Building Help

[Iguy022]

Hey guys, as you can probably tell, I'm new here(I don't even know how to add a picture yet!). However, I need some help. This summer, I hope that I will be able to make a guitar with my grandpa. I started playing about two years ago, but tech and gear wise I am still pretty ignorant. Anyways, I'm going to build an SG kind of thing. I definitely want 2 humbuckers and a single coil. Starting right there, would that work? I mean would it be possible to have humbuckers that could be used for Pantera and Iron Maiden alike and also have a single coil that I would use to play the solo of Comfortably Numb? Ive done a bit of research on active vs passive humbuckers, but until now, I haven't really found any where that will tell me if this is possible and will sound decent. Thanks a lot, if i actually get a response to this thread then I'm sure I will have many more questions and uncertainties in the months to come!

[GPW]

 You could always do a coil tap on your Humbuckers  for a single coil sound ... just a switch ... I use them all the time , with good results..

 More questions... bring this ....  That's what we're here for ...   

[Iguy022]

Yeah I guess but thats not really the same sound is it? I mean that as a question because I truly dont have as much experience as I would like with coil taps. And thanks a lot for the support!
As for more questions, I kind of like having a volume for each pickup, so if I had 3 pickups (H/S/H), would it be possible to have 6 control knobs? (3 tone, 3 volume?)
Thanks!

[Baz]

as long as you know how to wire it up, anything's possible, i have two guitars that have a total of 8 different controls each! the only downside with 6 volume and tone controls is that it might make the guitar feel a bit "clustered" and not easy to do things, what you could do is have three master volumes for the pickups and one master tone control, but it's up to you, just remember, ANYthing's possible when it comes to electric guitars

as for your three pickups, of course it would work, as long as you wire it properly, the only major difference between active and passive pickups (that i can tell) is that active pickups require a battery and passive pickups don't... the only issue with wanting to have Iron Maiden sound and Pantera sound would be if where you place the single coil is where the person you wanna imitate has it on his guitar, and also, cause you've got three pickups, you may want to consider a 25.5" scale length, if you want 24 frets. or if you like a 24.75 scale length, then to fit three pickups, you may have to sacrifice a couple of frets and have just 22 frets, it's possible to fit H/S/H on a 24 fret 24.75" scale length guitar (barely) but it might now look super fantastic because there'll be very little space between the pickups, if any

i hope that answers most of your questions, lol, what woods are you gonna be making it out of?

and to post pictures, type [img] then find a picture online, from facebook or wherever, right click, "copy image address" then past it next to the [img] then follow it with [ /img] and it should be awesome, it should look like this:
[img]your_image_here[ /img] (of course, don't include the space in the [ /img], i only did it so you could see how to do it, otherwise it'd show up blank, lol

[Iguy022]

Thanks for the reply! I'm not honestly sure what kind of wood I would make it out of, things are still mostly in planning and theory so far (which is mainly the reason I'm here!). I do know that I would order the neck, probably from this guy at a website (not sure if I'm allowed to post links or not) called soulmate guitars. I would almost certainly make the body myself, it seems simple enough.
      On the topic of frets, I would like 24, but I could live with 22 if it meant being able to have that extra pickup. As for who I'm "imitating", my main inspiration and reason for my wanting the single coil would be David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. It seems to me as though he didn't have a specific placement of single coils on his guitars, as all (or most of) his pickups are single coils anyway.
      In response to what you said about active vs passive humbuckers, would that mean that I would not want to have one of each? I remember asking someone about this and them saying not to mix the two... Anyway, do you have any recommendations for either active or passive? Because recently Ive been throwing around the idea of having an EMG 81 and a dimebucker, and then read several reviews saying how bad the dimebucker is. So Im not entirely sure on which humbuckers are good and which arent. My friend has an EMG 81 85 setup i believe, and his guitar sounds great. Thanks again!

[SecretWeapon]

Its not that you shouldn't use an active and a passive in the same guitar, its that you can't. Without getting into a wild electronics discussion, just pick one or the other, there are plenty of good active and passive pickups out there.

Not to get all technical but it might help your internet searches to know that what you're after is called coil splitting, rather than coil tapping. With a coil tap you have several wires (3-8 i've heard...) that are connected to the coils at different places, giving you the option of hooking up different amounts of the coil (like 3/8 of the coil, or 5/8 or whatever) for different amounts of output.

A coil split is where you have two coils (a humbucker) and you use a switch to connect the positive and negative wires of one of the two coils, which essentially shuts it off. You are left with one coil running, which gives you a single coil sound. Easy enough, but you'll need 4 conductor pickups if you want to use coil splits.

[Iguy022]

Wow, thanks a lot! Ive looked into guitars that come equipped with coil splitting capabilities before (Fender Tele FMT HH), but what I guess I need to know before I get my mind set on this is simply whether the split coil gets the same sound and tonal qualities as an actual single coil. For the majority of the things that I play, I would use humbuckers, BUT for almost all of my solos, I use single coils, because honestly, they make everything sound much much better( this is probably because of Gilmour's playing having a huge influence on me).
     So, if I had the coil splitter on my guitar, would you be suggesting that I have 3 humbuckers? That would be great, but only if, as I stated before, the coil splitter did it's job well enough to fool me into thinking I was playing a single coil. One last thing before I go for now. If I did have the triple humbucker setup and a coil splitter, then what sort of selector would you suggest I use to get the most versatility out of the instrument? By this I mean the gibson style which is a 3-position switch and can be used as a killswitch, or the fender type, which in my case would be 5-way. I would tend to think that the latter is more useful, as I could probably wire it to select one humbucker alone or all three(because this would be important to me). Again thanks for the help!

[SecretWeapon]

Don't get confused thinking that a coil splitter is a single-coil simulator.

