GregP

I say, stick to the plan. Coil-tapping is actually a term that has come into popularity, but which is used incorrectly for the most part. Because even the incorrect usage is the common usage, I'll call it "tapping", too, even when it's splitting. Here's the rundown as far as I understand it: - Coil tapping: back in the day, with very much care and a real possibility of wrecking your pickup, they would add an extra wire right into the middle of a coil. If you use this wire instead of the wire coming out of the "full" coil, the signal would be "tapped" at only half the pickup's normal impedance, which meant less power, but a "cleaner" sound, especially with an overdriven amp which would then be LESS driven due to lower output from your guitar. However, NOWadays, "tapping" more commonly refers to: - Coil splitting: a humbucker is essentially 2 pickups in one. Splitting the coils means that you use only 1 of the 2 pickups as if it were a single-coil pickup. Because the overall construction of a humbucker is different (bar magnet instead of individually magnetized pole pieces, for example), it doesn't always sound like a true single coil, but it does a pretty reasonable job. Swineshead pickups offers a humbucker that's actually 2 true single coils, so when they're "split" (or "tapped" as some people will call it), they will maintain a true single-coil sound. - Series/Parallel: a humbucker, as mentioned, is really 2 pickups in one "unit". Typically, a humbucker runs in series, which means that one feeds into the next, thereby doubling the resistance (and thereby increasing the output). This will give you the typical "fat" humbucker sound. However, with modified wiring, you can have both coils operate independently, sending their signals at the same time to your output, where they're "summed". The result should be more similar to a single-coil sound, thinned out a bit and somewhat more jangly. - In/Out of phase: by changing the "direction" that current flows through the coil (reversing the hot and ground), you affect the time domain in which a waveform is sent to the output jack... er... or something.... In any event, when waveforms are IN phase, they're going at the same time and therefore you get your full frequency range. When you reverse one of the pickups' directions, you put the resulting signal "out" of phase with the other, and since the waves are generally similar but not arriving at the same time, crossed frequencies cancel out. This means a thin sound-- sometimes TOO thin to be usable, but sometimes just what the doctor ordered for some funky rhythm. - Tone controls: If you don't put a battery into your guitar for a tone control related piece of electronics, they're passive. Passive means that frequencies can only ever be CUT and NEVER boosted. There's the illusion that bass is being boosted, but what's really happening is that higher frequencies are gradually "bleeding" into the ground. So, tone gets muddy real quick because you're only subtracting frequencies and not adding any. Passive tone controls, IMO, are fairly useless. For some rhythm sounds, you won't mind losing frequencies, but I'd rather do it with an EQ pedal or the amp's controls. Well, if you want to use these options, you need a 4-conductor pickup. Most aftermarket humbuckers already ARE 4-conductor (haven't looked into your '59, but my Little 59 is). Beyond that, it's no more or less important than the overall tone of the particular pickup you've selected. Also, as mentioned, Swineshead (and maybe other companies?) makes 'buckers that are actually 2 single coils, which should theoretically make it better for coil-splitting options. I've mucked around with a lot of different wiring, and with a 2-pickup guitar, I'd say that options are good. I like the PRS style, with hum-cancelling in every position, but with actual different usable tones being available. But for a 1-humbucker guitar? Nah. You might as well just put the bucker and a volume control, and ditch the useless tone controls, in my humble opinion. Greg

