Hello!
So I am interested in setting up my comanche so that I can switch between parallel and series. I was thinking about doing this using the expander switch that is already on the guitar since I rarely ever use it.
I want to do this to make the guitar a little more versatile, as of now for certain songs I switch to my HSS or Les Paul where I need a bit more gain. Recently I played a newer deluxe strat that had this feature and loved it.
Really I was wondering if any one has any experience doing this and if there is a detailed "How To" guide some where on the website that I can't find : )
I know very little when it comes to this and have no experience doing this so I would need the "Wire you z coils in series for dummies" guide. I'm no slouch either though, I just like to have details before I dive in.
Am I correct in assuming that you wouldn't need to actually wire two pickups together to achieve this sound because of the z coil design?
Really I don't want to do anything too fancy. I would like to flip the toggle switch and have them all in series and flip it again and have them all back to parallel... 5 way works the way it is now.... If this isn't possible and they need to be wired together then I would just do what ever you guys suggest....
I am at your mercy as far as this goes.
If there already is a detailed step by step guide some where for doing this with the z coil pickups I apologize for creating a new post and would you mind pointing me in the right direction. I have been searching over this for the past few months and while I have found a lot of posts about people talking about it I have found no one that has actually done it or put up a guide.
Thank you all very much.
(heck to be honest if I could get my HSS's sound from my bridge pup I would be thrilled)
Comanche Series Wiring
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NickHorne
- Posts: 785
- Joined: Wed May 26, 2010 11:44 am
- Location: England
Re: Comanche Series Wiring
I hope it's going to be OK if I just clarify a few points to begin with. I have done the mod that you describe, and it is no small challenge, as we shall see. And after all that work, I came to the conclusion that you have foreseen; that to be able to get a big, series back-pickup sound was all I had really wanted.
1: The two coils in Z-coil pickups are made wired in series with one another already, not parallel.
So:
2: You are indeed talking about wiring pairs of pickups in series with one another.
So:
3: This is only going to affect the "combination" 5-way positions; the individual pickup selections won't change.
I suggest:
That the neck + middle series pairing is quite dark and woofy, and that you may agree with my finding that it is not especially useful. Winding back the tone and turning up the volume on the neck pickup is almost certainly a better result.
And:
The series Bridge + Middle may be what you're after.
This still raises some practical issues. For example, I use 4-pole 5-way ("double-wafer") switches to achieve this kind of thing. But they don't fit in Tele / Asat - sized control routs. I dismantle them, cut their spacers down very precisely, and reassemble them with little bolts and loctite in place of their rivets, and I also cut down their actuator shaft, so that they will fit in the guitar. I do this almost surgically cleanly so that not metal dust ends up in the switch, so it won't crackle, nor around the guitar to mess up its finish. This takes me around two hours per switch, and that's after lots of practice.
I lift the ground connection to one of the two pickups (not for the faint-hearted; Z-coils really hate having their covers disturbed, the windings can be damaged really easily) to avoid introducing hum. I have evolved a system of melting a little opening in the rear of the side of the cover, with a little soldering iron and a lot of care, until I can get at the plain ground wire with some mini scissors....
I am in good company when it come to trashing Z-coils while experimentally fiddling with them. After I bust my first one, and posted about it here, Will Ray came on to say he'd once broken all three on one of his Z-3s just experimenting with different colours of covers! They're not like Strats where you can just lift 'em off at will. The windings are literally touching the cover, and the wax potting can stick them together. So when you pull on the cover...... hence my "keyhole surgery" ground-wire mod.
Having written all this, I recall mentioning, earlier about the neck + middle, that "raising the volume" was useful for the neck. Well, it's very useful for the bridge too. But "raising the volume" was a new concept to me after a lifetime of Fenders and such. I do now run my G&Ls so that I have some volume in hand most of the time, controlled from the guitar. They do this really well.
What I found was that if I worked this way, then raising the volume of the bridge pickup (which I have replaced with the hotter Will Ray unit) alone into a nicely sweaty amp, produced something so near the two-pickups-in-series, and perhaps better, that I haven't even bothered with that circuit mod in years now.
My personal preference is to replace the bridge pickup with the Will Ray unit, which can be had from the G&L site's online store. It growls and snarls as well as twangs, and is a lot of fun. My Z-3 has one in, and it makes a big difference for me.
And gently tape that pickup cover to the backplate until the pickup is safely installed in the guitar!
But if you must have the full rock humbucker experience, you may yet want to be able to put the bridge and middle in series with one another. I shall try to come up with a relatively painless way to do this; just ask.
1: The two coils in Z-coil pickups are made wired in series with one another already, not parallel.
So:
2: You are indeed talking about wiring pairs of pickups in series with one another.
So:
3: This is only going to affect the "combination" 5-way positions; the individual pickup selections won't change.
I suggest:
That the neck + middle series pairing is quite dark and woofy, and that you may agree with my finding that it is not especially useful. Winding back the tone and turning up the volume on the neck pickup is almost certainly a better result.
