Blending and combining pickups

[mziegler]

Question about multiple pickups. How does one combine two pickups, say a neck and bridge magnetic. If they each have a pot and are linked the pots interfere and go to ground. I must be missing something? Does one put a diode in the circuit?

Hopefully this question is even clear enough

Thanks

Mike Z

[Martinedwards]

there are a million wiring diagrams on the net.

my personal favourite site is guitarelectronics.com

and in short?

no diodes!

[Dave Higham]

There are wiring diagrams on the Stewmac site and on Seymour Duncan's too.

[Eben]

Well, I think there are several ways to do this Mike - You can install a blend circuit by incorporating a preamp, which nowadays can be found as purty tiny, pc versions. You can also do it as a volume based loop, but I think that's probably crude for what you're after. You mention multiple pots, but you certainly can key everything to single volume, single tone and perform the blends by switching, with, for example, a super switch, which I love to pieces - Those things allow pretty much the sky as the limit! As y'all know, I really like Seymour Duncan, and one big reason is that on several occasions, I've phoned or emailed them asking about a very custom wire up, and they took the time and trouble to diagram it out and send it to me - Now that's customer service!

Hope this helps rather than obfuscating, and feel free to let me know either way!

E

[mziegler]

Thanks for the replies. E I think you have hit it on the head and I will take you up on the Seymour Duncan Tech support. According to my wizard electronic brother in law I am asking too much from the system--Asking for independent control of linked magnetic pickups. I do know how to connect pickups and have single controls to change volume on blended dual pickups.

I was just wondering if there were some second opinion wizards out there who could independently control blended pickups. In a designed multiple input preamp, this could be done by isolation of signals. But I guess I was just wondering if somebody had cracked this nut with some simple methods.

E I know what you mean with the Superswitch I have used the same 5 way 4 pole http://www.guitarelectronics.com/produc ... witch.html in a rotary version for some fancy combinations.

Mike Z

[Eben]

Yeah, you're right on Mike -

The closest I've seen is the pre-amp circuits that come with various active/passive mag set ups, but I',m not sure that's what you're after...

I tried this years ago on a Jazzmasterish kinda thing, where the player wanted a Duncan P-90 in the neck position with an Angus Young signature at the bridge for the mags, and a Fishman Power Bridge for piezo. The blend between piezo and mags was easy, of course, but we wanted to take advantage of the 4 lead Duncans to isolate, phase, and in initial thinking, blend the mag pickups. I thought that the swicth options between the upper panel and lower panel sliders and dials, plus a super switch would make this something I'd be able to figure out, but I couldn't do it. I even got Steve Lamb and Joe Driskill involved, and that's some high-power thinking and experience between those two - They were intrigued and interested, but in the end, we ended up using the top panel to have a cut off switch to isolate the P-90 and controlled tone and volume there, then used the lower sliders for single coil execution and phase on the Young bucker. That was as close as I ever got - It sounds great to this day, but I never did climb the hill...


E

[mziegler]

Your nix to the idea is good enough for me E. In my spare time (as if) I think I will put some diodes in the system to try to block drainage of the signal through neighboring pots. My electronic wiz brother in law says this will probably induce high pitch hums in the circuit and he is talking about possible use of transistors to make gates for the signals. I guess diodes act as very tiny capacitors and let through enough signal at a high enough frequency to be totally irritating. Anyway I will go ahead and prove what is totally obvious to him.

He is an interesting guy. About half the time I don't have a clue what he's talking about but the other half I learn a lot. He started out playing electric guitar and wanted to make a living at it but couldn't. He loved the electronic aspect of the guitar so much that he kept learning and delving through college and now designs fancy holding units for elementary particles at McGill University.

MikeZ

[Eben]

Holy crud, now that there are smarts, huh?

I'm kinda, funnily enough, in a similar 'Hmmm' mode as you Mike - Just started the wiring for the Mandocaster, so need to actually think out how best to do that - 1 single coil for the mando, 2 for the tele, but how to make it sound good and best aren't firmly in my grasp just yet!



Urb