Concentric Push Pull Pots For Under $50?

[Omnipharious]

I've been looking into modifying my Squier Jazz for a while, and I have the perfect idea, which should come out to about $60 worth of junk, and a week or two worth of work, but I came to a snag in my plan: to do this the way I want, I will need one of the three concentric pots to also be a push pull. Now, I've scoured the interwebz and I've found two things.

The only guitar/bass maker that uses these pots stock is Warwick, I believe, and only on a few select basses, and none of those pots seem to have been taken out of said basses.

And, the only other people that make them are large companies that justify the low demand for a price of around $45 for one stinkin' pot (and that's not even including the shipping)!

Now, I love this bass, but I ain't spendin' no $125 for a mod on a bass I payed $200 for. Do any of you know any place that sells dual concentric pots with a DPDT push pull switch for anything near a reasonable price? Or, do you think it's possible to make one with limited knowledge, determination out the arse, and a bunch of junk pots and a switch I might have lying around (or even a bought concentric pot and the aforementioned switch)?

[i_got_a_mohawk]

Not a commonly used part, so could be a hard one to find at a reasonable price.

Have you tried contacting warwick to see if they would sell the parts?

I think MEC still do custom pots, but that would cost a mint too.

Doubt you'd be able to make one from scratch.


If it's a cheap bass, why not just drill 3 small holes and use 3x toggle switchs?


Also, what you planning to do with it (out of interest).

[Omnipharious]

Well, I'm planning on doing something of an homage to the Fender Bass VI. I'm adding a third pickup at the end of the fretboard to the Jazz, and I'm going to put a Jaguar mini control plate on the pickguard, just like on the Bass VI and use that for a toggle for all three pickups; the regular three knobs on the Jazz plate will be used for concentric vol/tones for each pickup. My hope was to make the first (or the new neck pickup pot) also have the switch in question on it, for a phase switch, or maybe a high pass filter, which is what Fender called a phase switch at the time.

So yeah, if this were a Sheehan style, add-five-pickups-and-ten-knobs type bass, I wouldn't have a problem, but I need a lot of ease of use from three switches, and three split knobs.

I will try contacting Warwick to see if I can get one from them, but it's doubtful. I'm sure if MEC could do it for me, it would cost just as much as the other pots I have already found.

[Nev375]

Those pots are expensive for a reason. But remember, pots and switches eventually wear out.

When designing things you should want to consider not only the form and functionality of the present, but also the long term maintenance of the device.

When these $50 pots wear out what will you do then? They may not be available at all in the future other than having them custom built and you could be looking at $100 or more for that.

Also, I'd advise against the DIY approach unless you happen to be a mechanical engineer yourself.

[Omnipharious]

Originally Posted by Nev375

Those pots are expensive for a reason. But remember, pots and switches eventually wear out.

When designing things you should want to consider not only the form and functionality of the present, but also the long term maintenance of the device.

When these $50 pots wear out what will you do then? They may not be available at all in the future other than having them custom built and you could be looking at $100 or more for that.

Also, I'd advise against the DIY approach unless you happen to be a mechanical engineer yourself.

Son of a somewhat-engineer. Is that close enough?

I doubt the $50 pot will wear out any sooner than the other pots/switches in the bass. If anything, it's fifty freakin' dollars; I would hope it lasts longer than the other pots in the bass.

You seem to want to steer me away from the crazy-super-duper-switch idea. What do you suggest? I would like to keep the aesthetic almost exact (I was going to put a jaguar top control plate that usually has the bass and treble rollers on it in somewhat of the same position on the jazz, but it doesn't come anywhere near fitting with a third pickup on it), but all I really want to keep tonally is a separate volume and tone for each pickup. And literally no one makes replacement 4 switch plates of the version 2 Bass VI's, so that's out of the question.

[ZolkoW]

MEC sells that kind of pots, but that's their price.
Some shops advertise them as "high-end" potentiometers, but actually I consider them not high quality at all. sometimes I have to use them, as some special configurations are only available from them.
I always try to convince people to keep it simple though... why spend hundreds of dollars on special pots, IF there are other solutions? (for example: drilling another hole, using a 5 hole jazz plate instead of usual..)

[Omnipharious]

I guess I could just have three concentrics for volume and tone, move the input to the side, and use the fourth slot for a switch, or button, or something that isn't insanely priced, or complicated. I wasn't completely decided on that layout anyway, I just thought it would be cool to have one pot that has three actual functions.

[Nev375]

The reason they are expensive is not because they are any better, it's mostly just the cost of engineering, reconfiguring, retooling, and retraining the production line to do a short run of a few thousand units and then switching it all back. All that downtime and those man-hours add up and that's why most manufacturers don't go there. The big ones can afford to do it sometimes even at a slight loss just to try and provide more options than their competition.

