Complete wiring noob here. Can I get some help?

[hillerheilman]

Hey guys. I'm trying to figure out a wiring scheme for the guitar I'm currently working on and I was hoping to get some help as I've got almost zero experience and I don't have any guitar techs near me to do it. Plus, I'd rather save money and learn a New skill. Anyway, I should probably start explaining what I want to do.
The guitar has a hum-p90-hum, 1 volume, 1 tone configuration. I'm using duncan triple shot switches on the hums, so all the pickups are the non braided 2 conductor cables. If I understand correctly this means that there's a positive lead, a negative lead and a bare wire for ground. What I want to do is have a 6 way rotary switch as my selector switch, giving me all the standard strat positions in 1-5 with position 6 being neck + bridge. Then I want that to go to my volume, which will have a treble bleed circut, then have that go to a push pull tone pot with a phase switch, and out to the jack. I'm assuming I can start wiring in that order. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I'm using the 6 position 2 pole rotary switch from stewmac, here: http://www.stewmac.com/Pickups_and_Elec ... tches.html
If I understand their diagram correctly, the red and blue pins are like the left and right sides of a blade switch., Just circular, with the two commons in the middle. So what I think I want to do from the research I've done, is connect the positive leads of the neck middle and bridge to lugs 1, 3, and 5 respectively on one (not sure if it matters which) side, and then run hoppers from lugs 1 and 5 to lug 6. Then, on the other side run hoppers between 1,3, and 5, and then the wire running from that becomes the output to my tone. Then if I connect the commons, the wire running from that becomes the output to my volume.
This is about where I'm stuck. I know that I should connect the wire from the commons to the input lug of my volume pot, and that my treble bleed circuit will go in between the input and output. However, I can't seem to figure out how to connect that to the tone pot and phase switch, and then out to the jack. The other question I have is whether or not one phase switch will cover all positions (1,3 and 6)
I apologize for the long-winded nature of this post, but I don't have a program to draw out diagrams so I just did my best to describe it. Any help is appreciated, as always.

~Hiller

[Shadoweclipse13]

Hey Hiller! You're definitely on the right track in your thinking with the rotary. Rotaries can be a little tricky at times, but your's isn't too bad. Easy stuff first:
-I always connect the phase switch right after the neck pickup (or right after which ever pickup you want it on). I put the phase switch connected to the neck pickup as the neck pickup generally has the most low frequencies, and therefore, has the most difference between in-phase and out-of-phase. For your wiring, putting it on the neck pickup will allow you to get out-of-phase sounds with the bridge+neck, middle+neck, and both of the in-between pickup sounds.


Using the above diagram as an example, you need to connect the hot/+ leads from each pickup to their respective number on pole 1 (bridge=1, middle=3, neck=5). The only thing you're missing is that you need to send a jumper from both terminals 1 and 3 to terminal 2 on pole 2, and from terminals 3 and 5 on pole 1 to terminal 4 on pole 2. The reason here is that, without those jumpers, positions 2 and 4 won't have ANY signal, but just be a deadspot. To make that work, you'll also need a jumper for the pole common to pole common. As you said, you'll also need to jumper the bridge and neck pickup signals to position 6, and it would probably also work best to use position 6 on pole 2 here as well. I KNOW jumpering those two to pole 2 won't cause an issue, but as much as I don't think it would cause a signal-crossing issue on pole 1, I've been at work for 11 hours already and am tired. Haha.

[Learning time:] There are certainly exceptions, but most of the time, pickup selector switches ONLY switch a pickup's hot lead on or off, with every pickup's ground wire going to a common ground spot (back of a pot, etc.). The reason for jumping between poles for the between positions, is that, if you used a jumper wire to the between position terminals (2 and 4 of pole 1 here) you would have all 3 pickups on in all 5 or 6 positions. The second pole allows you to use jumpers, and without crossing unwanted signals in the positions you don't want them.

