NGD ... happy fathers day Comanche

[Fumble fingers]

just got this off the local CL as part of my Fathers day gift , man ,this thing is even nicer than what the add said ..... I'm stoked again , I'm sure I'll have some Comanche queastions to follow














here's a "family" shot



thanks for looking , Eric

[KenC]

Sweet! Is that a birds eye neck?

Now you need a Leo-era guitar in the mix...and an ASAT Special...and a bass...

Ken

[Fumble fingers]

I definetly want a leo era , the SC Jon had on the market a couple weeks just about pushed me over the edge but he took it off or sold it , but I been eyeing this one a month or so while gas'n for some ZZZ's and the price was just so right .....

[supereiv]

Very nice family !
Love that Legacy too... But, there's an S500 lacking in there

Happy NGD

[Fumble fingers]

I can see getting a Leo era S 500 or F 100 in the future

[Lefty]

Nice Comanche! Nice family photo! Happy NGD!

[darwinohm]

Nice Comanche Eric, fits in with the rest very well!-- Darwin

[Fumble fingers]

based on the family shot , looks like a F100 or ASAT deluxe probably should be next ....maybe some dual humbuckers to further balance out the family ??

[supereiv]

Why not an ASAT special semi-hollow with bigsby ? black with double binding, that would look great !

[jeffmarshall67]

That's a great guitar and look, classic red! How are you getting used to the pickups?

[Fumble fingers]

I'm still learning it ... its different for sure , the amp setting need changed .... at first it sounded fine with my amp and settings at lower volume , then I cranked it up and wow I see what you guy's mean now !! ... the top end just screams , I thought I was going to blow a tube ..lol .... for me it seams the learning curve begins when you crank it up and I haven't had much "crank it up time" yet with my Peavey Classic 30 , my current guitar lesson is with open E tuning and using the slide so I been using my chinese LP copy by DDH for that then rotate my G & L's on standard tuning songs so they don't get there feeling hurt ...lol

does anybody know what the mini toggle does ???.... it sure changes the sound and I like it , would just like to know more of what it's doing

thanks , Eric

[supereiv]

sure, it simply connects the bridge and neck pickup in parallel so whenever you're on a position that have one, you have both :
1 : neck become : n+b in parallel
2 : n+m become : n+m+n
3 : m stays as it is
4 : b+m become b+m+n
5 : b become b+n

[jediguitarist]

Pulled from another post:

Here's how the expander switch works:

Basically it just ties both the bridge and neck pickup together, meaning that whenever the neck or bridge pickup is selected,
you also get the other. After it's all said and done there's a total of seven different combinations.
So in regular (or non-expanded mode) you have these combinations:

Position 1 - Bridge
Position 2 - Bridge & Middle
Position 3 - Middle
Position 4 - Middle & Neck
Position 5 - Neck

In expanded mode you get:

Position 1 - Bridge & Neck (same as position 5)
Position 2 - Bridge & Middle & Neck (same as position 4)
Position 3 - Middle
Position 4 - Neck & Middle & Bridge (same as position 2)
Position 5 - Neck & Bridge(same as position 1)

Either a mini-toggle or push/pull volume or push/pull tone knob is used on the S-500, S-500 Deluxe, Comanche,
Will Ray Signature, ASAT Z-3, Legacy Spalted Maple, and ASAT "Classic S" USA models, and the Tribute S-500, Tribute Comanche,
and Tribute Will Ray Signature Tribute Series models.

