GregP

4-pole 5-way switches are commonplace, and yeah-- the options are pretty staggering. I'm not ruling out mini-switches for specific purposes, but for most standard magnetic schemes, I can't think of much that I'd want to do that you can't do with a 4-pole 5-way switch.

My Godin LG has a strip of what seems to be brass, which anchors the ball ends of the strings (it's a string-through). This is simply a manufacturing decision, I'm sure of it-- easier to slap on a brass strip than to seat 6 ferrules. There's no way this strip increases sustain.

Especially since it's called a "2 pole 6 position switch".

My first thought is that one of the pickups has a faulty preamp. Although encased in epoxy (or whatever), it's still a circuit with components, and may fail. Just a thought, though.

Make full-sized plans, and stick to'em. That's the only real way. I mean, TOM posts can be raised pretty high, but I hate the way that looks. I like'em screwed all the way in. You're just gonna have to draw it up.

Mainly echoing what's already been said, but adding a few thoughts: - When you touch the strings, you don't become ground... there's usually no potential for it, and you're not as good a conductor as the actual ground. So, as stated earlier, you become a part of the "shielding" material and cut some potential interference. - It's very normal for hum to be reduced when touching strings on a guitar with single-coils. - A guitar with single-coils usually has a high noise floor to begin with. You are boosting it with your active boost. And then boosting it again with the amp. It's no surprise to me that the hum will be almost unbearable. In high-gain situations in my particular apartment (a horror of EMI/RFI) even covered humbuckers and a well-shielded guitar don't completely cure it. If you have any fluorescent lights, dimmer switches, CRT monitors, or other sources of interference around, your single-coil guitar is going to be a near-impossible beast to tame. Try this: take your fingers off the strings/bridge to INTENTIONALLY get hum. Now pivot you and your guitar in different angles, and walk around in small circles, looking for a spot and angle at which the hum seems greatly reduced. Finding this spot is proof that your guitar is simply picking up interference. If your environment is that full of it, it's also being picked up on your cable. - Speaking of which, are you using a decent-quality shielded cable? - completely shielding your guitar as per another doug's link is about the 'best' you can hope for, assuming shielding is your weak link. There will still be access points for interference (the tops of your pickups, mainly), but it'll help a great deal.

Hrm. I would think that cotton would offset part of the design... grippy rubbery stuff.... I wouldn't want my guitar on a slippery surface. Though, practically speaking, there's still going to be SOME grip, due to the friction caused by the weight of the guitar. What about foam rubber? Same deal?

That Guitar Jones site has some good deals and interesting items (using mini pcb for the push-push switches, which are interesting in and of themselves!)

That raises an interesting question-- has anyone seen tele-style bridge/baseplates that accomodate a 7-string pickup?

I think you're overcomplicating the issue. Just look at some pictures, eyeball where you want it (on your full-size drawing) and give'er. You'll find that most people will just put the P90 right up against the neck, and about a centimetre gap between a humbucker mounting ring and a bridge (assuming hardtail or trem-style bridge) or the high-e side of a TOM. I don't see any reason to get more scientific than looking at a few photos and taking it from there. Greg

White powder coat. LOL honestly, I dunno. I'm just mucking around, but I have no real answer to your question. I can tell you this: you might want to consider picking a subset of parts which could actually be painted (or powder-coated! I don't know what's involved to get something powder-coated) without affecting mechanics, and which might hold up for a decent amount of time. For example, if it's possible (and I'm not even sure it is): - the baseplate and arm of the FR - the tuners excluding the shaft - FR locking clamp I can't imagine there being any good argument for painting frets. They're frets! Even powder-coat will likely eventually get ruined-- it's durable, but not absolutely invulnerable. A white fretboard with stainless or nickel frets is a reasonable compromise.

I don't have a link to a gallery, but forum member Drak used CA rather successfully and with no clouding that I could see.

Pretty sure this project was already completed, using a Wilkinson trem if I remember correctly.

I'm not an electronics genius or anything, but it sounds like the signal is simply not making it into the "B" channel. What happens if you bypass all your distortion units but keep the A/B and Y boxes intact? Does the "B" channel have enough signal going in? A decent A/B should work fine (and is the right tool for the job), but if it's a dodgy unit, it's possible that it won't work. I know that a Y-cable won't split a guitar signal properly (for reasons beyond my comprehension) so if your A/B box is acting as a glorified Y-cable, that might be one explanation. Even one bad connection could be another cause; however, you indicate that when taken off the splitter, the distortion chain works. So the leads between units aren't at fault-- that leaves only the first and last leads to check. It's a long shot and I doubt it's the cause, but it's worth checking. If you're REALLY up to it, you could add effects back in piece by piece to find out where it goes wrong. Start off with your A/B box going directly to your Y box with no effects in either channel. Make sure the levels are the same. If not, you know where to start trouble-shooting. Then start adding effects in one at a time. Not sure which channel should be your first, but I'd alternate back and forth with each new effect added back in. By doing this, you get to check the effects for possible failures at the same time as checking the corresponding cables. Greg

