wiring advice needed > stereo mustang..

kajtek

hi all

im working on a plan to have my gtr work in a kind of stereo. i.e. neck pickup goes to one amp, bridge to another. think ric-o-sound.

i like things simple so im ditching the (forgive me) foolishly designed switching system which really serves me no purpose.

what id like is to have the two pots as volumes pots, one for each pickup. i dont want a switch of any sort, simply turn up the volume for the particular pickup you want, or turn them both up.

so i thought have each pickup go to the particular pot directly, in a gibson way i suppose.

i want to use one jack socket, a simple stereo socket. can i simply connect a common ground to one part (i.e. the tip), and the respective live connections to the two stereo poles?

also, my great hope is that i can the plug in a normal mono plug and it will still work as the two stereo poles will connect to the one mono pole on the jack plug. am i right in assuming that if this worked, that the pickups would run in parallel when both on?

thanks for any advice / suggestions, i cant seem to find any info on the net regarding this..

kajtek

feedbackismyfriend

pardon me I don't know much about wiring at all so I can't really help you out with you're question. I thought I'd recommend something for your project. why don't you put an on/off mini-switch for each pup on you're guitar? that way you could do panning with just the flip of a switch or say have your neck pup set clean and your bridge pup set with some distortion and have distorted tones with quieter clean backing and etc. I think having something like this would allow you to take better advantage of having a stereo guitar. You could even do something similar by using a 3 way toggle (y'know like on les pauls). I look forward to seeing (and hearing) your final result.

ModNuB

I have a stereo guitar. It has 2 jacks, 4 pots (2vol 2tone) & a pup selector switch. when you plug into the plug labeled "mono" you get standard "gibson" controls but when you have one in each jack it splits the pups & you can run to 2 amps. I don't use the stereo much mostly just because I don't have much of a use for it but when I have it works really well. You may think about adding a second plug if you want the ability to choose stereo/mono. My guitar is an ovation preacher (yes its an solid-body electric) so you may look for the wiring for it online.

Mad-Mike

One way to do it is this....

Mad-Mike

And here's the more complex idea I can put up, Stereo Mustang with separate jacks, a pickup selctor for the mono circuit, and concentric pots for the separate circuits, with blend for the pickups in stereo, and volume/tone regular for the Mono circuit.

kajtek

wow mad mike 😲😁 , thanks so much for those wiring diagrams, thats very helpful. i have to go out now but will review and make myself understand it all fully later, gonna give it a go this weekend for sure now..

kajtek

funtoosh

wow, that looks great, mike!

ModNuB

Mike....wow

kajtek

ive gone through ur ace diagrams, and ive decided to go with the simpler setup..

i play quite hard and am always having problems with knocking the switches, but i will fit a push/pull for a coil tap on the bridge humbucker.

thanks again for the help, will update with how it all goes once ive done it and tested it..

kajtek

tragictravisty

ive always liked the idea of having one pickup, with the negative going to one amp, and the positive to another - out of phasyness. could be really really interesting w/dirt. if the dirtbox could have a totally flat eq aswell, it could create really strange distortion effects.

everything mike posted was spot on by the way, thats exactly how i would do it.

kajtek

quick question.., in the simpler diagram, do i need to connect the 3rd free connector on the pots to ground?

thanks

kajtek

Mad-Mike

kajtek said: quick question.., in the simpler diagram, do i need to connect the 3rd free connector on the pots to ground?
thanks
kajtek

No, because if that's done it will defeat the ability to blend pickups, as the frequencies along the resistive track will be sent to ground the more the knob is turned down, therefore lowering volume of the overall guitar and not just that of the single pickup. Les Pauls are wired like this actually to allow pickup blending in the middle position.

kajtek

cool thanks, i wasnt sure as had seen it in a epiphone before that way, never quite understood the difference and why, and now i do!

wired it up.. then found my stereo Y splitter i had is gone somewhere along the cable not at the endso cant fix it...super. will let you knowhow it goes 2mrw when i get the bits..

kajtek