The string tension will be completely unaffected, with one caveat and a brief explanation: brief explanation: - to tune to pitch with the same string guage on 2 guitars with the same scale but totally different bridge or headstock styles, the actual tension of the strings is absolutely identical. Physics doesn't care what's happening before or after the bridge, but the tension must be the same for the same pitch. caveat: - the illusion of different string tensions and the FACT of different sensation and size of bend needed for vibrato/pitch bend comes down to how much extra string is left before your tuning posts or "tailpiece" (calling even a string-through style a "tailpiece"). When you bend, there's more string to "stretch out" and the CHANGE in tension is distributed across either more or less string length depending on your setup. Now, due to other things like friction, you don't always end up distributing throughout the entire string. On a TOM with string-through, a lot of the distribution will stop at the bridge itself because there's a fairly solid connection with a lot of friction there. And then another "bunching up" point at the grommets where the string passes through the body. So you're not necessarily and literally stretching the entire string, no matter WHAT method you use. conclusion: The actual method of attachment will still be largely irrelevant. You MAY find that with a string-through you require a slightly wider bend or wiggle to change the pitch noticeably, but I really honestly doubt it. The TOM bridge itself (and the way its steel saddles work) will effectively still maintain the bridge as the "end" point even for bends and vibrato. The headstock/nut has less friction to "stop" the string in its place, so THAT's where any "stretching" is more likely to occur. I still think that it's so miniscule a factor that you should choose based on which you prefer the look of.

Godin guitars did a great job with the non-tailpiece TOM, strictly in terms of looks. Their LG series would look wonky with anything other than what it has. BUT, for the most part I prefer with tailpiece, or as suggested, with a one-piece wraparound. Greg

Looking good, Thirdstone. Slow and steady wins the race!

I suspect a few other people will agree with me here-- do whichever one you think LOOKS better. In the huge equation of your guitar's tone, it won't make a shred of tangible difference. I think a stop tailpiece is less "fiddly" because you don't have grommets or perfectly-aligned string-through holes to worry about. I DO like the look of a string-through with TOM, though. Greg

Once your string gets stretched, it works flawlessly. It's sturdier than I thought it'd be, but not QUITE as sturdy as I'd ideally like with the monster strings I've got on the steel.

It was just your diagram with thicker lines and some labels. Look no further than the following thread to see the results: http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.ph...topic=23390&hl=

I'm not truly a "slide player" any more than most people who muck around. But it seemed like a good project and easier to complete than my 335 project that keeps getting bogged down. I'll post some sound clips of poor playing, soon. Thanks for having a look, and I'm glad you like it!

