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WIRING HELP NEEDED! Yeah, I'm lost......

Posted by Jerryrig240 on April 28, 2017 at 5:19pm in Building Secrets, Tips, Advice, Discussion

So I am going through what I want my new set up to do.  This is what I have as far as parts..

I have a stero volume knob.  I know, stero, I really just wanted a simple knob but our radio shack is going out of buisness and that is all they had left and it was dirt cheap. It by the way is a 100k.

Then I have my home wound sewing bobbin pickups.

Then I have my jack and also, I wanted to add a momentary switch.  To kill the single to the box when playing the loud, gritty stuff...push the button a bunch of times and you get this cool, kinda wha effect.....how in the world can I wire this hot mess up?  Please help!  Thanks.  If I need to not use the stero volume knob I guess I could do with out....Or dig one up from a radio or something.

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Tags: knob, volume, wiring, wiring.....
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Replies

  • Jerry Jordan May 2, 2017 at 12:51pm

    Wow.,,.you are having too much fun.,.,I was thinking about your buzzing problem in another post, but did not realize you were using homemade pickups.,To sort out that buzz the first thing to do is test those coils.,they could have a short or weird capacitance causing the buzzing, which only gets worse when you put them in series and amp it up.,next as far as wiring goes look at simple schematics at Seymour duncan.com.,ground goes straight from the pickup to the jack.,,.its the hot side that gets attenuated by the pots or modified by the tone pot.,,.the ground is soldered to the pots casing for reference and shielding.,,.your stereo pot is not something I normally play with but it either has a lead for ground or no connection to ground.,your only varying the hot side of the signal,.,All the kill switches I have seen on guitars use a normally closed switch, the momentary type..pushing the button in rapid succession cuts out the signal in rapid succession.,.,( hence the name kill switch) .,., so I probably sound confusing.,.,just keep asking questions.,.,your getting closer,.,.!!!

  • Jerryrig240 April 28, 2017 at 6:51pm

    I also found this diagram with out the kill swtich, but still, both wires of the pickup are going to one connection of the volume knob.....how does that work?

    • Jerry Jordan > Jerryrig240 May 2, 2017 at 2:10pm

      For a kill switch you use the Plus or hot wire from the output of the volume knob to the jack. Just cut that wire and insert the switch.,,.

    • darryl kernaghan > Jerryrig240 April 28, 2017 at 7:48pm

      The ground from the pup goes to the ground on the pot, then to the ground on the output jack, the ground terminal of the pot is usually connected to the body of the pot also

  • Jerryrig240 April 28, 2017 at 6:49pm

    So I found this page with this diagram
    http://www.instructables.com/id/Guitar-Killswitch-Strat.-design/

    https://goo.gl/images/R6Lh1N

    but it does not make any sense to me. I only see one wire going from the pickup to the volume knob. The rest seems dooable......still confused. Let me know what you all think.

    • David L. > Jerryrig240 April 28, 2017 at 8:02pm
      They have left off the ground wire from the pickup. Also you need to ground the strings to help reduce humming.

      How many bobbin pickups are you adding? If it was eg 3 bobbins for a 3 string guitar I would add them in series to give the most powerful signal possible (the hot wire of the first bobbin is what you wire to the volume pot. Ground of the first bobbin is soldered to hot wire of the second, the ground of the second is wired to the hot of the third and the ground of the third is the ground wire you solder to the common ground point - usually the back of the volume pot, but I don't know if your stereo pot has a metal or plastic body).

      The kill switch needs to be a push to make type (so when you push it it completes a circuit). In this case you are grounding the live part of the circuit when you push the button. This can be added at the Jack socket terminals if you find that easier to do.

      I have never used a stereo potentiometer - do you have a photo or web link please?

      If you find it hard to visualize the above I can draw you out the circuit tomorrow if nobody else does it before then.(I would need to know how many bobbin pickups you will use).

      Regards,
      David L.
      • Jerryrig240 > David L. April 28, 2017 at 8:34pm

        I did find this diagram, and no, unfortunately, there is no hard metal on the pot, just a plastic style body. I think I may have had it wired backwards. I was testing everything just a min ago, I could get the button to stop the signal like I wanted it to do, but no sound from the pup.

        I am using just two bobbins, each of them wrapped with mag wire, I have one wire coming from one, to the second bobbin and then that lead wire coming off of that coil. I did not ground the other line coming from the other bobbin though.  

        I am going to run more tests this week. I am getting this horrible buzz though. Is there another place that I could ground the wire inside the box, other then the strings? I have some silver shiny metal tape.  Or would I need copper?

        I did find this diagram, which makes me think I have it wired backwards....https://goo.gl/images/OMJtxk

        thanks for all of your help. Any more ideas just let me know.  Thanks again.

        • darryl kernaghan > Jerryrig240 April 28, 2017 at 10:11pm

          the reason you ground to the strings is to stop it humming unless you are touching the strings, it's a good practise on all mag pups, you just need a wire to something metal that touches the strings, if you have a metal bridge or nut  the bridge or nut will share it to all strings, often the easiest way is to add a bit of metal to the tail piece/ string anchor and connect to that out of sight

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