And:
The series Bridge + Middle may be what you're after.
This still raises some practical issues. For example, I use 4-pole 5-way ("double-wafer") switches to achieve this kind of thing. But they don't fit in Tele / Asat - sized control routs. I dismantle them, cut their spacers down very precisely, and reassemble them with little bolts and loctite in place of their rivets, and I also cut down their actuator shaft, so that they will fit in the guitar. I do this almost surgically cleanly so that not metal dust ends up in the switch, so it won't crackle, nor around the guitar to mess up its finish. This takes me around two hours per switch, and that's after lots of practice.
I lift the ground connection to one of the two pickups (not for the faint-hearted; Z-coils really hate having their covers disturbed, the windings can be damaged really easily) to avoid introducing hum. I have evolved a system of melting a little opening in the rear of the side of the cover, with a little soldering iron and a lot of care, until I can get at the plain ground wire with some mini scissors....
I am in good company when it come to trashing Z-coils while experimentally fiddling with them. After I bust my first one, and posted about it here, Will Ray came on to say he'd once broken all three on one of his Z-3s just experimenting with different colours of covers! They're not like Strats where you can just lift 'em off at will. The windings are literally touching the cover, and the wax potting can stick them together. So when you pull on the cover...... hence my "keyhole surgery" ground-wire mod.
Having written all this, I recall mentioning, earlier about the neck + middle, that "raising the volume" was useful for the neck. Well, it's very useful for the bridge too. But "raising the volume" was a new concept to me after a lifetime of Fenders and such. I do now run my G&Ls so that I have some volume in hand most of the time, controlled from the guitar. They do this really well.
What I found was that if I worked this way, then raising the volume of the bridge pickup (which I have replaced with the hotter Will Ray unit) alone into a nicely sweaty amp, produced something so near the two-pickups-in-series, and perhaps better, that I haven't even bothered with that circuit mod in years now.
My personal preference is to replace the bridge pickup with the Will Ray unit, which can be had from the G&L site's online store. It growls and snarls as well as twangs, and is a lot of fun. My Z-3 has one in, and it makes a big difference for me.
And gently tape that pickup cover to the backplate until the pickup is safely installed in the guitar!
But if you must have the full rock humbucker experience, you may yet want to be able to put the bridge and middle in series with one another. I shall try to come up with a relatively painless way to do this; just ask.
Last edited by NickHorne on Sat Jun 20, 2015 2:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
-
NickHorne
- Posts: 785
- Joined: Wed May 26, 2010 11:44 am
- Location: England
Re: Comanche Series Wiring
PS to previous
I'm sorry!
In the stress of reliving the rebuilding process for 5-ways, it quite slipped my mind that your are enquiring about doing this to a Comanche!!
I imagine that the extra thickness of a 4-pole 5-way would fit in there no problem, just like into a Strat.
And then there would be a simple way to at least try out the series idea, without getting involved in lifting any pickup ground connections, and using the existing "expander" switch, to see how you like it. If it hums a bit (probably only when touching pickup poles) then you could progress to the ground-lift as a second stage to complete the change.
The most useful implementation that I can see, as well as the most readily do-able, is to keep all switch selection stock except for the bridge-only one, which would become either:
Bridge-only (i.e. stock)
or
Bridge + Middle in series
Selectable with the toggle switch. That is to say, you would simply have a presettable choice of "bridge" selections: either stock or in series with the Middle, for when you select that position on the 5-way. Regular bridge or afterburner bridge.
Also as a further, later stage, using a Will Ray back pup will further turbocharge the mod as well as being a great back pickup.
Let me know if you would like a sketch of this, and I'll jot something out to email to you (I still haven't got internet-hosted pictures together, to use here. Still in the cave!)
I'm sorry!
In the stress of reliving the rebuilding process for 5-ways, it quite slipped my mind that your are enquiring about doing this to a Comanche!!
I imagine that the extra thickness of a 4-pole 5-way would fit in there no problem, just like into a Strat.
And then there would be a simple way to at least try out the series idea, without getting involved in lifting any pickup ground connections, and using the existing "expander" switch, to see how you like it. If it hums a bit (probably only when touching pickup poles) then you could progress to the ground-lift as a second stage to complete the change.
The most useful implementation that I can see, as well as the most readily do-able, is to keep all switch selection stock except for the bridge-only one, which would become either:
Bridge-only (i.e. stock)
or
Bridge + Middle in series
Selectable with the toggle switch. That is to say, you would simply have a presettable choice of "bridge" selections: either stock or in series with the Middle, for when you select that position on the 5-way. Regular bridge or afterburner bridge.
Also as a further, later stage, using a Will Ray back pup will further turbocharge the mod as well as being a great back pickup.
Let me know if you would like a sketch of this, and I'll jot something out to email to you (I still haven't got internet-hosted pictures together, to use here. Still in the cave!)