I'll try to be brief, but the forum regulars know I'm not usually. Here it is: (Slightly larger duplicate of the exact same pic: Click me for larger version) Click for Alternative view (the string pull IS straight, it's the over-the-nut angle that creates the skewed illusion in this perspective) It started off when I discovered the EZ-Bender, and when I started getting an interest in country music, in which the pedal steel figures prominently. I loves me some pedal steel now. I don't have the space for a pedal steel guitar, and I remembered that Koch had a free tutorial on building a lap steel here: http://www.buildyourguitar.com/resources/lapsteel/ I knew that I could modify it with the EZ-bender and that with any luck, the resulting product would be usable enough to emulate some pedal steel sounds. Since then I've learned about "slants" in conjunction with tunings like the C6 (CEGACE) and I realize that the bender isn't strictly necessary; however, in my little bit of time messing around with it, I feel that the bender will still come in handy, but maybe on a different string and with a modified tuning. A few hopefully quick notes about the construction: - Wood: A convenient size of wood blank wasn't available in basswood when I went shopping. They had mahogany, but I was then reminded that with either basswood OR mahogany, I might not get enough snap. So I went with a 2-piece design, Mahogany and Cherry. It looks like Maple, but it's Cherry. Fretboard is a rosewood pre-slot from LMI. The rosewood for the pickguard and controls were from the headplate that supposedly matches the fingerboard. It's not a perfect match, but the impression of matching is close enough for me! - Staining: Once I decided on 2-piece, I decided to make contrasting colours. After much debate, I used plain old gel stain, which worked well enough UNTIL 2 things: a ) I used steel wool on the danish oil finish, and it took off some of the dyed wood at the same time, lightening it considerably. It didn't penetrate very deeply! Oops! b ) Even before the wool lightened the mahogany part, the Danish oil DARKENED the cherry more than I thought it would. There's now still contrast, but not as much as I originally intended. - Fretboard: I used a Gibson-scale preslotted fretboard blank that I ordered for another project. I hacked off the 1st fret, then measured from "nut" to "fret" 12 to get my half-way point, and doubled it in order to position the bridge. It's something around 23" scale. I then ordered MOP dots from DePaule because I didn't want to mess around with inlaying (I'm not skilled yet) and put them in the right spots. - Frets: I had fretwire that fit the blank, so I decided to use it more as practice to see what it felt like to put frets into a fretboard than anything, but I like the results more than the "veneer/putty" markers I've seen on other steels. One of the guys at the local music shop commented on how classy true frets looked, so I guess I done good. - Plans: Once I had all the materials and parts in place, I drew up some to-scale plans: Some plans and a test headstock I spent a LOT of time with the plans, because I was using a different "headstock" style than Koch, and I also wanted a bit of elegance to the shape. It looks like a "plank", but there are 3 different angles on each side. By the time sanding was done, I realized that one of the angles was so subtle I shouldn't have bothered. Forgetting the headstock for a moment, one "line" goes from the nut to the bridge, then the two sides are perfectly parallel until the stop tailpiece, and then there's a sharper angle toward the end. The plans weren't enough to ensure the headstock would be lined up, so I also used some scrap to test. This led me to discover that I needed to use a router to "shave" off about a sixteenth of an inch from the top of the headstock area, to "drop" the tuners down a bit for proper angle and also to make the Cherry thin enough for the tuners to fit. As it turns out, the plans were accurate for straight string-pull, though! - Controls/Cavities: The controls were a pain to mount. I pre-routed channels into the mahogany before gluing: Click me for preliminary channels But I should've made them wider. This would've given me far more room for the wires as I pushed the switches and controls back into the guitar itself. I ended up having to drill out a spot for the strat-style jack plate because another idea I had fizzled, and at the same time I bored out more space in the other areas. So my tidy work served as a good "beginning", but ultimately I had to go in thug-style to make space. - Bridge: I had to make the bridge myself. I took some roller saddles that Frank Falbo sent me, and after MUCH screwing around with design, ultimately just screwed them directly to an inexpertly shaped aluminum angle. Here's a bit of a close up of the bridge, along with a shot of the controls and pickup cover: click me for shot of bridge You'll notice another weird thing there, which is a "tone bar" made by using CA to attach a Dunlop slide to a shaped piece of limba. I already own a Shubb GS1 "lap steel bar", and this is modeled after that, giving me the glass tone as another option. It looks silly with all those rocks inside, and the extra weight isn't completely necessary, so I might just keep it as plain glass. - Wiring: The pickups also proved to be a pain, as some of you might have seen in a recent thread. Robert the Damned helped me out a bunch, and guided me toward this finished wiring scheme with a 5-way switch: Click for wiring diagram The diagram is a modified version of one that Robert himself drew up for me. I just superimposed new lines over it. It's worth mentioning that Frank Falbo, who found the saddles for me at a swap meet of sorts and sent them to me for just his cost price, generously supplied the pickup as well, along with a few small rotary tool bits that came in handy along the way I might add. I guess that's it, or I'll go overboard. You'll see a few nicks and burn marks there already, which is no worry to me. Character. Greg ------ PS, these threads and others went into the making of this steel. No need to click them, I'm just putting them there for posterity! http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.ph...23344&hl=pickup http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.ph...15667&hl=pickup http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.ph...topic=20299&hl= http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.ph...30&hl=lap+steel http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.ph...97&hl=lap+steel http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.ph...72&hl=lap+steel http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.ph...36&hl=lap+steel

I think his concern was with the magnetic field, not the cosmetics. EMG and no-hole style covers only affect the magnetic field very minimally. Despite what your eyes may tell you and your natural intution dictates, they won't "blend" the individual magnetic fields into one massive one. But, as I already believe, not having the strings perfectly aligned is a smaller issue that some people realize.