But no, they aren't likely to be any more reliable than a regular part and could potentially be worse from a lack of long term design refinement.

As for what I would suggest... I'm a big fan of keeping things relatively simple. But let me think about what you are trying to do and see if I can come up with some additional thoughts or suggestions.

[Omnipharious]

Originally Posted by Nev375

The reason they are expensive is not because they are any better, it's mostly just the cost of engineering, reconfiguring, retooling, and retraining the production line to do a short run of a few thousand units and then switching it all back. All that downtime and those man-hours add up and that's why most manufacturers don't go there. The big ones can afford to do it sometimes even at a slight loss just to try and provide more options than their competition.

But no, they aren't likely to be any more reliable than a regular part and could potentially be worse from a lack of long term design refinement.

As for what I would suggest... I'm a big fan of keeping things relatively simple. But let me think about what you are trying to do and see if I can come up with some additional thoughts or suggestions.

Okay, that would be awesome. I've been stewing on this idea for a few days, and I just recently started drawing it up.



Ignore the hardware colour. I had this crazy idea of copper plating all of the hardware myself, and so far, I have been marginally unsuccessful at plating anything. I will most likely end up leaving it all chrome, and hating it; but that's better than paying for gold hardware and being out another $150 just for some pretty colours. Also, yes, I know the top two pickups are hard to see. I'm not the greatest photoshopper ever

[Nev375]

I know you were wanting to do stack knobs, but you may or may not know there's an inherent flaw with having 2 passive tone controls and that is they interact with one another and really don't work that well. Fender got around this problem by using a resistor in-line with the circuit that minimizes this interaction. However, it also reduces your overall output of your signal. So, I'm not a big fan of this.


Plan A: (p-bass style) My 1st suggestion is to radically simplify the circuit to 2 knobs and go with master vol and tone on a 3-hole control plate. Each knob being on a push/pull switch. The vol knob switches the neck pup out of phase with the middle, the tone knob does the same for the bridge.

Your switches will be 3 basic on/off switches.


Plan B: (j-bass style) This one also involves finding a 3-hole plate, but using a drill to drill 2 additional holes between them to make a 5 hole/4 knob plate. You might have to use mini pots, but they need not be switched as they are simple vol/vol/vol/tone

The switches will then be dpdt phase reverse for each pickup.


Plan C: (no switchplate) If you really want the jaguar switchplate, scratch this as this is how I would do it to preserve the pure j-bass look and feel.

Do the 5-hole 4 knob mod as in the 2nd idea, but use push/pull mini pots on the vol knobs. (you only really need them for the 2 outer pickups to get every possible phase relationship)

x-x-x, o-x-o, o-x-x, x-x-o (o-o-o and x-o-x are the same as the 1st 2)


Anyhoo.... those are my suggestions. Plan A has the advantage of getting your selected sound into a single vol knob for swells or instrument muting. Plans B and C, like a J bass, allow you to dial in various amounts of each pickup.

Happy modding!

[Omnipharious]

I'm relatively new to the slightly more advanced guitar wirings; how is it possible to flip the phase every pickup individually? If I had three pickups, I know I could flip the phase between two, or with all three, I could flip the middle, but if I reversed the phase on all three, wouldn't that be the same thing as not reversing the phase on any of them? If I have no idea what I'm talking about, please tell me, because I have a feeling that I'm talking out of my arse right now.

Also, thanks for putting so much time into helping me I would hate to spend upwards of $50 on something that might not work well.

[Nev375]

You are exactly right. If you flipped all three pickups it would sound exactly like all three flipped the other way.

That's why the three phase switch idea for plan B above is slightly redundant. As you pointed out though, it's hard to find anything other than a 3-hole switchplate.

If you have 2 pickups, you only need one phase switch to switch them out from each other. But if you have 3 pickups, you need 2. You can flip one pickup out of phase from the other two, but what if you want to use those other two and have them be out of phase with each other? (say you were using neck and bridge and had the middle off) You need another switch for that option.

You can pick whichever one to be the reference pickup and put switches on the other 2 (I chose the middle one as the reference), or.... you can just switch all 3 and use the switches as a visual reference as to the polarity of each pickup. (you just have a few possible settings that sound alike)

[Omnipharious]

Yeah, I quite like that last idea. I really want to make this super-versatile bass. My other two basses are a EB-0, and a 60's style P bass, so the former has only one tone, and the latter has maybe two tones, since I put a much heavier cap on the tone than usual, so it would be nice to have a bass with many, many tones. How about if I went with...

