3PU Les Paul wiring idea - feasible?

Trude

Hi folks

Can anyone give me some pointers for this wiring scheme I'm dreaming up?

Basically I have a 3PU Les Paul which I want to use for maximum versatility with minimum fuss.  This means accessing coil taps and the middle pickup for Stratty sounds, whilst keeping the core LP options intact.  Right now I have:

• Coil taps on bridge & neck
• Independent volume pot for middle pickup, to add it to any selection
• Master tone

This gets me a lot of sounds, but it's fiddly to move between them.  Also rolling down the volume is a pain when you're trying to use the middle pickup, as you have to adjust two knobs to the same level.

What I want is this:

• Coil taps for middle pickup (that's the easy bit)
• I'd like to pull a single pot that will tap all three pickups at once (if not possible, 2nd best would be to tap the bridge and middle together)
• Another pull pot would switch the middle toggle position from bridge+neck to bridge+middle 
• Volume and tone for middle pickup to be chained to the bridge controls
• Individual volume/tone controls for neck and bridge, as per standard LP setup

So basically by pulling the two pots I'd have single coil sounds with quack in the middle position.  Push them both down and it's standard LP wiring.

Can I achieve some or all of this without resorting to the fancy 6-way superswitch/gearstick thing they put in the JP Black Beauty?  I'm not looking for phase switching or parallel/series options etc.

jdbwales

Not sure if it’s quite what you’re after, but in my 3 pickup SG I have it wired as a standard 2 pickup, 3 way switch configuration (eg bridge/bridge and neck/neck) with independent volume controls and a master tone, but I have a HB sized p90 in the middle slot.
This is independently activated with a push pull pot on the master tone that brings in the middle in combination with any other pickup which is currently selected, including the ‘all 3 on’ option.
I also have the bridge and neck humbuckers coil split on another push pull (bridge volume) meaning I can get pseudo Strat sounds too (eg bridge pickup with coil split plus middle position p90 activated is U2 as all hell).
 I was after something similar to you I think, and to me this was the most elegant solution. If you’re not after the pure middle p90, you could always use the same setup but with a middle humbucker and wire another push pull pot in (neck volume?) that splits it.
 Anyway, that works beautifully for me - loads of big rock tone in standard SG humbucker mode and lovely Strat cleans when split/P90’d.

Funkfingers

The Freeway 3x3-03 switch is a piece of piss to install - unlike the big, rectangular bodied, original that Page had to use. 

Perhaps, a neater way to do some of the coil switching is via Seymour Duncan Triple Shot humbucker mounting surrounds? https://www.seymourduncan.com/accessory/triple-shot-bridge-arched

Older readers may remember the Adrian Legg book, Customising Your Electric Guitar. One of his experimental testbed guitars was a three pickup LP type. It bristled with DP3T switches, offering every conceivable permutation of the six coils. Legg concluded that many of them sounded indistinguishable from each other.

jdbwales said:

works beautifully for me - loads of big rock tone in standard SG humbucker mode and lovely Strat cleans when split/P90’d.

IMO, this is because the host guitar is an SG rather than a Les Paul. 

Trude

Thanks folks.

The main goal is to have the ability to switch from a Stratty quack (middle position) to bridge or neck only during a song, using just the toggle switch (ie like having a Stat with a 3-way that gives position 1, 2 or 5).  This is actually how my Black Beauty was wired originally, but this meant the bridge & neck setting wasn't available.  So there are basically two switching configurations I'm after:


Neck 
Bridge/Neck
Bridge

Neck
Bridge/Middle
Bridge

...with the option of all pickups in HB mode, or all in single mode (no desire to mix HB/SC two different pickups, hence I'd rather avoid individual push/pulls).

I'm already happy with the way it actually sounds, and I can get Stratty sounds even with the middle pickup being a classic 57 and not tappable.  I figure splitting it should sound even better.

Maybe I should send this spec to the Freeway people and see if they could recommend a switch and wiring scheme....