At this point, you've got the rotary switch, and the phase switch sorted out. Next, you'll connect a wire from one of the two common terminals on the rotary (remember, there's a jumper between the two pole's common terminals, so it doesn't matter which) to the volume pot. Wire the volume and tone pots like volume and tone pots here:


For the treble bleed, here are the most common types:

Most people I've talked to seem to prefer the [Seymour] Duncan type. They would be wired between the bottom and middle lugs of the volume pot in my immediately above picture (between the input wire (bottom lug) and the output wire (middle lug).

Since you seem to dig the idea of learning, here's the link to my wiring schematic page:
http://offsetguitars.com/forums/viewtop ... 8&t=104282
You may find some of it interesting or enlightening, but the 6 video links at the bottom might also provide some cool knowledge as well. That guy knows his shit!!

Let me know if you need any more help with your schematic/wiring! I'm online quite a bit.
Jason

[hillerheilman]

Thanks Jason, this helps a lot! I do have a few more questions though. Firstly, I misspoke in my original post. I meant that I wanted the phase switch to work in all the in between positions(2, 4, and 6). You're saying that wiring just the neck pickup to the phase switch will do this, right? So correct me if I'm wrong of course, but the way I think I'd go about doing that is this:

1. Instead of going directly to the selector switch with the neck pickup, I'd instead take the +/- leads directly to the push pull and wire them to the left and right lugs respectively in the middle row.

2. Run a hopper from the top left to the bottom right lug, with the bottom right lug going to ground(bottom of pot)

3. Run another hopper from the top right to bottom left lug, with the wire coming from the bottom left becoming my positive lead, which then would go to the neck position of the selector switch.

Secondly, if I'm only wiring the phase switch to the neck pickup then I don't really need the other negative leads, right? So do I just ground them along with the bare wires? While on the subject of grounding, I wondered if I needed to connect all the grounding spots.(I.e. grounding on the back of the volume pot, then running another ground wire from there to the bottom of the tone pot, then from there to the jack.) Also, do I need to also connect a ground wire to my bridge or trem plate somehow as well? (It's a mastery jm style setup)

[Shadoweclipse13]

I may have missed a sentence between talking about the phase switch and talking about the rotary for pickup selector. You definitely want the leads from the neck pickup to go to the phase switch first. That way the phase switch will work in every position. Wire it like this:
You can have the inputs on one of the ends and the outputs in the middle, or the inputs in the middle and the outputs on one of the ends, that part doesn't matter.

Correct. The neck pickup going to the phase switch is the only instance for what you're wanting to do, that will require a ground/negative/- lead to go anywhere but straight to a ground point. You'll want to ground your pots, pickups (obviously), and the bridge and tailpiece (whatever you've got for the bridge that's metal). If your rotary has a metal chassis, you'll want to ground that too, BUT, if the back of the pickguard is shielded, you don't want to create a ground loop by adding a soldered ground wire to your pots or rotary switch, if they're already making contact by touching the pickguard shielding. Check for continuity between a grounded spot (say from your output jack sleeve terminal) to the metal casing of your pots and rotary switch. If you've got a continuity there, i.e. they're showing that they're grounded, adding a soldered ground connection will have the opposite effect. You may want to Google proper guitar grounding, since I've never been great at explaining things like a teacher would

[Mad-Mike]

I saw you mentioned an 6-way rotary switch. You could also use an 8-way 3 waver single pole rotary to get all eight combinations + off. That's something I'm planning to do eventually. Of course, you need standard body depth or thicker to do that though, at least, to my knowledge. I could show a schematic later.

[hillerheilman]

Thanks so much for all your help guys! Quick update. I finally tried wiring this up yesterday but I apparently wasn't paying careful enough attention and as I stripped the outer wire of my bridge pickup(to access the 4 conductors to wire up the triple shot switches) I apparently cut one of the leads off with it, and then the triple shot switch itself came apart somehow. So, unless I can manage to solder the whole thing back together, I may unfortunately need to get new pickups.
I'll be sure to post a thread somewhere on here when it's all finished.
-Hiller