[hawk900]

Three jacks. Good eye. Run all mono. Stereo cables cost way more and I had line cutouts after continuous stepping on the line. Was never impressed with any a/b line. I have these babies braided together no fatter than my midi cable.

[hawk900]

The worst this about gibson's. Is that the bridge ground is soldered on the shaller style mounting bolt on the inside and they sneak it through a pin hole to the cavity. Unfortunately I'm running that butt ugly white wire to volume knob washer than to bridge. Works design off all gibson's. The sg on the other is a guitar axe just waiting to be customized. It's my four one and this one the midi is on the way.
hawk.

[Tennessee Jedi]

Before you go on with the mods...check out this guy from the most prominent Philly Dead band playing a faded SG with virtually no mods (I have no relation to this band besides a fan). Kadlecik, Mattson and Donna Jean have sat in with these dudes too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aESWlW5MxgE

I saw said band last night ....
Looks like the SG is out and some Ibanez has taken its place .... it had 1 tone and 1 vol knob !
The Marshall stack is gone too
Last couple of times I have seem them he has been playing thru a Bandmaster I think.
To mod or not to mod .... either way seems to work
Funny part of the show last night
They ended with Ripple but the venue cut the Main PA - leaving them with just their amps and monitors - so the crowd had a cool little sing-along with band at the end .... very cool

[ccw3432]

So the more research I do the more I realize that I don't want to take my gutiar to a tech to do this. I've decided to give this a try myself. This will be my first shot at guitar wiring and I'm starting out pretty big. As things become more and more complex, I'm not confident the guitar tech is going to get things the way I want. I think I'm getting very close to a wiring diagram. Here's what I came up with for my electronics

Gibson 490s in neck and bridge
Dimarzio Super 2 in middle (I'll route out a spot for it)
Fishman Powerbridge Piezo w/Powerchip and 3 way switch (which allows magnetic, piezo, or a mix of both)
3 switches to go between parallel, series, and coil tap on each pickup (still not completely convinced on this. North/South option instead?)

The thing I'm having the most diffiuclty wrapping my head around is how the swicth works to coil tap. I can follow the parallel and series and understand how that works. I'm having difficulty with which pickup should be south which north, and if they should be selectable between the north and south instead of parallel so that they work better in unison.

I suspect that the center pickup will typically be used alone while the bridge and kneck often used together. The Dimarzio will be hotter than the other two and don't know how it will blend with the Gibsons. Once it is done and hear it I'll get a better idea of how it will be used together and hoping they will work well together, but I'm willing to live with using the Gibsons and Dimarzio separately.

Here's my diagram. If anyone sees any issues with it I would appreciate the feedback.

The Gibsons wires are South start=black, south finish=green, north start=red, north finish=white
The Dimarzio wires are south start= green, south finish = white, north start = red, nrth finish = black

Thanks,
Chris

[ccw3432]

OK, I'm starting guitar surgery today. Hope all goes well.

Chris

[hawk900]

That's beautiful man!!!! Get your router out. Almost like mine with a cripe touch too. I use onboard waldo's killer tpc-1 for all my buckers and blend in the piezo strength with my bridge and mid buckers with an onboard stratoblaster gain knob. If your pup cavity is full off three buckers back to back you must flip the mid bucker aka rosebud diagram on wald-electronics site to keep the magnets in phase and wire it the same as diagram. Love the parrallel option too. Strum that dimarz in parrallel (second cleanest sound just a little flatter than split) instant slightly mudded exact Touch,Bertha,and all 1st and second position chord strummed intro's. I used push pull 3ways at the beginning but wore them out quick switching from verses to leads I had to go to dp3t toggles. Also remove all those gibson metal guards that hide the south coil especially for parallel and split utilizing south coil. There's just a glob of solder on each side of the gib pup holding them on. I used a dremmel tool and buzzed a tiny slice in each and they popped right off.
With help from GaryBrawer, Parrish on facebook and Mr.Cripe in early 95 I fully understood how the piezo was placed and operated. Brawer tought me about cavity isolation lining all cavities with copper tape and in the pup cavity using those expandable earplugs filling the pup cavity emptiness as added insulation.
I just received my midi sensor which will screw in just in front of saddles. Can't wait to utilize those instrument sounds like oboe and flute etc.

Looking real good man and careful with that router. PM me if you need any tips.
hawk.

[ccw3432]

I routed out the spot for the middle pickup and installed a battery compartment on the back today. All the drilling is done for the piezo and the switches. Still need cut a spot for the middle pickup in the pick guard and do the wiring. Hope to get it together tomorrow. So far it's going well.

[ccw3432]

I completed the surgery today. 12 hours of intense work. The tone pot wiring threw me a bit at the end but I figured it out. So I got the last bit of soldering done and took a look at my diagram one more time. I knew what I wanted my guitar to do, but not sure how to get there at the beginning. After getting everything wired up I was pretty sure that something would not work right and I would be back at it tomorrow. I put a battery in for the piezo and holy F-in crap it worked. Everything works like it should and it sounds great. I'll have to spend a lot of time finding the new sounds, but a great first impression. I have a ton of new sounds to play with and blend. Here's some photos of the project and the finished guitar. Ya!!!

[aiq]

Nice, could you post a pic of the whole face?

[ccw3432]

Ya that photo got cropped. Let's try this one.

Here's a better photo of the innards.

[Smolder]

the way this site is set up it artificially crops the images if they are too many pixels wide. You can expand the browser window to get the extra stuff.

[WildEye]

Wow, everything worked on the first try. I hate you

But seriously nice job, did you ditch the rotary selector for push/pull pots to turn the individual pick-ups on and off?

[ccw3432]

I did use push/pull knobs to turn each pickup on/off individually. Each pickup has its own volume knob that is push/pulls for on/off.

I played the guitar for a while today. There is one thing I'm trying to figure out. If any of the 3 volume pots are turned below 2 the other pickups don't work. It dosen't matter if the one below two is activated or not. I can't figure out why this would be. I supsect it may be that the volume pot outputs are somehow screwing with the signal even if not activated. Once I turn the volume knob above two on all volume pots everything works as it should.

The signal goes from: pickup -> mini switch -> on/off switch -> Volume pot

The output of all three volume pots are wired together to allow for one master signal from the magnetic pickups. The grounds are connected to each other as well. It seems to me that if I put the volume pot before the on/off switch it may fix this, but I really don't have a clue. Any ideas?

The easy answer here is just don't turn the volume knobs below 2 or 3, but I'd like to knw what's going on.

Thanks,
Chris

[WildEye]

I don't know the answer but am also curious (I have an SG I'd like to do the same thing to (pull/push instead of a selector)). As it is standard - if you have the middle position on the toggle for both pick-ups you get to blend them a bit but if you drop one of the volumes too low it just cuts out. The answer is above my understanding but I wonder if it's the same thing???

[ccw3432]

I don't know the answer but am also curious (I have an SG I'd like to do the same thing to (pull/push instead of a selector)). As it is standard - if you have the middle position on the toggle for both pick-ups you get to blend them a bit but if you drop one of the volumes too low it just cuts out. The answer is above my understanding but I wonder if it's the same thing???

Interesting. I'm not sure if my SG did that prior to modifying it, but suspect it may have. I never noticed it happening but usually don't have the volume knobs that low. Anyone else...Is this normal and what's the deal? The one interesting thing is that even if I have the pickup turned off the volume knob still reacts the same. With the standard wiring on an SG, I do remember having one at zero and the other operated without any relevance when a single pickup was selected. Hmmm.