I dunno, Joe. I'm willing to be open-minded, but like you, I'm a consumer (not a maker) who happens to be weirdly obsessive about learning this kind of stuff, and your argument is missing a few things: 1. If the two coils are scatter-wound, using a counter, by the same person, there is a very good chance actually that they'll be almost perfectly humbucking. The law of averages factors in here-- yes, one wrap might be shorter than the next (due to diagonal displacement, etc), but spread over thousands of winds, there is likely to be pretty much the same length of wire used. Particularly if, like I say, they're wound by the same person. That person is likely to have the same approach to winding and will naturally wind each with similar displacements, resulting in (averaged over thousands of winds) a pretty similar pickup. By measuring inductance, they have an additional tool to make sure that the coils match. 2. The hum is not a static 60/50 cycle sine wave. Therefore there are higher-order harmonics present as well. 3. I honestly have no concrete knowledge yet, but Mike's explanation of pickup construction at least has the appearance of basis in fact, and lines up with common sense. It's common sense that the magnets will have an effect on the hum "picked up," though I'm willing to admit that there might be physics that I'm unaware of. Rather than simply saying it's not worth disputing, I for one would find value in an actual explanation as to why the magnets are not a factor in picking up hum. I don't mind if my common sense is proven wrong-- the world is full of discrepant knowledge and phenomenon. ;-) I think it goes without saying that a scatterwound pickup is less precise than a computer-driven factory wind. As such, it's a given that the humbucking will be "X" degrees more effective with a factory wind. The issue I'm trying to convey which you still seem to disagree with is the "degree" to which this difference is an impact. It's by overestimating this degree of difference that you're at least *possibly* insisting on your interpretation of the OP's problem as being the right one without question. I think the difference in effectiveness is infantessimal to the degree that my instinct is to look to other potential causes. You have to trouble-shoot all possibilities rather than make one diagnosis and stick to it. IOW, your theory is valid, but by overestimating the differences between scatterwound coils, you're shutting out the possibility that there are other factors. For example: it seems like the OP has wrapped conductive copper tape directly to the coils themselves. Even though the coils generally have cloth tape around them, it's at least possible that something has gone amuck with the shielding tape. For that matter, though he says the new pickups are "open," he doesn't say whether the previous ones were open or covered. Even with copper tape around the coils, the top of an 'open' pickup still exposes the coils more than a covered pickup does. Another example: maybe the OP just never noticed this effect (increased noise by proximity to amplifier) until he truly scrutinized his replacement job. Another possibility: maybe the previous pickups were LESS effective and the noise of the middle position was just more noticeable than now; it could be the more remarkable difference in noise that's drawing his attention to it than the noise floor itself Also possible: faulty wiring. Wouldn't be surprising for someone new to soldering and rewiring to make some faulty connections -- Greg

What pedalboard, which channels? So confused. I'm afraid you're not giving a complete enough picture of what your setup is! What are you using to split into 2 channels?

I'm still as lost as ever. <lol>

A well-made router jig would do it. You'd need a nice flat surface, 2 nice flat "rails" (they can be made of anything), and another long flat board/surface that doesn't sag in order to makeshift a new 'base' for your router. Router attaches to long flat base, then sits on the rails. Or I guess you could make the router stationary and move the body, but that somehow seems riskier. Not sure why, just a hunch.

[edit: cross-posted] I'll admit to being unsure about the screws... surely they factor into the entire equation of the pickup's ability to... er... pick-up... otherwise we wouldn't need polepieces at all? What you say seems to make sense, Joe, about the coils being the only factor in picking up certain things, so I can't say I feel as confident anymore. But nor am I completely convinced yet. However, don't be pedantic about the 'reversed' coils. You know what I meant. That doesn't toss the idea into the trash heap as you imply. If the UnBucker still bucks SOME of the hum (and it does), and if one coil of a humbucker, combined with a coil of a separate humbucker (popularized by PRS but found in other manufacturers) will cancel a great deal of hum, and if one coil of a humbucker, combined with a single-coil middle pickup can cancel mucho hummo, then it stands to reason that as long as the two coils have at least been made with "equal but reverse" in mind, then they will cancel most of the hum. To clarify that last phrase, I mean that the pickup maker/winder was at least TRYING to make them equal (even if the total length of the coils had slight discrepancies). That being the case, you're going to have most of the hum cancelled. I can't say that you're "wrong", full stop. No way would I do that. But I think that it's unlikely to be due to the Fralin (high quality, with winds likely carefully counted) pickups and more likely to be due to a rewiring mishap or oversight. I'm not sure what effect the 'copper tape wrapping' might have, but I'm wondering.... To the OP: have you changed environments at all? Did you intentionally take note of the 'lack' of hum in the old pickups when standing near the sources of interference? Is it possible that it's just close scrutiny that is making you notice now (scrutiny due to having changed your own pickups and wanting to check them carefully), and that the old pickups might have passed along the same amount of hum in the same environment, gain levels, and proximity to interference but you just never thought to scrutinize previous to the change? When you say it's not the "touching the strings", does that mean that touching the strings has no effect whatsoever? Also, regarding the copper tape-- how did you affix it?

The Carvin headstock isn't distinctly "UN-metal" to my eye. A few touches here and there (sharpening the points, flattening out the subtle curves) would be enough, I would think. What kind of "metal" body style will you be using?

In all fairness, the 2 coils don't have to be absolutely identical to effectively cancel most hum. Heck, I would think that the differences in polepieces (slugs vs screws) within a typical humbucker are going to create a bigger difference than a few extra winds here or there. It would be a huge overstatement to say that handwound pickups won't cancel hum effectively.

So nice!

It's certainly a versatile wiring scheme! None of it's going to give you teh extra uber-heaviness, though. That's all in your pickups, your amp, and your fingers. Phase reversal and parallel wiring (vs. standard humbucker wiring in series) are both mods that will give you a thinner sound, not a thicker one. I'm also surprised at the diagram-- didn't Page actually use true tapped coils? (the coil has an extra lead coming out, somewhere in the middle of the winds) I don't know that as a fact at all, it's just something I thought I heard somewhere. Greg

built-in effects, other than EQ and boost, are the devil. Along with foosball.

Definitely nothing wrong with shielding. Worst case scenario, you get peace of mind that it's done. If you run into noise situations, you won't blame yourself for overlooking a good shield job.