or without a 100k resistor.

You also need to think about whether you want the push pull tap switch on the Tone or Volume control. I know you said 3 way selector, but an alternative is to use 4 way pickup selector: humbucker, tapped humbucker, both pickups in parallel (or tapped and bridge), bridge alone. You could also use a 5 way Superswitch, and get all five options.

ICBM

You can also use a 500K volume pot for the humbucker and a 470K resistor in parallel with the bridge pickup to give an effective 250K pot when that is selected. I would use a .047uF tone cap and a 500K pot for that too, since you get 250K simply by turning it down to about 8 so there's no real disadvantage to using the higher value. For a treble pass I would use 680pF and 220K in parallel, that seems to work well with a 500K pot across a range of pickup types.

Bear in mind that a Superswitch usually won't fit in a standard Tele cavity. There is also a more complicated scheme using a standard 5-way switch that gives full humbucker, split humbucker, both pickups, bridge plus split humbucker, bridge. (There is a slight oddity with the both-pickups sound in that the bridge pickup is in parallel with only one coil of the humbucker even though both coils are on.) I would need to find a diagram for that...

rico

@TheGuitarWeasel is this something you can help with? I’ll be having a fortyniner in the bridge and a four conductor vintage style humbucker in the neck - anything you’d recommend specifically? 

I’d want a standard three way switch with push/pull on the tone pot to split the neck coils. 

ICBM

That’s dead easy then - 500k pots, resistor for the bridge pickup. If you want to be really clever you can use the second half of the coil split switch to engage the resistor when the neck pickup is split as well, so you get an effective 250k pot there too.

flying_pie

Be aware that, regardless of the wiring choice, when you tap (or split or phase reverse) a humbucker that the output drops. I'd ask yourself if you NEED a neck humbucker and will use it enough in full humbucking mode or if you just fancy one. I've always found coil tap/split to be useless when gigging and don't bother with them. There are other opinions available!