(Answer contributed by: the Cajun Boy and Craig Dewey)

[ellengtrgrl]

Pulled from another post:

Here's how the expander switch works:

Basically it just ties both the bridge and neck pickup together, meaning that whenever the neck or bridge pickup is selected,
you also get the other. After it's all said and done there's a total of seven different combinations.
So in regular (or non-expanded mode) you have these combinations:

Position 1 - Bridge
Position 2 - Bridge & Middle
Position 3 - Middle
Position 4 - Middle & Neck
Position 5 - Neck

In expanded mode you get:

Position 1 - Bridge & Neck (same as position 5)
Position 2 - Bridge & Middle & Neck (same as position 4)
Position 3 - Middle
Position 4 - Neck & Middle & Bridge (same as position 2)
Position 5 - Neck & Bridge(same as position 1)

Either a mini-toggle or push/pull volume or push/pull tone knob is used on the S-500, S-500 Deluxe, Comanche,
Will Ray Signature, ASAT Z-3, Legacy Spalted Maple, and ASAT "Classic S" USA models, and the Tribute S-500, Tribute Comanche,
and Tribute Will Ray Signature Tribute Series models.

(Answer contributed by: the Cajun Boy and Craig Dewey)

The girl with the electronics background (yes I'm a techno-geek - I had electronics classes in college from Engineering Degree #1, and I've had a ham radio license for a long time [I've also built ham radios from kits, and restored vintage ham radios]) is curious about Expanded Mode. Are the pickups wired in series (ala the S1 switch in a Baja Tele, or the Blower mode my old Danelectro MOD 7, 7-string had), creating a higher output humbucker in process, or are they wired in parallel like your typical guitar is, when you're using 2 or more pickups at the same time?

Oops! Before I forget - nice looking Commanche (ditto for the rest of you G&L guitar family) Fumble Fingers.

[Fumble fingers]

Why not an ASAT special semi-hollow with bigsby ? black with double binding, that would look great !

what I really want ( BAD) is a ASAT deluxe with Buck Owens and a bigsby .....


thanks all for the help and complements

Eric

[Craig]

Why not an ASAT special semi-hollow with bigsby ? black with double binding, that would look great !

what I really want ( BAD) is a ASAT deluxe with Buck Owens and a bigsby .....


thanks all for the help and complements

Eric

In case you have not seen BoogieBill's post which we have in the G&L Knowledgebase: Comanches For Dummies Redux by BoogieBill. It's been helpful to many of our members. Check it out.

Congrats on you new to you Comanche!

Enjoy.

[Aetrox]

Elengtrgrl I just looked at the schematics for the comanche, (they are posted in the gallery, check it out the neatest part for me is the PTB) and while I can barely fumble my way through reading a schematic, it looks to me as if the expander creates a situation where pick ups 1 and 3 are series but pick up 2 remains isolated. On mine I have not noticed any significant volume changes switching in and out of the expanded mode, but then again I do not consider my comanche to be a particularly "hot" example, not really a high out put example. Other folks may well notice a volume change but I do not. Have a good one.

[Aetrox]

ellen, I also just noticed that in your question, you made reference to the series mode creating a humbucker, the Z coil pick ups are already humbuckers, they are wired like the split coils on a P bass. do some research on these little guys they are really neat, between the reverse wound coils and the MFD, they create a very clean single coil sound with an ungodly top end. Under certain circumstances I really have to roll of the top end because is can become searing hot. The full spectrum sound you get is startling when you remember that they are in fact humbuckers. Later

[NickHorne]

Ellen, it's just parallel. The hots of neck and bridge are joined, simple as that.
If you do ever experiment with wiring Z-coils in series or out-of-phase, PLEASE BE VERY CAREFUL! You'll find the cold side of the pup is connected to the steel backplate, to ground it. It seems obvious to just lift the cover off the pup and snip / tidy up the connection, make a new "chassis" ground wire connection, and then wire the coils up freely and off you should go.
BUT BUT BUT!!!!! the coils are very, very near the inside of the cover, and the potting wax can mechanically connect them so that lifting the cover may tear the winding.
I accidentally did that to one of mine some years back, and posted about the experience here, and Will Ray came back to say he'd done the very same thing. They're not like strat pups, where you can just change covers with no worries.
You sound pretty capable technically. For what it's worth, I break this earth link by a sort of "keyhole surgery"; I tape the cover so it can't lift up off the pup and damage anything, and then very carefully open up a little rectangular hole in the cover, next to the baseplate, with a low-wattage solder iron to melt with and some tiny pliers to pull and chip with. Then I get inside this little hole with very small cutters and snip the link wire, close to the back of the bobbin. Then I unsolder the remainder of the link wire from the backplate (being careful with the heat up near the magnet) and attach a new "chassis-only" ground wire. I guess it helps to have a busted pup to hand, to work out how best to do this......

