2-humbucker series/parallel switch

Frans-B--Cocq

Good evening South Africa.

There's this guitar I've been building for some time now. It's shaped like an SG and the controls are similar (2x vol, 2x tone, 3-way switch) except for an additional DPDT. You see, the original plan was to use active pickups, so I drilled a hole for a standby switch. Somehow I ended up with a cheap pair of passive humbuckers (as it's not going to be my main axe anyway), so I had a hole, but nothing to fill it with. Then I thought, why not make something wild. Like a switch that would change between series and parallel wiring when both pickups are used. The pups are 2-conductors (cheap Shadows), so I can't make a phase switch, a ser/par switch for the neck or a coil tap for the neck. And besides, imagine two humbuckers wired in series - that'd give you something like a quad-coil pickup (not exactly, but close enough)! Distortion thick enough to melt the walls and upset the local elephants. With Shadows pups, right. In theory, anyway.

Problem is, I can't figure out how that would be wired. I looked at Alexplorer's almighty site, even mailed him, but gah.

As I said, I have:
-Two 2-conductor humbuckers
- Four potentiometers
- A 3-way switch
- A DPDT ON/ON switch

I'd be eternally in love with anyone who could help this dummy to creative thinking out.

~Frans

AlanRatcliffe

"Megabucker" wiring diagram below.

Note that strictly speaking, you need two conductor wiring and a separate sleeve for earth for proper operation. Otherwise you get hum from one pickup as the ground in effect becomes live.

Also note that if in series mode you switch to one single pickup, the guitar is turned off - potential for disaster playing live.

Frans-B--Cocq

Thankies. The pups do have earth sleeves, by the way. Even Shadows aren't that bad.

AlanRatcliffe

Frans B. Cocq wrote: Thankies. The pups do have earth sleeves, by the way. Even Shadows aren't that bad.

Lots of good pickups are made the traditional way like the original PAFs.

The only Shadows I've ever had, the wire used to break off at the solder points if you even looked at them funny. I eventually replaced the wires with decent wire and they behaved after that.

Gearhead

So the thing to remember is not to look funny at the Shadows ?

AlanRatcliffe

Unfortunately, I look funny at the best of times. ?

Actually, they were interesting pickups otherwise:

The Shadow EQ5s - active with a five-band EQ built in. The polepieces were trimpots and the pickup itself was about the same size as a minibucker, a rail pole humbucker with a ceramic magnet. Splitable and you could bypass the preamp too. A bit noisy and, like most actives, a bit compressed. Plus as mentioned, the stiff narrow gauge wire (7 or 8 core IIRC) kept on breaking away from the PCB.

Gearhead

Must be hard not to look funny to a thing that looks so funny itself. My guess would be it's harder to get to a setting you like while not being able to play and adjust at the same time...

AlanRatcliffe

Kind of a set-and-leave thing anyway. Came with a sheet of suggestions supposedly to make it sound like a variety of different pickups (with limited, but some success). Sounded best when tweaked to suit the specific guitar. Five band is a bit too coarse an adjustment to be really successful at mimicking others.

Frans-B--Cocq

Well, that's not what I have. ? Mine are called "Vintage Blues Swingers". Haven't tried them out yet, but they were among the cheapest you can get from Thomann.de (German shop... pretty good)

These -> http://www.thomann.de/gb/shadow_sh681b_pickup.htm (+ the neck 'bucker, of course)