Help needed wiring series/parallel with a 3 Humbucker guitar

allen

Hi all,

Although I've built a couple of guitars and wired them I am a bit of a dunce when it comes to working out wiring.

The guitar I want to mod has one vol, one tone and a 5 way switch and I don't want to drill any holes in it. 3 humbucking pickups.

Basically I'd like to pull one of the pots and switch all of the pickups to parallel (internal to each pickup). i.e. pot down = all humbuckers internall wired in series; pot up = all humbuckers internall wired in parallel.

My own thinking (after looking at a load of diagrams) is that I need a 6pdt switching pot, which basically don't exist. Then I came across the 5 way superswitch which I think can solve it, but at this point my head exploded.

Can anyone offer any help please

Allen

ICBM

Can't be done without a 6-pole pull switch, sorry - even with a Superswitch for the 5-way.

Does it have to be parallel, or would coil-split be OK? If so you can easily do that with a standard 5-way switch and one push-pull.

Alternatively, do you use the tone control? If not, replace it with a 6-pole 2-position rotary switch.

allen

Thanks for the idea.

So, just thinking about it I could have a dual gang vol and tone and then go for a 6 pole rotary on the other hole on the body. Sound possible?

And can I definitely do it with the 6 pole rotary?

ICBM

Yes, that would work. You can definitely do the series/parallel switching with a 6-pole rotary, you need 2 poles per pickup.

It will be a bit of a pig to wire up, although once you've worked out how to do one pickup the others are just the same.

allen

So when wiring I would following the schematics that are out there for 1 humbucker with one dpdt switch for example

http://www.guitarelectronics.com/product/WD1H10_04/Guitar-Wiring-Diagram-1-Humbucker1-VolumeSeries-Parallel.html

 i.e. need to use 6 pins of the switch per humbucker? Is that right?

Then I had a search for switches and came up with this one for example

http://www.jameco.com/1/1/51460-sr2511f-0602-19r0b-e9-s-w-rotary-switch-6-pole-2-position.html

From the data sheet it seems to have 18 pins which seems to be what I need, but the data sheet seems to show that some of them are joined already. I have also seen a fair few switches that have 12 pins round the outside and then an A and B connection in the middle.

Any recommended switch that I should use? Am I going in the right direction?

ICBM

allen said:

So when wiring I would following the schematics that are out there for 1 humbucker with one dpdt switch for example

http://www.guitarelectronics.com/product/WD1H10_04/Guitar-Wiring-Diagram-1-Humbucker1-VolumeSeries-Parallel.html

 i.e. need to use 6 pins of the switch per humbucker? Is that right?

Yes, although the top link wire shown there should be a diagonal from one top pin to one middle pin (doesn't matter which way) - you should not run the connection through both switch poles in series, that increases unreliability. One is enough.

(This is a major pet peeve of mine, I admit! Usually with true bypass pedals…)

allen said:

Then I had a search for switches and came up with this one for example

http://www.jameco.com/1/1/51460-sr2511f-0602-19r0b-e9-s-w-rotary-switch-6-pole-2-position.html

From the data sheet it seems to have 18 pins which seems to be what I need, but the data sheet seems to show that some of them are joined already.

No, that's just to illustrate which connections are made in one of the switch positions. That switch is ideal.

allen

Thanks. I'll be back when I've got it. I'll never work out the specifics!