Wiring diagram for push/pull bypass

ChrisCst22

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Dec 14, 2012
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Hey guys, I'm hoping someone here is willing to help. I'm trying to figure out how to wire one of my PRS's. Its an SE Tim Mahoney with stock neck pup and Duncan alternative 8 bridge pickup. I'm using 2 push pull pots, and I want when pushed down to have both volume and tones bypassed. If I pull up, the pot becomes active. I've almost got it figured out, but with caps on both I'm confused where those would connect.

So again it's basically a standard wiring scheme, with bypass switches. And I've seen some people who have done this have it the opposite. So pushed in (or default) the pot is active and pulling out bypasses the pot. I'm looking for opposite of that.


Thanks so much!
 
Here is an extremely rough drawing from me. I think I'm on the right track, but again the caps are throwing me off. On the tone in my pic, the solid line is how it would be wired normally. The dotted line is what I thinking would accomplish the tone bypass, but I'm really not sure.

imagemxp.jpg


Thanks so much for the reply. If I can't figure out I'll end up taking it to my buddy but I'd like to see if I can do it myself.
 
Ah, I think I see what you mean. I'm going to throw this out there, and hopefully someone else can either agree or correct me, because I'm not an expert on this, though I have done a bit of custom wiring in my axes. First of all, is there any specific reason you want to have a cap in the signal chain when the tone pot is bypassed? (Edit, am I understanding your correctly? Are you unsure of if the cap should be in the equation with the tone pot bypassed?) From my understanding of guitar wiring, a cap helps to regulate a cutoff frequency, and the tone pot then helps to regulate how much treble signal above that frequency set by the cap is sent to ground, and thus eliminated from your sound. At "0" on your tone knob, the resistance of the pot is 0K, so all of your high signal is being bled to ground through the cap, and hence you get a very dark sound. Now, if you add a cap to your signal without a tone control, and it leads to ground, you're basically getting the effect of having a tone control in the circuit and set to 0, which will make a very dark sound, and I assume that isn't what you're going for. If you put a cap in your circuit as it leads to the hot output of your jack, it's going to cut bass (kind of the opposite of sending treble to ground, it will allow only high frequencies to pass, but to your "kept" signal instead).

So, long story short, maybe just not have the cap in the circuit when you bypass the pot? Sorry, that may have been overboard on the explanation, but I didn't want to just tell you what to do without any rationale!

Also, in your diagram, I think I see a couple things that might not do what you're aiming for, but I don't want to be "that guy" that thinks he knows everything, I know it was just a quick drawing so it might not be the whole picture. Let me know if you want me to take a whack at drawing something up later tonight, would love to help! Otherwise good luck!
 
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