Non ADA Gear > Guitar Wiring

Pots and Caps

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rnolan:
It's been a long while since I got into wiring guitars so the Strat upgrade project has rekindled my interest somewhat and I also made a couple of interesting discoveries.
When I first started doing this kind of stuff many years ago the was no Internet which I found very useful to get back up to speed however, it informs your choices, not decide them for you.

So because I was putting in 2 new single coil sized humbuckers (SD Hotrails Bridge, and SD Little 59 Neck) I had a bunch of choices to make. I went with 2 Dimarzio push pull 500k pots. I chose 500k over 250k as I didn't need to have top end removed as much (as with single coil PUs). The pots didn't fit in the squire bullet strat, I had to ream the holes to fit them. I kept one of the original 250k pots for the tone control, the 2 new pots are volume controls for their respective PUs and the PUs are wired series (down) parallel (up). This gives me lots of tone/volume options. Because it's all upside down (looking from underneath) initially I managed to wire both B & N out of phase with the middle PU (is original PU but screwed into guitar so is flush with scratch plate, basically to get it out the way and also reduce its volume). Getting the strat scratch plate out from under the strings once it's set up is an absolute pain (brought back memories... :facepalm: ), I had to remove it a few times to fix up some broken leads, which led to me ripping off one of the tone cap legs doh  :facepalm: . So I pulled the bridge off (I don't like to do this too often as you strip the 6 screw holes over time) but I needed to get it fixed and didn't want to waste a set of strings and didn't want to rip any more wires off in the process. Turned out the Bridge hot on both coils (ie black & red) had been ripped out.... So I rewired it but in phase this time (so now is out of phase with N like my JPLP). So via the super switch it's now OoP N, OoPN + M, OoPN + B, M + B, B. N and B have their own push pull vol pot and overall tone for everything.
So the 0.022uF cap is stuffed, and I need a new one. So I researched cap values a bit. I must say the Seymour Duncan site is very useful  :thumb-up: . What cap you need depends, how much do you roll the tone pot ? if at all (I never used to), what PUs are involved and how dark do you want it to get.
So SD diagrams all say use 0.047uF caps. But the 2A223J (0.022uF) is also popular (depending how much tops you want to roll off). I found 2 x 2A682J caps in a unit I've been pulling apart for practice at de-soldering. One of the posts I read talked about going even less than 0.022uF (eg 0.01uF) and that 2 caps together in parallel add together (so 2 x 0.0068 = 0.01364uF). Apart from having them to hand, I really like the result, it's a bit more subtle than your normal tone control which suits me fine.

El Chiguete:
For now on my build I will only use a push-pull volume knob, latter I will add a neck humbucker and look for the choices on that.

MarshallJMP:
I must admit i don't use tone controls,all my tone controls on my guitars are disconnected except for the MS flying V.I never use them and this way i can't accidentally turn them down.

rnolan:
I never used the tone pots either until I got the LP. Then I discovered some really nice tones by rolling the vol down to 2.5 - 3 ish and using the tone pots as well. On stage I've always turned all the pots to 10.

tomy:

--- Quote from: rnolan on February 29, 2016, 03:24:20 AM ---I never used the tone pots either until I got the LP. Then I discovered some really nice tones by rolling the vol down to 2.5 - 3 ish

--- End quote ---

Ouch!!!! I 've never mentionned, be sure that I will check

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