SG mods?
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redscott131
Active Member
Anyone here ever put 300k pots in an sg with humbuckers? just curious as to what itll do to the tone before i go on a soldering spree.
Just letting you know, that's what comes stock (both volume controls - 300K Lin) in Gibson SGs. So if you've had an SG in the past, then yes...you've already tried it. Lol.
300K will be slightly darker, and in many cases are exactly what SG guitars need to help out their "thinner than les paul" tones.
lol sorry man I'm an idiot. I just looked in the back cavity and they are 300k. For some reason I thought they were 500k but im probably confusing them with les pauls. Any chance you know anything about coil-tap pots? I played a les paul junior the other day that had a coil-tap humbucker and I really liked the fact that I could get major differences in tone from one pickup.
BeardedRetroGuy
Well-Known Member
I can tell you an awful lot about DPDT switch pots. I wired my strat so the humbuckers went Series/Parallel. Almost all humbuckers from major manufacturers come wired in Series. It gives you lots of mids and great signal strength.
Wiring a humbucker in parallel reduces the overall signal strength, but you get a lot less mids and more treble content, so it sounds a lot closer to single-coils.
Then there's coil-splitting, where you really are using a single-coil.
All three sound different from each other, and you can do either Series/Parallel or Coil-Split with the same pot, depending on how you wire it.
I can also draw diagrams out for wiring these things up if need-be. Let me know. Here's a sample: It's the diagram for my Warmoth strat.
This diagram assumes Seymour-Duncan pickups, so the colors for the wires (Black->White, Red->Green) may change for other manufacturers. this is the Series/Parallel configuration I was talking to you about. The hot line is wired to the black post of the DPDT switch. In the down position, the signal returns from the first coil by the white post, is switched to the brown posts (which are jumpered together), then back up through the switch to the Red post. That goes out to the 2nd coil of the humbucker, then back to the switch at the Green post. Then the green post is hooked to the common ground (on a strat, it's usually the back of the Volume pot).
In the up position (Parallel), power goes into the DPDT switch through the black post, but the switch also jumps to the red post, so they both get power at the same place at the same time. Then both separate signals go through their respective coils and return via White and Green posts, which are also jumpered together so they can go to ground (through green wire) to the common ground.
If you hook the red wire to the first brown post, you can do coil-splitting without having to jump posts (a.k.a. brown) and link things to ground.
Like I said, I can draw you a diagram, so long as I know exactly how you want the guitar to handle/play/work/etc. and what the wire color codes of your pickups are. You can always tell if you hook up a volt-meter set to DC resistance. Which ever wire gives you a return value, that's the "pair."
Wiring a humbucker in parallel reduces the overall signal strength, but you get a lot less mids and more treble content, so it sounds a lot closer to single-coils.
Then there's coil-splitting, where you really are using a single-coil.
All three sound different from each other, and you can do either Series/Parallel or Coil-Split with the same pot, depending on how you wire it.
I can also draw diagrams out for wiring these things up if need-be. Let me know. Here's a sample: It's the diagram for my Warmoth strat.
This diagram assumes Seymour-Duncan pickups, so the colors for the wires (Black->White, Red->Green) may change for other manufacturers. this is the Series/Parallel configuration I was talking to you about. The hot line is wired to the black post of the DPDT switch. In the down position, the signal returns from the first coil by the white post, is switched to the brown posts (which are jumpered together), then back up through the switch to the Red post. That goes out to the 2nd coil of the humbucker, then back to the switch at the Green post. Then the green post is hooked to the common ground (on a strat, it's usually the back of the Volume pot).
In the up position (Parallel), power goes into the DPDT switch through the black post, but the switch also jumps to the red post, so they both get power at the same place at the same time. Then both separate signals go through their respective coils and return via White and Green posts, which are also jumpered together so they can go to ground (through green wire) to the common ground.
If you hook the red wire to the first brown post, you can do coil-splitting without having to jump posts (a.k.a. brown) and link things to ground.
Like I said, I can draw you a diagram, so long as I know exactly how you want the guitar to handle/play/work/etc. and what the wire color codes of your pickups are. You can always tell if you hook up a volt-meter set to DC resistance. Which ever wire gives you a return value, that's the "pair."
I LOVE coil splitting on my guitars.
I installed Duncan Triple Shot mounting rings.
They have micro switches installed on the rings and are very easy to wire.
Gives you something like 21 different combinations.
I installed Duncan Triple Shot mounting rings.
They have micro switches installed on the rings and are very easy to wire.
Gives you something like 21 different combinations.
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