Well, having sold
off all of my good guitars, I found myself left with an old Hagstrom
Swede (Les Paul Style), which has been laying around in pieces for ten
years or so. Having become accustomed to the myriad of sounds provided
by my Strat Wiring scheme, I decided that a similar approach
would be a must for the Swede.
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Basically, I wanted to have the following combinations:
My initial inclination was to replace the normal pickup selector with a 6-position rotary switch, giving all six combinations. After thinking about this for a while, however, I decided that: a) this would be unwieldy to use, and b) the wiring would be more complex than I cared to deal with. Consequently, I decided to use a 4-pole, 3-position rotary switch, in combination with push-pull pots on the (master) volume and (master) tone controls, one giving series-parallel, and the other controlling the in-out of phase function. The advantage of this approach is that the guitar would retain the familiar 3-position switch function in the usual place, giving me neck/both/bridge. The positions of the two push-pull pots determine how the pickups are combined in the center position, but have no effect in the other positions. With the two pots pushed in, the toggle will operate in the usual way (i.e., the center position gives both pickups, in parallel, and in phase). Having lived with similar combinations in my Strat, I know that I find all of these combinations useful in various situations. In addition, while surfing the web to find a 4P3T toggle switch, I came across details on how to use a standard DP3T (dual pole, triple throw) switch to control the combination of the individual coils in each humbucker. Hence, with the addition of two small toggle switches, I would be able to place the coils of each humbucker in parallel, in series, or coil tap just one coil of each humbucker. Moreover, the wiring is set up so that when I am using both pickups, with just one coil of each, the individual coils of the two pickups will combine to yield a hum-canceling effect. Finally, I decided to replace one of the tone controls with a 6-position varitone circuit, like the Gibson Blues Hawk or the old ES 345. The circuit I'm using for the Varitone is from Craig Anderton's book, Electronic Projects for Musicians. It's mainly the same as the Gibson circuit, but adds a control for notch depth, and a switch to center-tap the inductor, effectively doubling the number of frequencies for the Varitone. DetailsLots of Sounds:All told, this gives me a whopping 462 distinct combinations! And this does not take into account the notch-depth control or the regular (low-pass) tone control! Here's how I came up with that:
Okay, that works out to 42 sounds. Now we factor in the varitone, which, by using the inductor tapping switch, gives 10 tones plus the bypass. So, we have 42*11= 462, Cool, huh? Especially considering the fact that, visually, the only changes to the guitar are the addition of the two toggle switches on the pickguard. I can get pretty good approximations of a Tele bridge pickup, Gretsch Filter trons, thick jazzy tones -- you name it. The way I figure it, if the sound ain't in this guitar, it does not exist! Moreover, by mounting the two DP3T switches on the pickguard, I can avoid making any extra holes in the guitar itself. For pickups, settled on a Dimarzio Virtual PAF in the bridge position, and a Seymour Duncan SH2 Jazz in the neck position. They are really terrific, low-medium output humbuckers with full range and nice chimey tonality. Considering the complexity of the wiring, I'm frankly amazed that it all worked the first time. Goes to show that time spent in design pays off, just like when writing software. |
