Wiring ideas

MikeP

I'm mulling an electric solid wood archtop with two pickups. No jazz, thinking t bone walker, fenton Robinson etc and dirtier tones like willie Johnson on early howlin wolf records. I also like out of phase tones and I like to run both pickups all the time and adjust the volumes. Which is a faff. I'm imagining a slide potentiometer with only one pickup audible at the extremes and both equal at the middle, plus a master volume and master tone. Can that be done? Probably looking at surface mount p90s out of phase with each other but might be cool to have a push pull on the volume for in and out of phase. I have little or no idea how to achieve this or if its possible?

Any thoughts and ideas appreciated. 

Funkfingers

Yes. A volume, balance, treble roll-off control array can be assembled easily.

For my tastes, phase reversal should be accessed by a DPDT switch or a push-push pot.

The majority of professional quality P90 pickups are supplied with single-conductor + braided shield output cable.

For phase switching, you would require one of the P90s to have two-con + shield cable.

For permanently out-of-phase, just reverse the orientation of the bar magnets in one P90. (I once had a pair of P90s arrive in this condition. The novelty of the honky both pickups on sound soon wore thin.)

YMMV.

ICBM

You will need a special MN taper slide pot, if the pickups are in parallel. You can get these, they’re used as balance controls for hi-fi amps, although I’m not sure if they’re likely to be available in 500K. They’re more easily available as rotary pots since they’re commonly used in basses.

Alternatively you could connect the pickups in series and use a plain linear slide pot - much more easily obtainable - which would also require one of the pickups to be 2-conductor+shield, so that could be combined with the phase switching.

Dave_Mc

Funkfingers said:

The majority of professional quality P90 pickups are supplied with single-conductor + braided shield output cable.

For phase switching, you would require one of the P90s to have two-con + shield cable.

For permanently out-of-phase, just reverse the orientation of the bar magnets in one P90. (I once had a pair of P90s arrive in this condition. The novelty of the honky both pickups on sound soon wore thin.)

YMMV.

Pretty sure Catswhisker do the two conductor + shield thing as default on their P90s, though I suspect pretty much any decent winder who's making your P90s to order could do it if asked. (You're quite right that you need it to swap phase I also agree about the out of phase tone- obviously everyone's taste is different, but I've had pickups out of phase before by accident, and very quickly changed them to in-phase! I didn't like it at all... or at least didn't like it as the only option.)

Funkfingers

Dave_Mc said:

Funkfingers said:

honky both pickups on sound

I also agree about the out of phase tone - obviously everyone's taste is different

What does work well is the 2 and 4 positions of three P90s via a five-way lever selector switch.

There is an argument for having neck and bridge position P90s via a three-way selector switch plus a central P90 governed by a blend pot. Phase reversal on the centre pickup would sure as hell introduce sonic variety.

MikeP

I kind of fancy 3 p90s but I don't want that much weighing on the top so it's really dead unplugged. 

I definitely don't want oof on permanently

I'm not totally sold on p90s but I think vintage tones and surface mount is the obvious choice. Only listened briefly to gold tops but they seem REAL gnarly with a bit of breakup...

MikeP

3xp90 plus strat wiring would be simple and probably work well though. 3 pickups are more expensive than two... although 3 single connector not boutique might be cheaper than two fancy ones. I need cheap second hand stuff really. 

I need the volume to work well, I basically hardly touch the tone, crank the non mv amp, reduce the vvr to the volume level I want and use the guitar volume for clean to dirty. Am I right in thinking that doesn't work well with gold tops?

Funkfingers

MikeP said:

I'm not totally sold on p90s but I think vintage tones and surface mount is the obvious choice.

Dyna-Sonic, Filter'Tron, Johnny Smith style mini humbuckers. (The latter could be mounted via either the pickguard or a neck bracket.)

MikeP

Funkfingers said:

MikeP said:

I'm not totally sold on p90s but I think vintage tones and surface mount is the obvious choice.

Dyna-Sonic, Filter'Tron, Johnny Smith style mini humbuckers. (The latter could be mounted via either the pickguard or a neck bracket.)

Thanks, you thinking they are other options or they're better options? My main guitar is a 64 starfire ii with anti hums so I want something different err but not that different!

Funkfingers

MikeP said:

you thinking they are other options or they're better options? 

They are pickups that could be installed with minimal disturbance to the carved top.

Dave_Mc

Funkfingers said:

Dave_Mc said:

Funkfingers said:

honky both pickups on sound

I also agree about the out of phase tone - obviously everyone's taste is different

What does work well is the 2 and 4 positions of three P90s via a five-way lever selector switch.

There is an argument for having neck and bridge position P90s via a three-way selector switch plus a central P90 governed by a blend pot. Phase reversal on the centre pickup would sure as hell introduce sonic variety.

Yeah I seem to remember trying a Vintage Advance Strat-style guitar with 3 P90s (actually stacked ones IIRC) and a 5-way switch and it sounded really good.

You'd have to wire the volume backwards for a blend pot, wouldn't you? I'm not too keen on that because it kills all the treble when you roll the volume anywhere below full (even worse than standard wiring does!). I'd probably prefer it on a push-pull, or maybe easier (depending on the guitar and what type of switch you can easily fit) on a 5-way with a push-pull to add the bridge to the neck pickup setting (or vice-versa) so you can get all the options.

Dave_Mc

MikeP said:

I need the volume to work well, I basically hardly touch the tone, crank the non mv amp, reduce the vvr to the volume level I want and use the guitar volume for clean to dirty. Am I right in thinking that doesn't work well with gold tops?

How well the volume cleans up is largely due to how it's wired. As I said above, backwards wiring (which you need if you want the volume control to only shut off one pickup when you have multiple pickups selected and that pickup's volume turned to zero; "normal" wiring means in, for example, the middle pickup selector position if you turn the volume of one pickup to zero, you get no sound at all i.e. silence) noticeably reduces the treble. For me it's not worth it considering you have a pickup selector to accomplish the same job, but for some people maybe it's worth it, depending on how they play. (It makes sense on a Jazz Bass, for example, though it'd still probably make more sense if it had a pickup selector!)

You can also try 50s wiring which mitigates (a bit) the usual treble roll-off of standard wiring. But it affects how the tone knob works.

Or you can try a treble bleed circuit (that's misnamed, it's actually a treble pass, but if you try to google "treble pass" you'll get nowhere!) which will retain more treble, but some players feel it thins the sound out and actually retains too much treble. You can tweak it substantially by capacitor values, and also add a resistor (again, of various values to tweak it) in either parallel or series with the capacitor to make it feel more "natural", but doing that also affects the pot taper.

There isn't really any "fix" which will please everyone, but there may well be one which you prefer to normal wiring with no treble reduction mitigation...