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Let me start off first and foremost by saying I am not trying to achieve a true humbucker tone by wiring two single coils in series, but instead to give my guitar a some humbucker flavor. I'll give you a quick description of my wiring and then tell you what my trouble is. I recently finished a custom semi-hollow jazzmaster equiped with three single coil pickups. For pickup selection, I use three toggle switches (one on/off toggle for each pickup). The "down" position on a toggle will turn the pickup one, and the "up" position will turn the pickup off. Here's where it gets fancy! If ALL THREE of the toggles or in the "up" position, AKA if you turn all of the pickups OFF, then the neck and middle pickups are wired together in series aka "humbucker". The neck wound counter clockwise, south up. The middle is wound clockwise, north up. NOTE: I'm not 100% positive that the winding I just describe is correct, but I DO know that they are wound oppositely and that the polarity is opposite.
Now heres the issue. All of the wiring and toggles work, but when I go into humbucker mode, the guitar is quite a bit louder (which does make sense, but Im not sure if it would be a problem or not) and also, when I go into humbucker mode, the sound becomes very mid rangey and bassy, lacking treble. This actually sounds GREAT for jazz, and Ive considered keeping it, but Ive decided that I want to correct the issue. I was wondering if anybody knows what the issue could be. I apologize for not supplying a wiring diagram but Im hoping that what I have shared thus far might be enough to solve the problem. Here are my two theories:
I wound the neck pickup to 5.5k with alnico 5's. The middle is about 7k with alnico 3's. These are two drastically different pickups, so Im wondering if the problem is just that the are not similar enough?
My other theory has to do with my treble bleed. I dont remember what the exact values I used are, but after doing some testing with different values, I ended up going with a cap and a resistor in parallel. I did something a little out of the ordinary with my treble bleed though... I wired a kill switch into the guitar. It's just a little toggle switch. When put in the "up" position, it completely cuts all signal coming from the guitar. BUT, because of this, I saw no need to have my volume knobs bring the volume all the way to zero. Basically I made the treble bleed so that when the volume knob is brought down to 0, the guitar is HALF as loud as if the volume knob were on 10, so the signal cannot but cut using the volume knob (thats what the kill switch is for). It makes sense to me that this might be cutting out some of the highs in the humbucker mode, but Im not sure.
Let me know if theres any info I left out and I really appreciate the help. I just figured I would get some other opinions before I delve into my guitar with a soldering iron. Thanks -Alex
Now heres the issue. All of the wiring and toggles work, but when I go into humbucker mode, the guitar is quite a bit louder (which does make sense, but Im not sure if it would be a problem or not) and also, when I go into humbucker mode, the sound becomes very mid rangey and bassy, lacking treble. This actually sounds GREAT for jazz, and Ive considered keeping it, but Ive decided that I want to correct the issue. I was wondering if anybody knows what the issue could be. I apologize for not supplying a wiring diagram but Im hoping that what I have shared thus far might be enough to solve the problem. Here are my two theories:
I wound the neck pickup to 5.5k with alnico 5's. The middle is about 7k with alnico 3's. These are two drastically different pickups, so Im wondering if the problem is just that the are not similar enough?
My other theory has to do with my treble bleed. I dont remember what the exact values I used are, but after doing some testing with different values, I ended up going with a cap and a resistor in parallel. I did something a little out of the ordinary with my treble bleed though... I wired a kill switch into the guitar. It's just a little toggle switch. When put in the "up" position, it completely cuts all signal coming from the guitar. BUT, because of this, I saw no need to have my volume knobs bring the volume all the way to zero. Basically I made the treble bleed so that when the volume knob is brought down to 0, the guitar is HALF as loud as if the volume knob were on 10, so the signal cannot but cut using the volume knob (thats what the kill switch is for). It makes sense to me that this might be cutting out some of the highs in the humbucker mode, but Im not sure.
Let me know if theres any info I left out and I really appreciate the help. I just figured I would get some other opinions before I delve into my guitar with a soldering iron. Thanks -Alex
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