Bypassing volume pot?

Alessandro

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Jul 30, 2018
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Hey everyone. Brand new to the forum and I’ve already seen so many helpful posts but I’m hoping someone has the answer to my specific head scratcher. I installed an American hfs and vintage bass so I’m absolutely loving the sound I’m getting right now but I have one issue still to deal with.

I’m very familiar with 4 knobs and 2 humbuckers in my SG and I used the volume knob on the neck pickup a lot to get that rolled off cleaner sound when I load the gain up. I really use a lot of that stuff but I’m having the issue where the 2 knob system on my custom 24 is making it difficult to change pickups and volume while I’m singing or possible changing tones with pedals. I was thinking of adding a volume pot/knob but that isn’t something I really want to do at all. Ideally I would love to bypass the volume knob on my bridge pickup since. I never ever adjust that volume. This way I can change pickups and have the volume rolled off occasionally on the neck a bit for a cleaner tone than my super high gain bridge.

I installed the pickups myself and I’m pretty sure I can take care of this myself as well with a little help from my PRS friends. Some smart cookies on here I’ve noticed.

Any tips would be so appreciated. Show me some PRS love people ;)
 
Oh and some more info I should have probably shared. This is a 2018 custom 24 SE. Rather then soldering directly on the electronics I decided to leave the soldered connections from my 85/15s pickups and just clip the wires with enough slack to make wire to wire connections instead. Might sound weird but I wasn’t 100% sure what I was doing and It was much easier for the trial and error to just twist some wires together and test. So the SE custom 24 wiring diagram would still apply
 
Oh and some more info I should have probably shared. This is a 2018 custom 24 SE. Rather then soldering directly on the electronics I decided to leave the soldered connections from my 85/15s pickups and just clip the wires with enough slack to make wire to wire connections instead. Might sound weird but I wasn’t 100% sure what I was doing and It was much easier for the trial and error to just twist some wires together and test. So the SE custom 24 wiring diagram would still apply
So you want the bridge full on all the time and volume only affecting the neck - I’m sure someone can help with that.

Welcome to the forum.
That’s exactly what I want, and exactly why I posted up here because I know someone out there had my answer and it’s only a matter of time haha
 
I would say this may be a bad idea. You have learned the value of riding the volume knob for the neck pup - doing the same for the bridge is invaluable.

I personally use it this way: leave it on 7 set up my main tone. Stay on 7 for everything but leads and thats when I go to 10 to shift a gear.

EVH change the knob for volume to say Tone. He would use the volume knob to vary the loudness but also the gain.

If this is a bad idea for you I am sure you can easily bypass the treble pup!

Good luck!
 
I’m not sure how I became addicted to the sound of a neck pickup at 4-6 or exactly when it happened but I have never had the same love on the bridge pickup. I use a boost pedal on my board for the lead punches. I think a lot of it has to do with style of play? Not much room for rolled off bridge tones in grunge/hard rock music. However I think outside the box when it comes to Wiring and nothing is ever permanent when it comes to taste so future changes may be in my cards but for now I really wanna get this done for some shows I’m pumped to debut this beauty at
 
It's doable, but I don't know about doing it with the stock switch. I haven't messed with the SE three-way blade yet.

You could do it with the typical American style two-pole three-way switch. You'd use one side for each pickup and run the neck pickup to the volume pot input and the bridge pickup to the volume pot output.

If you want a master tone control, you'll need to do the so-called "50's mod" and connect the tone pot to the volume pot output as well. Otherwise, the bridge pickup will bypass it. The HFS is going to be even louder and rawer with no volume control, so you may want to put some load back on it via a fixed resistor.

If you don't use coil splitting, consider putting a push/pull kill switch on the tone knob so you can silence it when you need/want to. The HFS can get unruly at volume with gain.
 
It sounds to me like you want to rewire the volume pot in between the neck pickup and the switch, then have the output of the switch go to tone and then output.

Never tried this myself, but seems doable?
 
It sounds to me like you want to rewire the volume pot in between the neck pickup and the switch, then have the output of the switch go to tone and then output.

Never tried this myself, but seems doable?

Ah yeah that's the ticket. Simpler than what I was thinking.
 
Thank you gents I’m gonna get myself some alligator clips and test some of this out shortly
 
It's a pretty common mod to leave all your wiring as is, but install a switch somewhere else that runs the bridge pickup straight to the jack. Guthrie Govan's signature guitars do it I am pretty sure

That way you can hit it and you are full volume into the jack, but you have an option any other time to use the volume
 
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