If I got three DPDT mini slider switches for the jag plate, the center would be off, and either way would be phase one way, and vice versa, so I could have the on/off capability, and many tonal options; and then I could move the input to the side (which I kinda wanted to do all along), and then have a v/v/v/t setup for the knobs. Not including the tone knob, that's... like ten different tonal options, right?

[Stealth]

A small note - the Fender Jaguar's high-pass filter wasn't a phase switch - it was an actual capacitor wired in series with the pickups' output and it acted as a choke for the low frequencies. Just as a capacitor in parallel with the tone pot acts like a low-pass filter cutting the highs, a capacitor in series acts like a high-pass filter, cutting the lows.

I don't think the phase switching is such a hot idea - I understand you want to make an F-B-VI homage, but you'd probably get more mileage and useful tones out of two series/parallel switches, or alternately one series/parallel switch and one phase switch.

[Omnipharious]

Originally Posted by Stealth

A small note - the Fender Jaguar's high-pass filter wasn't a phase switch - it was an actual capacitor wired in series with the pickups' output and it acted as a choke for the low frequencies. Just as a capacitor in parallel with the tone pot acts like a low-pass filter cutting the highs, a capacitor in series acts like a high-pass filter, cutting the lows.

I don't think the phase switching is such a hot idea - I understand you want to make an F-B-VI homage, but you'd probably get more mileage and useful tones out of two series/parallel switches, or alternately one series/parallel switch and one phase switch.

Thank you for your concern, but series parallel switch will not happen for this bass. I bought her second hand from who-knows-who, and he felt like doing a bit of modding. The only drastic thing was that he replaced the neck pickup with a lace sensor- which I absolutely love solo'd, and with the bridge pickup- but he had it wired in series (or parallel, I honestly can't remember,) and I switched it (to whatever the opposite of it was {I'm too lazy to take it apart to find out which way it is now}) because before, both pickups on together made the bass sound like it was being played through underwound guitar pickups through a 5-watt practice amp. Very tinny and quiet. Now it sounds like an actual jazz bass, so I guess that means she's in parallel.

TL;DR: it wouldn't sound good in series wiring, so I would never use it.

[Nev375]

Was that a lace sensor or a transsensor? The transsensor is a wonderful sounding pickup but it cannot be used along with a normal pickup in the same instrument.... at least not in parallel... I have no idea what it would sound like in series. (my single pickup (neck position) jazz bass is a transsensor and I love it)

This is because it only has a few windings as opposed to the normal hundreds and measures WAY less resistance as a stock pickup. The two in parallel would result in very little output at all.

Normally series/parallel switching does produce a nice scooped sound in series but the output goes up. But with 3 pickups if they were all in series I think the output difference would be drastically different and I would not expect a very good tone from that. I dunno though, I've never tried a 3 pickup bass.

I kind-of agree that phase switching is not all that fantastic. There are some subtle variations, but nothing so much as just selecting or blending pickups at various distances from the bridge. I've never tried it with 3 pickups though and not with 2 of them so drastically far apart, there may or may not be something useful there.

If not, there's always the on/off switch idea that you can revert back to with whatever vol or tone configurations you desire. That's very useful!

[Omnipharious]

I'm not sure exactly what the pickup is, but it's the same size as a regular jazz neck pickup, it's a closed top, and it says "Fender Lace Sensor" on it. It has a pretty regular output, almost the exact same as the bridge pickup, and when both on, the output is only a little higher than normal. It's very, very low hum, and it has a lot of airy, wide open bass, and a bit extra high-mid to it.

I know the phase idea isn't the most useful idea ever, but I do know that ricks have a super awesome distinct sound with (what would be in this proposed idea), the neck, and middle pickup out of phase I believe, so with the phase switches, and the separate volume controls, I'm sure I could get my money's worth out of what should come out to about $35, now that I don't have to buy new pots, and knobs!

[Stealth]

I see what you meant - I dug around and apparently Lace Sensors, Transensors and Alumitones (all of which are low-impedance with impedance-matching transformers) can be combined with other pickups - if you got a tinny sound, something was surely wired out of phase and thus didn't work. But if you're certain you don't want S/P switching, as you wish.

As for the Ricks, some models have a phase switch, but only on two-pickup models - but most of their basses had a "strangle/choke" switch similar to the Jaguar.

[Omnipharious]

Well, it seems that no one knows what a three-pickup bass sounds like, so I guess even if the rest of it is a bad idea, I should go through with it anyway, and post clips.

For the greater good.

[Stealth]

Regardless of what I said and what the classical way of wiring is, color me interested in the results.