Concentric Stacked CTS Pot wiring - can it work for a guitar?

[TroyHamilton]

I've got a buddy who is building a guitar and asked for my help on the wiring of it.

What he'd like to do is have three pickups wired to three of the CTS concentric stacked pots. No pickup selector - just all of the pickups on all the time and then he could adjust the volume/tone for each pickup via the stacked knob.

It isn't a setup that sounds idea from a playability standpoint to me - but I can appreciate the sleek factor of it.

Can anyone give some input as to the feasibility of this? It seems workable to me, but I haven't seen any existing wiring diagrams for it so I fear I'm making an incorrect assumption.

[CharlyG]

The closest I have come is I put a P90 in between two humbuckers and wired it to the output at the switch. Each pup had it's own concentric tone/vol.. I think your idea may work as well......It added the P90 to whichever position the switch was in.


This is somewhat like Alvin lee's Big Red (but he used a strat pup)

[cc9cii]

Agreed that it won't be very practical.

You can use "independent" wiring to connect the 3 sets of pickup/vol/tone but the result may get muddy (depends on the pickups and whether they want to see 250k or more).

The taper you get with the "independent" wiring (tone change as you roll down the volume) may also be a factor.

[fumbler]

Hmmm . . . +1 that it wouldn't be ideal; you'd have to roll one volume down, then roll another up, all while trying NOT to mess with the tone settings in order to switch pickups. Try to talk him out of it.

But if he's as stubborn as most of us are then it would be pretty easy to wire. For SC pickups I'd get the 250k/500k concentrics and use the 250k for volume and the 500k for tone. 500k/500k for HB pickups. Each pickup goes straight to a vol. pot/tone pot and then all go in parallel to the output.

I don't think it would be any muddier than a "normal" guitar; just a PITA to change pickups.

[walterw]

trouble is, all 6 of those pots would be in parallel, leading to quite a bit of tone suck.

also, each tone knob would affect everything, not just its own pickup.