I want to try a different switching scheme with my Will Ray's Z-coils:
I have the middle pup down low, as I only use it in combination; I don't generally like a middle pup on its own anyhow. And the low middle pup helps with fingerstyle picking as well as improving sustain by reducing magnetic pull.
I'm going to try the Bill Lawrence / Jerry Donahue "fake strat" wiring for positions 2 and 4, so that pos 2 will be reverse-phase neck, plus the bridge via .02uF and 6K8 res; pos 4 will be bridge, plus reverse-phase neck via .02 (no res). I like how this circuit sounds, have done for years; the high harmonics from different parts of the string are being added out of phase, exaggerating their differences and adding touch-sensitive complexity and character, while the lower partials are not reduced. Pos 3 will be Neck + Bridge, just like a Tele. To this 5-way scheme, I'll arrange to add the middle pup, in its natural phase (i.e. same as bridge, in this scheme), via a cap (.033?), to every position's output, via a toggle or pull-pot. I expect this will add some nice harmonic complexity, without thinning the tone out at all, and still work with the middle pup set low for my easy picking and good sustain.

[Elwood]

Great stuff Nick !,

I have a WR set that I'm contemplating some different wiring schemes for. It's good to hear
some proven configurations , and good reasoning to boot

elwood

[NickHorne]

I haven't done it yet!
But it's basically just a Tele circuit, with the addition of the Jerry Donahue imitation of Strat pos4 and also the same idea in reverse (i.e. the bridge via a cap out-of-phase with the neck) for an imitation of pos2.
Added to that (it's just a 2-pup guitar so far) I'm planning to add the option to switch in the middle pup in addition to whatever is selected on the 5-way. I'll again put a cap in series with the middle pup, so that the lows don't get reduced. I haven't experimented with the value of this cap yet, though I'm guessing .033 or .022uF.
The only pup in this scheme that needs a reverse-phase option mod is the neck. It's reversed in pos 2 & 4; in fact almost the only difference between 2 & 4 is which pup is via the cap and which is not. I'm going to add 6k-ish resistor in series with the cap when it's the bridge that gets the cap (the "neck full + top-end-of-bridge-out-of-phase" selection).

Please watch those Z-coil covers........ I wonder whether it can be done less intrusively, by unsoldering the ground wire from the backplate and then slipping some sleeving over it, up into the pickup, with some adhesive to keep it there, instead of breaking into the cover and snipping the wire. All we're trying to achieve here is to get the grounding of the steel plate to be independent of the coils, so we can reverse the phase of the pup without making the metalwork "hot" (which would cause huge hum etc).

[Elwood]

I wonder if a low heat hair dryer would make things slippery just outside the coils, like when dealing
with potted p'ups.
IIRC mine are loose already ( I better check the windings) . I hadn't considered phase reversal but that might be the ticket
to making some positions more useful.

I think I saw a Comanche Vl in a dream before I ever heard of one, I had to get one when I saw one in the waking world.
There's a sublime passion for me to really get to know these things and what they are capable of.
I am going for two outputs on my project Z guitar, to further isolate the p'up halves . I haven't even got to thinking about caps,
you've got me going now. ( I'll start a project thread ...now which case is did I put her in? )
It'd be nice to see yours evolve with a thread all its own, so this good info doesn't get lost so easily...just a thought.

elwood

[Aetrox]

Nick, thanks for the explanation, like I said schematics befuddle me, now I think I may actually grasp it! Thanks again.