I agree totally, and will add 2 other things: 1. If you're particularly picky, you can use "rails" style pickups, Lace sensors, Carvin, or other types that don't use typical 6-pole spacing. 2. Exact alignment of the polepieces isn't really necessary. Even F-spacing I'm not really convinced is strictly necessary. A magnetic field is pretty wide, and being out by a fraction of an inch will still put you well within the usable magnetic field of the pickup. Greg

Took it to my local music store where I know some of the guys a bit, and they seemed well impressed. Photos coming up as soon as I've buffed out the wax finish. Though, the daylight is fading so I might wait until tomorrow to get proper light on the photo. In any event, just for closure I did a quick mod of Robert's original diagram using my own colours, to show what I ended up at. Part of the reason the coils needed to be swapped came down to the fact that the humbucker is meant to be a bridge humbucker, if I'm not mistaken. Thanks again, Robert and Joe! Greg

I dunno. It's hard to tell because my apartment is absolutely, NOTORIOUSLY prone to EMI hum in the first place, so it's hard to guage how much of this is normal. After switching those wires, everything's definitely "in phase" with each other, because there are no positions with really weird frequency drop-out. But the only position that's really cancelling the hum right now is with the switch all the way toward the "neck", ie, the humbucker in series. The in-between position that's just one coil of the humbucker is noise-tastic. I wonder if it's just a really noisy or EMI-prone pickup to begin with. I *believe* that the SC + one coil of HB position is now a touch quieter than last night when I tried, but it's pretty noisy, too. Which is too bad, because it's the "best-sounding" of the positions. The SC by itself sounds good, and the HB by itself sounds good. After all these hours and all this mucking around, I am realizing that I probably should've replaced my broken 3-way with another 3-way instead of the 5-way. I certainly appreciate all the help, Robert-- above and beyond the call of duty, really. Muchas gracias for this "best-case" scenario I've finally arrived at. Greg

Robert, I'll give that a try. Luckily when you say "opposite" it ended up not mattering in the end, because you flip the common, which IS correct, and then of the remaining 3 lugs, the middle is still the middle. Cheers, Greg

Bump again. I went ahead and did it with the assumption made above. This thing sure is getting fiddly to work with-- my wires somehow got shorter and shorter, and I don't recall very often cutting them down for a "clean start". I'm not sure what to do with the results it yielded. pos 1 (bridge) = nice full single-coil tone pos 2 = not hum-cancelling, but reasonable volume pos 3 + 4 = not hum-cancelling, and low volume pos 5 = only fully hum-cancelling position, with good volume Now, it needs to be said that the results for 3+4 aren't totally unexpected. If I'm not mistaken, they are both single coils from the neck 'bucker. I measured the impedance of the individual coils, and at ~3.5 Ohms, I doubt they're very high output. The bridge SC was a spanky 8! So, from those results, I don't know what to do... if I screw with either of the coils (reversing hot and ground) of the humbucker, wouldn't that then mean that the "opposite" switch setting would then not be hum cancelling? Or in other words, if position 5 is hum cancelling, won't switching the wires as per Robert's directions then render position 5 to be NOT hum-cancelling? As you can see, I'm working a lot of this out on my own, which is rewarding. But I've also spent about 12 hours in total on this, as I'm not a very fast solderer and feel very sharply the non-presence of a third limb. Greg

The "left" pole makes sense to me. Going from top to bottom: 0 (common) 1 (bridge) 2 (middle) 3 (neck) but using the same numbers, my personal switch's "right" pole is: 1 2 3 0 Robert (or anyone else good at this stuff), how do the lugs in your diagram correspond? I try to work out the logic for myself, but it's not panning out. where the 2 coils of the humbucker "join", I don't know how to trace the path. So, in short, I need to know where to connect (on the right pole) the ground and the other wire. Just to show I've "tried", here's what I'm THINKING happens: On the right lug, the 'bucker is wired to the middle position and the ground is the 'common' lug. When neck is chosen on the switch, the signal path is FORCED into going through both coils because that's the only path it can take to ground/"return". When middle position is chosen, the 'series' path gets broken because the path to ground has less resistance through Robert's "green" wire because it gets sent to ground via the pole's common lug. Sure would like to know if I've at least got the right lugs (middle for wire, common for ground), even if my reasoning is flawed. Greg

