ilovefuzz.com

want some backstory? here's some backstory
recently bought a 72 dlx ri tele, kinda beat to hell? Not like all the way beat but pretty beat, but had an old SD DDJ and weird neck pup I wanted to checkout.
Anyway I paid a bit more than I was originally gonna and now feel like I have to justify it, so I wanna wire it up in this config that sounds right up my alley but am not sure how exactly.


actual wiring stuff
So here's the idea
2 humbuckers
1 volume
2 tone
2 killswitch instead of a 3 way.


master volume would go where the current 3 way switch goes, the tone pots would go where the current neck pup controls go, and the kill switches would go under their respective tone knobs.


....also I've got a push pull pot laying around here, maybe use that for the volume and give it a phase switch? totally optional though.


this ones pretty much where I'm going (https://guitarelectronics.com/2-humbuck ... e-2-tones/) but the killswitches are where it...well where it dies.
I can't think of a way to use SPDTs that wound ground out the entire circuit when killing the one switch?

Help me out, yeah?

so with the help of big homie MuddFuzz, this is what I've come up with so far





,





if anyone sees anything wrong with it please tell me, I'd much rather know somethings bunk or if it's all clear before I start soldering

Looks correct!

Are you just using the kills as selectors, or are you doing stuttering trem type things? You may want a master kill switch between the two, if the latter.

Jero wrote:Looks correct!

Are you just using the kills as selectors, or are you doing stuttering trem type things? You may want a master kill switch between the two, if the latter.

Hey Jero!

I wanted to use them as selectors, basically on/off for the neck and on/off for the bridge, with the ability to have both pickups on.

So I spent a few hours wiring it up and it went bad, so here's the basic write up

if I turn off the bridge killswitch it kills the entire circuit.
if I kill the neck one it seems to kill the neck only, I judge this based on the lowered output.

It sounds like maybe theres a single tone working and it sounds like s rolled all the way down.
I think it's the bridge one since if I play with it a bit there are certain positions where I get a nice trebly tone out of it.
However if I roll it all the way down it kills the entire circuit...
not entirely sure what could be causing this, maybe the cap on it is...I literally don't know how to finish this sentence.

The volume knob seems to do nothing, kills the circuit if I roll it off a bit.
maybe a bad pot? bad solder joints?
dunno, thoughts?


Also, I failed to account for the idiot ass routing on the '72 ri body...it's routed like this








know what that means? My baller ass cable managment means nothing because it has to fit into those slots...
Not only that but the full sized 500k pot that lives where the selector used to reside is too big and doesn't let me properly align the pickguard with the existing holes...



On the bright side, and I'm actually really happy about this, there was no hum when the circuit was engaged and I was getting output, albeit garbage output.


so I'm thinking the issues I'm encountering have to do a few things,
the parts I'm using have seen better days, they're super janky, like the switches work, I tested them before hand, but geez are they finicky.
there's a solid probability that my solder joins weren't the best in some parts, due both to my bad soldering skills and the fact that there was a ton of old solder already there. Though I tried to clean it, the bottom of one pot looks the the elephant graveyard from Lion King, just dead parts of wires and caps sticking out.

Also, the physical abuse I put on it while trying to get it to fit probably damage some of the solder joints, and at best it definitely didn't help anything.





so heres the plan.
I'm kinda upset at it that it's taking me this long to get it where I want it, so I'm obviously gonna double down on my efforts ( because what's more ilf than stubbornly trying to mod a perfectly working guitar in a totally pointless way).

Gonna order some mini pots and switches from amazon, and use some better cabling practices to get things to line up with the routes.
That is to say, better parts and this time I won't I cut the wires down to the bare minimum length to cover the distance between the two points, this was literally one of the dumbest things I've done all day and I spent the entire day refactoring my own code.


I do think that perhaps the circuit is wrong in some way due to the way bridge killswitch was killing the whole circuit, but the fact that the neck one wasn't doing the same leads me to believe that it's something else.
so yeah, any advice is totally welcome. Hell not just welcome, I'd love to hear some thoughts


thanks for all the help thus far Jero and Muddy

We've all been there. Just keep at it

One thing I have learned the hard way... With mini pots if you are using push on knobs, some brands come apart when putting the knob on so put you want to put them on before you put the pickguard on so you can push on the bottom of the pot while pushing the knobs on... Because reassembling pots is a pain

So right off the bat, I missed an issue with the volume control (sorry about that!)
Your purple wire to the output needs to come from the middle lug of the volume pot, not the left one connected to the pups.

*I'm still reading and re checking the rest. Will update.*

Mudfuzz wrote:We've all been there. Just keep at it

One thing I have learned the hard way... With mini pots if you are using push on knobs, some brands come apart when putting the knob on so put you want to put them on before you put the pickguard on so you can push on the bottom of the pot while pushing the knobs on... Because reassembling pots is a pain

yo that's good advice, thankfully I'm not using push on knobs at the moment, they're screw ons.
But I was thinking about putting in this old ugly lime green knob that goes to 11 for the volume, and it's a push on, so I'll probs reconsider that.

Jero wrote:So right off the bat, I missed an issue with the volume control (sorry about that!)
Your purple wire to the output needs to come from the middle lug of the volume pot, not the left one connected to the pups.

*I'm still reading and re checking the rest. Will update.*

ah that makes sense, thanks for catching that man, I feel real dumb for not seeing that being that it's literally the only consistent wiring across every schematic I came across.

if you come up with anything please let me know, parts will arrive on Saturday so I'll be back at it then.
I'm actually really enjoying this, now I'm looking for random other projects to complete.

Got the parts in, started wiring, before doing the last few joints I decided to test it w/ a multimeter to see if it was all gravy.

I'm running into an issue where having the neck switch on ( that is, not going to ground) will make it so that on the bridge switch, it doesn't matter what position it's in, it's always on.
however killing the neck switch makes it so that the bridge one works fine.

thoughts?

Here's a video showing what I mean

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRxkXR4Jg_g[/youtube]