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Topic: Pros/cons of blend wheel for two pickup steel? |
James Mayer
From:
back in Portland Oregon, USA (via Arkansas and London, UK)
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Posted 10 Apr 2007 11:27 am |
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| Mine has two pickups and switches. I'm thinking of having a blend-wheel installed. Any advice/warnings/comments? |
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Erv Niehaus
From:
Litchfield, MN, USA
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Posted 10 Apr 2007 1:42 pm
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| It worked on the later model Stringmasters. |
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J Fletcher
From:
London,Ont,Canada
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Posted 11 Apr 2007 6:47 am
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| In a Stringmaster, the blend control blends the front pickup with the back pickup. At the one extreme you have the rear pickup by itself, as you rotate the blend control, the front pickup is blended in. Doesn't allow the front pickup by itself. Pickups are in series, and physically reversed from each other, so there is a hum cancelling effect. Relying on memory here...Jerry |
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James Mayer
From:
back in Portland Oregon, USA (via Arkansas and London, UK)
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Posted 11 Apr 2007 7:33 am
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| Ok, I didn't realize that you couldn't isolate the "neck" pickup with a blend wheel turned to one extreme. That kills my interest in installing one. Thanks for the info. |
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Rick Batey
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Posted 11 Apr 2007 7:43 am
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...
Last edited by Rick Batey on 10 Jan 2009 6:54 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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James Mayer
From:
back in Portland Oregon, USA (via Arkansas and London, UK)
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Posted 11 Apr 2007 7:47 am
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Thanks, I'll take a look.
Actually, I've got more to add. With the Sutainiac I'm having installed(see Sustainiac thread), I'll now have a pickup at the 17th fret. It's mainly to be used as a driver but also functions as a pickup, and not a bad one from what I hear. Does anyone know of a creative way of using a blend knob and a switch together? I'm thinking a strat-style 5-way rocker might be the ticket. |
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James Mayer
From:
back in Portland Oregon, USA (via Arkansas and London, UK)
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Posted 11 Apr 2007 8:03 am
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Hmmm, I wonder if there is a blend pot that can take on three pickups?
I seem to remember Chris Fouke, of Industrial Guitars, telling me that he thought blend pots added mud and that he preferred switches. Anyone agree/disagree? |
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David Mason
From:
Cambridge, MD, USA
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Posted 12 Apr 2007 2:59 am
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I have read a couple of places that the interactivity between the two pickups - "line-loading", I think it's called - makes a blend switch work less well than it sounds on paper. I am a big fan of having four controls on a two-pickup six-string guitar, a separate volume and tone control for each pickup and a three-way switch. I have even rewired my two-knob guitars with concentric volume/tone controls, stacked knobs with both controls in one hole. The only problem is that all the sound will cut off if you turn either volume all the way down, in the classic Gibson wiring. There's a way around that, by swapping the wires from the switch and pickup to the lug connections on the pot, but then the line-loading problem makes the tone and volume regulation uneven.
Additionally, there's a switch called the "Super Switch" that lets you wire up all kinds of wacky varients of different coils and such, at the bottom I'll put a couple of places with diagrams but you'll have to do your own headache-induction - I am NOT an electrician.... One thing I'm pretty sure of, you'll want to have some kind of clean "off" selection to divide the Sustainiac functions between sustaining and being a pickup. If you have it blended in as a passive pickup with some other pickup, then kick on the sustain juice, I'm pretty sure all hell would break loose. Electronically speaking.
http://www.tdpri.com/wiring5wayStrat.htm
http://www.guitar-mod.com/rg_diagrams.html
http://www.stewmac.com/freeinfo/
When I try and figure the logic I get lost, but when I just follow a drawing I can wire a guitar. TDPRI and Rothstein had diagrams for wiring a Super Switch that agreed with each other so I used them and it worked out. On the Stew-Mac site, they have diagrams for the blender pot, a Megaswitch, the Super Switch and the dual concentric pots, as well as a "standard" Gibson-type drawing. Rothstein has a drawing for wiring a Strat with a blender that lets you add in a bit of one pickup to the rest, possibly like the Stringmaster. "Good luck!" is probably the wrong thing to say, but it's the only thing that's gotten me through so far....
P.S. You might want to start here:
Stew-Mac Wiring Basics
When I wire concentric pots, I just use the "Les Paul" diagram, cause they're just two pots on top of each other:
Les Paul Wiring
The Sustainiac should have a poop sheet with it explaining something.... I keep meaning to get one but I get scared enough without having a guitar that plays it's own self.  |
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Rick Abbott
From:
Indiana, USA
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Posted 31 May 2012 4:45 am
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James,
What happened with this? Did you try a blender from stewmac? Old thread, but new interest of mine!
_________________
RICK ABBOTT
Sho~Bud D-10 Professional #7962
Remington T-8, Sehy #112
1975 Peavey Pacer 1963 Gibson Falcon |
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James Mayer
From:
back in Portland Oregon, USA (via Arkansas and London, UK)
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Posted 31 May 2012 7:22 am
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Wow, old thread.
Rick, I decided not to go the blend wheel route on that lap steel. However, I did install a couple of Stew-Mac benders on my Lone Star 6-string pedal steel. It has split pickups so there are actually 4 seperate three-string pickups. I can use the blend pots to select neck, bridge, both or somewhere in between. So, it's not wired like a Stringmaster where the bridge pickup is always on. It's simply used like a three-position pickup toggle with lots of in-between settings. It works very well. I can't really think of any drawbacks to using them.
The old Guyatone lap steel that this thread was based on (with a Sustainiac installed) was stolen from a UHaul trailer in San Francisco. |
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