A humbucker is 2 single coil pickups, faced towards each other in order to cancel out the hum that is typical of single coil pickups. Hence the name "humbucker." When you 'split the coils' in a humbucker, you're simply shutting one of the two coils off, so you have only one coil running. To answer your question directly; yes, you will have a single coil sound when split because you're essentially running a single coil pickup at that point.

If I were going to do 3 humbuckers... Which I probably wouldn't... I'd use a 5-way switch, 2 vol/2 tone, and push/pull pots to split each of the coils. You could even throw in a fourth push/pull to have an all pickups on or all pickups off switch, both of which can be useful at times.

[Iguy022]

Why wouldn't you want 3 humbuckers?

[Baz]

Why wouldn't you want 3 humbuckers?

+1 for you

the one in my dp picture over there (<<) has three active pickups in it, the bridge is an EMG 81 and the other two are EMG 85's, honestly i think i'd like it better if they were all 85's, the 81 doesn't seem to get as much tone as the 85's, i only put the 81 and 85 combo in cause i read reviews that they were fantastic together, they're not horrible, but the 81 by itself doesn't do it for me, that's just my opinion though, i still love playing it (i did build it afterall, i could never put it away forever, lol)

as for your controls, a 3 way switch would be useless for three pickups, you'd only be able to have one pickup on at a time, you're much better off finding a 5 way switch and have a master tone and volume, or to adjust with your original idea of having 6 knobs, a better thing would be to simulate a Brian May style set up where he has an on/off switch for each individual pickup as well as a phase switch to turn each pickup in and out of phase, then he just has a master tone and volume for it all, which gives you a huge rande of different sounds and tones and you can turn the entire guitar off if you need to without having to go to the amp, i think i counted about 36 different combinations with at least one pickup being "on" with all the switches, lol. I personally like that setup (that's why i copied it onto the one in my dp) but it takes a bit of getting used to and it's a fair bit of wiring, but you can save yourself some time with the EMG's as they come with "solderless connections" so you don't have to solder 4 different wires from the pickups, instead it's like having just one wire, it reduces time on wiring up the setup by quite a bit, lol

[Iguy022]

Thanks a lot for all of you replies! I think the main question that I need answered here is how would it possible for me to get all three of the tone types listed above (extremely heavy, like pantera, higher divebomb metal like Iron Maiden, and smooth soloing like David Gilmour) out of a three pickup sg. Also, would it be possible to install a decent tremolo bridge that doesnt send my guitar out of tune instantly for under 200$? Because my current one does just that. BUT that is on a beginners Yamaha Pacifica. In any case I would love a tremolo, but would like to avoid paying some ridiculous amount for it (floyd rose, kahler). Thanks

[Baz]

i'd avoid Floyd Roses like the plague, but i would highly recommend a kahler, they are a tad expensive (about $220) but damn they're fantastic and so easy to install and easy to set up and tune and all that and you don't need to route the guitar from the rear either, the 2300 hybrid is on one of my guitars and i love it, well worth the $220, but if you want something cheaper and wanna have a crack at rear routing a guitar for springs and stuff, maybe try and find something off of a fender, or try and find a nice Wilkinson brand tremolo, they make really good tremolos

as for wanting so many different tones, it's not all from the pickups, it's your equipment too that can help get the sounds you need, but you may really want to consider the Brian May set up if you want so many different sounds, here's how it looks on the BM guitar (this is a signature model, with a Wilkinson tremolo):


and here's how it's wired up at the switches:


and with the jack and pickups and stuff (this one and the last one are photos from the building of the one i built, which uses three EMG's with solderless connections, this would probably be the best way to go about wiring it up if you decide to use this set up)

[Iguy022]

So from my inexperienced point of view, this guitar(the brian may) has 3 switches that control whether the pickups are functioning or not and the other 3 are.. what? The tone and volume I understand, and that tremelo does look nice. On that subject, I would be building this with my grandpa (i'm 14) and I know he has a router, and he is most likely experienced with it. Are the Wilkinson tremelos good enough to route out the guitar for? What I really need is a tremelo that doesn't just detune the guitar. Would it even make a difference if I was making it myself how the bridge area is shaped? What I'm getting at is that its not that I'm replacing the bridge, im starting from scratch, so would it be easier one way or the other? I know this is a lot of questions, and you guys have been a great help so far! Thanks

[Baz]

the 6 switches work like this: (colours are for ease of reading an relativity)

|br. pup on/off|          |mid. pup on/off|          |neck pup on/off|
|br. pup phase in/out| |mid. pup phase in/out|  |neck pup phase in/out|

these then all connect to master volume and tone controls and then to the jack

basically it's 3 seperate circuits mixed into one, kinda like a cars exhaust, usually they go from the 4 cylinders (on a 4 cyl. car, duh) into two pipes, then into 1 pipe to the exhaust (known in the car world as a 4-2-1 exhaust)

Wilkinson trems in general are great, but if you want it to stay in tune, the trem isn't the only place strings are attached, you're gonna need eitehr a locking nut (not recommended, tuning become a chore and a huge hassle having to undo and redo it each time you need to tune) or a good set of locking tuners (i suggest Gotoh or Grovers) they lock the string in place and keep the strings in tune even on your most violent dive bombs and vibratos, so, you'll need a good trem, like a Wilkinson, and a good set of locking tuners and you'll find you'll have less problems than if you didn't have locking tuners

[GPW]

 While the Brian May guitar is cool in it's versatility...  it is rather too much for a dark, intense  on stage situation , all those switches     Sometimes  Simple is better ...  unless you're Brian May of course...  all in the fingers eh !!!      (and a good bit of Studio production too    )  Saw the revised Queen on the tele, BM had One tone all night ...LOUD and distorted...  not the best pleasant sound  IMHO ...