A schematic, for your critique

fretless19

fretless19

Jun 4, 2012
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#1
Hola Talkbass. I am building a Warmoth bass, and I think I have hammered out the control layout.
Two humbuckers with series/parallel switch, V/V/T , passive clipping. Switching accomplished with push-pull volume knobs.

Please point out any glaring errors.
IMAG0187_1.jpg
 
#3
Semion N. said:
About the tone circuit - isn't the capacitor supposed to be connected between the middle terminal and GND, while one end of the pot is GND and the other is OUT?
Click to expand...
The order of the cap and the pot doesn't matter. The passive tone control in the diagram should work as drawn.

The series parallel switch is apparently only for the bridge humbucker? That doesn't look like the series/parallel wiring I'm familiar with.
 
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#4
It's a master series/parallel switch to put the full humbuckers in series / parallel together right? That looks like it should work, you need 4 conductor humbuckers or 2 conductor plus shield humbuckers though, otherwise you put signal on the sheild which can cause noise problems.
 
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#5
Crater said:
The series parallel switch is apparently only for the bridge humbucker? That doesn't look like the series/parallel wiring I'm familiar with.
Click to expand...

It is meant to be the same as jazz series parallel switching. in parallel position, the pup leads go where they normally would, ( Neck negative to ground, bridge positive to wiper of bridge volume) and in the other position, the negative of the neck connects to the positive of the bridge pup.
 
#7
Will_White said:
It's a master series/parallel switch to put the full humbuckers in series / parallel together right? That looks like it should work, you need 4 conductor humbuckers or 2 conductor plus shield humbuckers though, otherwise you put signal on the sheild which can cause noise problems.
Click to expand...
Can you please elaborate on this?
 
#8
fretless19 said:
Can you please elaborate on this?
Click to expand...
With two wire humbuckers you one hot lead and one hardwired negative/shield (/cover/baseplate in guitar pickups) when you put signal through a shield instead of the shield picking up external noise and sending it to ground it injects that noise into the signal. With 4 conductor or 2+shield the shield and pickup negative lead(s) is separate so you can connect the shield to ground and switch the pickup negative lead without putting noise into the signal.
 
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#9
Will_White said:
With two wire humbuckers you one hot lead and one hardwired negative/shield (/cover/baseplate in guitar pickups) when you put signal through a shield instead of the shield picking up external noise and sending it to ground it injects that noise into the signal. With 4 conductor or 2+shield the shield and pickup negative lead(s) is separate so you can connect the shield to ground and switch the pickup negative lead without putting noise into the signal.
Click to expand...

So, do 2 lead jazz pickups have that noise when wired this way?
 
#13
40Hz said:
@fretless19 The passive clipping switch is a nice unusual touch. I'm fond of simple diode grundge circuits myself. Have you decided on which diodes you're going to use?

.
Click to expand...

In34A germanium.
I have tried schottky (low threshold silicon) before, and i found them to have a fairly significant output drop-off. Really, this is because they are clipping more signal, but in this passive (read: subtractive) wiring setup, that wasn't desirable.

I have had great success with passive clipping setups, and I strongly believe that any ill-will ascribed to them is a result of a fundamental misunderstanding of what they are.

Passive clippers = waveform shapers
Passive clippers =/= distortion pedal

they add a grit to your bass' output, which can interact with phasers, wah and modulation pedals nicely. I swear by them.
 
#14
Yeah. I stick to germaniums too.

Funny thing. Back around 1980 I was building a ring modulator module for use with a some synth circuitry I was experimenting with at the time, and I couldn't find a pair of transformers that worked well for it. So on a lark I just plugged a guitar into the diode bridge part of the circuit and discovered it did some very interesting and unexpectedly musical things with no power needed.

After playing with that for awhile I soon noticed only two diodes were needed, and how different diodes had different characteristics.

I think I must have wired up over a dozen of these simple things for my guitarist friends who wanted one of these "buzz boxes" as they called them.

Who knew some enterprising individuals would turn them into products like the Black Ice module someday.
 
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#15
40Hz said:
Who knew some enterprising individuals would turn them into products like the Black Ice module someday.
Click to expand...

If only you knew then ! You could be making bank on those patent royalties:roflmao:

I stumbled upon the concept while learning about half wave rectification. I was trying to design an octave up pedal.
 
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