I have to confess, I'm still trying to sort this out, with the colours on my humbucker. I wanted to sort it out on my own rather than expect my hand to be held, but as it turns out, I keep giving myself headaches. My humbucker is a Quad rails (Kramer? Mitey Mite?), but as far as I can tell, it uses the same colours as Seymour Duncan and Gotoh. That being the case, using Robert's diagram: "north" coil of HB: - his black = ground = my green - his green = hot = my red "south" coil of HB: - his green (again) = tied to other humbucker = my white - his blue = direct to switch = my black ---- Following that logic, on my pickup, the white and red are tied together to facilitate the series connection, my green goes to ground, and my black also goes to the switch (to the left with the 2 lugs). ---- Does that sound about right? Damn this perfectionism. I finally "gave up" trying to work it out last night and wired it all up before discovering that I had no series connection, plus also putting my SC out of phase. If I'm "going in" again, I hope to do it right first time. Greg

Robert, The only problem I have is not breaking off these stupid teeny tiny little pieces of wire as I try to fit the switch back into the too-tight cavity. Qveztion, though: Since we're now using both poles of the switch, should the two "always on" lugs (also labelled as "0" on many diagrams) not be wired together? Greg

Robert, I'm reading this from work, so I can't put it into practice yet, but if it works, I'm going to be a very happy man. Thanks a lot! Greg

*bump* My thinking was "off". I wanted the humbucker to operate in series, but of course with a Strat style switching system, they operate in parallel. I've spent many hours trying this, so please don't hate me for asking, anybody, but: Can anyone help me with a wiring diagram? --- Components: "neck" rail style humbucker, Seymour Duncan colours used (red+green, white+black, bare) "bridge" generic imitation Telecaster style, red+white wires, don't worry about polarity, I can reverse if needed 5-way strat-style switch (2 poles with 4 lugs each) volume knob All I REALLY need it to do is: - "bridge" by itself - "bridge + either coil of "neck" for hum-cancelling - "neck" as in-series, in-phase humbucker (normal humbucker) The other 2 slots can be whatever, even if they sound bad (like out-of-phase nasal weakness) --- I know you guys have better things to do than work this stuff out, but every time I use that humbucker (which I currently have "working" at least! I tried!) I'm going to wish it was series. Thanks in advance for anyone who has pity! Greg

One Idea I had was just to put an appropriate diode, capacitor, resistor, or whatever (I dunno what they are in a Varitone) in-line with either the "neck" or the "middle" position on the 2nd pole. Then the tone would be at least "different". Greg

Last bump... nobody here plays lap?

Thanks Robert, I'll give'er a given'er standard Strat style for now, and later I'll see if I can find a use for the other lugs. Greg

I have a project with a humbucker (4-conductor) and single coil. In the interest of making things easy for myself, I'm just using a strat-style switch (5-position, 2-pole) even though each of the split coils in the humbucker will yield almost identical tones. Meh, it's what was on-hand. Now, the guitar has no tone knobs. Just the switch, the volume, and the output jack. I mosey over to good ol' Guitarelectronics and check out their standard strat diagram: http://guitarelectronics.com/product/WDUSSS5L1201 And I'm having a gander. Only one of the poles has pickups attached. The other pole runs to the tone controls. So now I'm confused about what to do with the second pole. Is it even needed? If I send lug 0 to the vol knob, 1 to bridge, 2 to middle, and 3 to neck (or the other way around-- easily checked before I begin soldering), all from pole 1, do I even need pole 2 at all? Is it still a vital part of the circuit? As far as I can tell, with just 1 pole and no tone, I'm still completing a circuit. Do I even need to solder my two lug 0's together? If I DO need additional soldering, what does it need to be? Thanks for any pointers. I had a search around, but nobody seems to be hosting any diagrams for 3 SC + 1 Vol diagrams. Greg PS, even though it's not a superswitch, with the Tone controls out of the equation, can the 2nd pole be used for some sort of trickery to make one of my redundant ("neck" and "middle" sounding almost identical) tones something more interesting?

Desperation bump. Or if you know a forum where I'd be more likely to find an answer...!