Petrucci with a push/pull?

[acidsid75]

Hello all
I have done some research and could not find an answer so...
I have a basic petrucci model, stock pickups an all and wanted to know it I could have a push/pull pot to split the humbuckers in to single coils. Also would this give me a cool sound with the stock pickups? I use a mesa triple rec. Thanks in advance.

 

[dan desy]

Sure you could do that.

First caveat is that split humbuckers aren't true single coils. Some sound pretty good split, some not. Based n the middle postition tones on the Petrucci, the stock pickups probably split fairly well. A single split HB will give you a significant drop in volume vs. humbucker however.

Second, wiring might be tricky since the middle position on the three-way selector is actually wired to split the coils. Easiest thing tyo do would be to rewire the pickups so that you'd split them with the push/pull first, then rewire the swtich so that the middle position just combines them (ie two humbuckers with push/pull down, two singles with push/pull up).

 

[beej]

Dan's right on the money about them not sounding like true single coils. The other downside is that they'll be noisy- so they'll be best played with little gain, unless you want to wire up them up to be put into parallel mode which will give you a SC like sound (close anyway) but no noise. But wiring that for both HBs can't be done with a single pot. You'd need two pots or a 4P3T toggle switch.

Having seen the Petrucci switch in another thread, I'm not sure if I would run the pickup wires into the push/pull before putting into the switch. If it were a standard three way I'd do it, but given that it also splits the coils you would have to be sure that you're wiring up the coil split to give you the inside coils of each HB when split.

Probably I'd take the leads from the pickup selector switch and wire them into the push/pull pot along with the ground for splitting. Also makes it easy to revert back to the stock wiring.

 

[acidsid75]

thanks for the quick reponses

 

[dan desy]

Dan's right on the money about them not sounding like true single coils. The other downside is that they'll be noisy- so they'll be best played with little gain, unless you want to wire up them up to be put into parallel mode which will give you a SC like sound (close anyway) but no noise. But wiring that for both HBs can't be done with a single pot. You'd need two pots or a 4P3T toggle switch.

Having seen the Petrucci switch in another thread, I'm not sure if I would run the pickup wires into the push/pull before putting into the switch. If it were a standard three way I'd do it, but given that it also splits the coils you would have to be sure that you're wiring up the coil split to give you the inside coils of each HB when split.

Probably I'd take the leads from the pickup selector switch and wire them into the push/pull pot along with the ground for splitting. Also makes it easy to revert back to the stock wiring.

You can't do that. You can't split after the selector, since you have a combined output at that point. You need to split the pickups first.
And yes, you're right, you'd need to change the 3-way for a "regular" one, since the splitting function would be done my the push/pull. You can get a push/pull
tone control that can split both pickups. It's pretty standard (PRS uses them all the time for their McCarty switching).

 

[beej]

You can't do that. You can't split after the selector, since you have a combined output at that point. You need to split the pickups first.
And yes, you're right, you'd need to change the 3-way for a "regular" one, since the splitting function would be done my the push/pull. You can get a push/pull
tone control that can split both pickups. It's pretty standard (PRS uses them all the time for their McCarty switching).

Hey Dan,

You can split them at the switch. All you're doing with the push/pull is grounding the start of the inside coil (whatever coil you want to use). So the push-pull pot doesn't need much wiring- just a lead from ground on one lug, and a wire which would run to one connector of each humbucker (at the pickup toggle switch). You'd then be grounding one coil from each HB when you pull the pot, effectively turning the HB into single coil. It's the same ground, so wouldn't matter if both HBs were engaged.

The switch change I mentioned was only if you want to do series/parallel switching. For splitting, the 4P3T pickup toggle can stay as-is and you'd just need to add a basic push/pull pot.

Cheers,

Jason