Pickup wiring question

victorludorum

Bear with me on this one as I'm running through some ideas in my head. With a tapped pickup, is it possible to run the tapped output to one lug of a switch which passes by the tone controls etc etc, and the other full power wire to another lug, which then bypasses the pots and goes straight to the output jack?

ICBM

Yes, but it needs more complex switching than that or the controls will still have some effect when they're supposed to be bypassed.

Is it a single-pickup guitar? If so it's easy - you need a DPDT switch, either a mini-toggle or a push-pull.

One side of the switch is connected to the output jack and selects between the full pickup and the output of the volume & tone pots; the other side of the switch connects the pickup tap to the volume and tone pots in the second position.

If the guitar has more than one pickup it can be done, but it will need more than a DPDT switch.

Funkfingers

Clarification, please. Do you actually mean tapped - as per a single coil - or split as per pickups with more than two coils?

If you do mean a single coil, your description is almost exactly what happens in the wiring harness of a Fender Seymour Duncan Tribute Esquire. Full output = direct. Partial output accesses the tone pot.

victorludorum

Here's a full explanation. The guitar is a Tele Acoustasonic, which has a single neck pickup and a bridge piezo setup with a Fishman Aura system integrated somehow. The 3 way switch works like this: 1. Neck pickup only; 2 Neck and Bridge blended; 3. Bridge only. There is the choice to run in mono or stereo too. I do two sets, the first being an acoustic one, and the second being electric. The slight irritation that I have is that even when I run the neck pickup alone, it requires the battery to work.

I'd like the option of a slightly beefier sound from the neck pickup, so was thinking that maybe if I replace it with a tapped single coil, I could maybe switch to the tapped version and go straight out, bypassing the battery. It would also mean that if the battery ever dies on me and I have no reserve, I can always bypass it and play on, plus i would have the choice of a 2 power pickup, which would give me a little variation in the limited sounds currently available.

Alegree

There's a very simple way of doing it. High output tap direct to jack, low output tap to normal place. Flick the switch in any pickup switch position to access the high output mode. I'd suggest a push/pull pot.

Funkfingers

From memory, the stock magnetic pickup in the Fender Tele Acoustasonic was a Lace Sensor. This is entirely passive. I suspect that it is the onboard pre-amplifier and buffering circuitry that requires battery power.

victorludorum

Funkfingers said:

From memory, the stock magnetic pickup in the Fender Tele Acoustasonic was a Lace Sensor. This is entirely passive. I suspect that it is the onboard pre-amplifier and buffering circuitry that requires battery power.

It's a Twisted Tele, so passive as you say. It's the preamp/blender that requires the power, but the neck pickup alone requires it too, so it's clearly not bypassing the circuitry.