Custom wiring project

[Benn Roe]

I've long since bought all the parts for a guitar I'm putting together, but the project has stalled for two reasons, and one of those is that I'm a novice with an ambitious plan. So, I wondered if anybody here might be interested in being hired to help me with a diagram and walk me through the basics (notably, how to read that diagram properly). Here was my plan:

2 humbuckers
Standard Fender style volume and tone knobs
On/off switch for each pickup (2 total)
Coil split switch for each pickup (2 total)
Phase inversion switch
Series/parallel switch

I can probably be talked out of some of this, especially if it doesn't make sense for whatever reason, but I wanted to give the guitar pretty decent tonal versatility and also the potential to make weird noises all by itself, and I already have the tiny switches to fit all this into a Telecaster control panel. As I said, though, I'm a novice. I've changed the pickups in other guitars before and I've changed speakers in a cab, but both of those were basically just soldering, without having to work out much about how or why the wiring was doing its thing. I'm pretty intuitive and I usually figure things out pretty easily by reverse-engineering and just doing. I did a lot of research on this last year, though, and made a bit of progress, but ultimately didn't walk away understanding how to make it all happen. The guitar wiring-help sites I was able to find were either written with the asumption I had a pretty firm grasp on the basics, or the concepts they were explaining were too basic to be helpful in any practical way. I realize those are totally fair and expectable ways for help sites to be, but they didn't help me plunge into the deep end like I want.

I really wanted to put together the wiring diagram for this by myself, but at the end of the day, just getting the project done is more important, and once I've wired it all up myself, I'll be able to figure out why things work and how to repeat the parts I need for future projects. I had determined previously, through research (rightly or wrongly), that what I needed was 4 SPDT switches and 2 DPDT switches, so that's what I have (all on/on), but I think I picked up two extras of each, just in case. I have two 500k pots, one audio (for volume) and one linear (for tone), and a variety of caps, but it looks like I had settled on .001. I have 100 feet of cable. I forget the gauge, but I'm pretty sure it'll work, and I can find out before finalizing anything. It's all black, and I realize I probably want several colours, but that's what I have now.

Help anyone? Thanks!

[MechaGodzilla]

you could use something like this to cut down on the sheer number of switches you need to fit. that said... i reckon people never use more than the standard 3 way options and MAYBE coil splits where available.

[Benn Roe]

I appreciate it, but I actually prefer a series of binary switches. It's easier to look down and see what options are active, it's easier to be precise about on-the-fly changes, it opens up a lot more combinations of options*, and I just think they look cool. Space on the control panel is definitely a concern, but I already found switches small enough (in fact, I could probably fit a few more). I know this project is going well past practical, and I will honestly probably stick to a single setting most of the time, but I wanted to go all out on this guitar, both to wind up with something unique and to learn as much as I can about wiring them. I just need someone to help me with the initial wiring, so I can reverse-engineer it to figure out what I'm doing, and I'll gladly toss that someone some bills.

* I think this configuration technically has 64 different options, though a bunch of settings would be redundant. 16 of them would include both pickups being off, for instance, and it doesn't really matter if the pickups are wired in series or parallel or have their phase inverted if even one of them's off. I think that still leaves 21 actually different options, though.

[JonnyAngle]

It's all easy except the series/ parallel switch

When you're in series mode, you'll either have both pickups on or just the last pickup in the wiring, which makes the series/parallel mode pointless for one pickup.

I hate to be that guy, but it seems like a ton of wiring for little gain.

The phase inversion would obviously only go on one pickup, but then you'll need a switch that will work in single coil and humbucker mode. I'm not sure what type of switch that will be off the top of my head.

sounds cool to have all those switches tho, you have any pics of what you have already?

[Benn Roe]

Any interest in being hired to take a crack at this? Or know anyone else who might be? I can take some pictures, for sure.