50's Wiring and detrimental effect on tone.

[greengriff]

That's very useful, thank you.

[g1]

You have HSH, but only a single volume and tone like in those Fralin diagrams? And none of the pull options are wired?

[greengriff]

I have HSH, single volume and tone with a 5 way switch. The reason I rewired the guitar was to add pull pots for more pickup mixes, The pull tone pot now splits the humbuckers for pseudo S/S/S strat wiring. The pull volume pot swaps the middle pickup connection on the 5 way switch for the bridge pickup. With the volume pot pulled it makes the switchting as follows: neck, neck and bridge, bridge, bridge, nothing. This gives me a 'kill switch' option and allows me both Tele style (when split) and Les Paul style (when not split) pick up mixes. However all of them are completely out of circuit with the pull post disengaged.

[bbsailor]

I would like to add one more thing to consider and measure to make a full analysis.

The effect of volume pot loading and tonal pot loading is also based on the actual input impedance of the guitar input amp input circuit impedance which also includes the coax cable length and capacitance. The most useful measurement is to measure the amp input impedance at the guitar end of the coax cable typically being used to play the guitar. You should use the frequency of the pickup resonant point to get a better understanding of the loading effect on the pickup output tone. Typically you want the amp input impedance to be 10 X the pickup output impedance at the pickup resonance frequency to have a minimal tonal loading effect.

If you look up the Fletcher Munson curve you will see that the human ear is most sensitive at around 3 KHz tonal region. This is why subtle guitar wiring effects in this particular tonal region make a clearly audible difference.

I built a FET buffer circuit in the metal guitar plug end with the power supply feeding the amp end of the coax. This kept a very high input impedance and eliminated the coax impedance from affecting the guitar tonal sound.

I hope this gives you another variable to consider.

Joseph J. Rogowski

[greengriff]

Thank you/ It does, but I'm more concerned that either my hearing is going or that one of the pots is faulty. I might bodge together a switch to toggle between 50s and modern wiring so that I can test them back to back.

[Chuck H]

Thank you/ It does, but I'm more concerned that either my hearing is going or that one of the pots is faulty. I might bodge together a switch to toggle between 50s and modern wiring so that I can test them back to back.

Well the switch wouldn't have to do much. With the simple circuit you describe it should just be a matter of moving the tone control circuit connection from the ungrounded pot lug of the volume pot to the wiper lug at center. If you did more than that you did something unnecessary.

[greengriff]

Exactly. Nice and simple. I've just got to buy a suitable switch and get around to doing it.