PRS question...

[diode breath]

Does anyone have a schematic for the selector switch and "sweet" switch for an EARLY PRS (late 80s,) or know of a URL where it could be found? I liked the sound capabilities of that system, and wanted to try it on an LP clone.

Any information would be appreciated.

Thanks!
dB

[David Schwab]

Does anyone have a schematic for the selector switch and "sweet" switch for an EARLY PRS (late 80s,) or know of a URL where it could be found? I liked the sound capabilities of that system, and wanted to try it on an LP clone.

Any information would be appreciated.

Thanks!
dB

You mean the two switch pickup selector? You can find that here:

http://www.prsguitars.com/csc/schematics/santana.gif

The sweet switch was some kind of LC filter network. Eric Pritchard, who designed it, wrote about at the GearPage

Paul Smith called me sometime over 20 years ago and relayed the Carlos Santana's complaint that when he was playing with a wireless, the guitar was too trebly. I suggested that it was created by using a short cord instead of a long jack cord. Well, having a long cord was not too workable, even wound up, so I suggested using a delay line. After messing around with a bunch of lines and investigating the market, Paul settled on a 75 ohm, 150 nanosecond, 10 section delay line and then put it on a double pole double throw mini toggle switch so it could be switched in and out.

In retrospect and considering the work I have done since, it probably can be done with a resistor-capacitor network as well - rather like in the high-end cables.

Well, if you turn up your guitar all of hte way, then you can experiment with values by removing the cap on the plug to that you can tack the series RC on temporarily. I would start with something like .001 microfarads (1nanofarad) and 33 K and work from there. You might also consider using two or three of these series RC (different values) in parallel. The basic idea is to kill some of the resonance between the pickup and the cable, but not all of it.

To do my research I made a drive coil to put over the pickup and drove it with a function generator and looked at the result with an oscilloscope and then correlated that with Phil's judgement - this is a matter of taste.