Pickup wiring help

Haych

Done a scour of Google but can't find a specific diagram that will satisfy what I want to do.

Apologies, I've asked a similar question before, but my requirements have changed a bit.

So, I have H/S/S pickups, a five way switch, V/T/T pots and a push/pull switch on T2.  So far nothing out of the ordinary.

In position 4 (or 2, depending on how you look at things) the bridge humbucker will have the north coil only, and the middle pickup selected.

Again, nothing too difficult.  The bit I'm not sure about is that with the push/pull switch, I'd like to simultaneously split the humbucker and add the signal to whatever switch position is selected at the time, so it's basically an add-split-bridge switch.

I'm not clever enough to work out if/how this can be done.

Thanks in advance.

ICBM

You can't auto-split the humbucker in position 4 with the standard tone control wiring - to do it, you'll need separate tone caps for the pickups so you can use the second half of the switch to split the pickup instead.

If you *only* want to do it with the pull switch, you can do it with the standard tone wiring. You can also easily both split the pickup and add it to any other selection using both halves of the pull-switch.

Haych

OK, so slightly confused - not difficult to do.

Yes, I accept the standard tone circuit will need to change, I was going to use T1 for the neck and middle and T2 exclusively for the bridge.

I'm sort of compiling a load of different diagrams online and taking bits from one, bits from another and working out the bits which aren't specifically stated.

To make matters worse, not all the diagrams are particularly clear.

The one bit that none of them have is the split-add-bridge.

ICBM

Haych said:

Yes, I accept the standard tone circuit will need to change, I was going to use T1 for the neck and middle and T2 exclusively for the bridge.

You can't do that *and* auto-split the humbucker in position 4. You can have one tone for the neck and one for the bridge (with none for the middle) and still auto-split.

Split-add-bridge is easy, you just combine a standard pull-split and a standard pull-add-bridge on the same switch - each only uses one half of it.

Funkfingers

Combining auto-split and separate tone pots is more easily achieved using a four-pole five-way Superswitch. 

The business of combining one coil of the humbucker with whatever the selector switch is doing may be better achieved via a Blend pot.

Of course, if you are committed to a Blend circuit, you can not have two individual tone controls. This removes the need for a Superswitch.

(Here we go 'round the mulberry bush.)

Haych said:

I'd like to simultaneously split the humbucker and add the signal to whatever switch position is selected at the time, so it's basically an add-split-bridge switch.

The push-pull pot is a DPDT on/on switch. One pole engages the coil split. The other connects the bridge pickup hot directly to the common/collector terminal on the pickups side of the selector switch.

This will do what you ask. I am uncertain how usable the resultant sounds will be.

Haych

Funkfingers said:

This will do what you ask. I am uncertain how usable the resultant sounds will be.

I'm pretty sure Tom Anderson work this into their wiring on H/S/S guitars, but they have an extra toggle switch too, I forget what that does.  They seem to get some decent tones out of it, but then they do also make their own pickups so I guess they'd design them for that purpose to get the best out of them when used like that.

Dave_Mc

Funkfingers said:

This will do what you ask. I am uncertain how usable the resultant sounds will be.

Bridge and neck together are usually quite pleasant-sounding. I just do the splitting on a separate push-push since that gives me the option of combining the full humbucker with the neck single coil, too. (Also my HSS guitars just have a master tone so I don't have any faffing to do with a superswitch or anything like that.)

If @Haych only wants the split sounds, another option might be a Freeway switch... they're quite expensive but a bit easier to wire and use than push-pulls (you do lose a few of the possible options, but that doesn't seem to be a problem here).

Keefy

Haych said:

Funkfingers said:

This will do what you ask. I am uncertain how usable the resultant sounds will be.

I'm pretty sure Tom Anderson work this into their wiring on H/S/S guitars, but they have an extra toggle switch too, I forget what that does.  They seem to get some decent tones out of it, but then they do also make their own pickups so I guess they'd design them for that purpose to get the best out of them when used like that.

I think the Tom Anderson toggle switch brings in a passive mid boost.

Funkfingers

There is no such thing as a passive boost.

There is an aftermarket device that squeezes some passive filtering gubbins into an epoxy-sealed black cube. I think that the brand name is Villex. The last time I encountered one, it was crammed inside the control cavity of a Gordon-Smith. Those are none too generous to begin with.

ICBM

Funkfingers said:

There is no such thing as a passive boost.

I know it's stretching the definition a bit, but there is... just about. A cap in parallel with the pickup - a smaller value than a tone control, usually - does actually boost the mids slightly at the resonant frequency of the cap and the inductance of the pickup. It's not a huge amount, but it does produce a little bit of extra output at that frequency. If the amp is most sensitive around that frequency as well, you can hear a noticeable amount of 'boost'.

Keefy

ICBM said:

Funkfingers said:

There is no such thing as a passive boost.

I know it's stretching the definition a bit, but there is... just about. A cap in parallel with the pickup - a smaller value than a tone control, usually - does actually boost the mids slightly at the resonant frequency of the cap and the inductance of the pickup. It's not a huge amount, but it does produce a little bit of extra output at that frequency. If the amp is most sensitive around that frequency as well, you can hear a noticeable amount of 'boost'.

Yes I think that’s what the Tom Anderson circuit does. I didn’t like it though.

There have also been boost/drive circuits that use some of the current generated by the guitar’s pickups but they had a very high output impedance.

Haych

The switch on my Tom Anderson worked differently. 

There was a push/pull on the tone pot to add bridge to whatever other selection was made at the time (and it split the coils simultaneously too). There was also a mini toggle to split the humbucker when that was the only pickup selected. 

I think. 

There was certainly no mid boost. 

Funkfingers

ICBM said:

A cap in parallel with the pickup - a smaller value than a tone control, usually - does actually boost the mids slightly at the resonant frequency of the cap and the inductance of the pickup. It's not a huge amount, but it does produce a little bit of extra output at that frequency. If the amp is most sensitive around that frequency as well, you can hear a noticeable amount of 'boost'.

This is what the Villex GMB does. 

Hostile reviewers say that the electronical gubbins mildly filters treble and bass frequencies, then, the inductance increase makes the remaining signal seem louder. Thus, proportionally more of the band-passed frequencies are present.

Villex now offers the "booster" in three formats.

www.villex.com
Click on Products, then, Boosters.