I'm pricing and specing out a potential bass build and want something passive with insane tonal options, a la Roscoe Beck. I freaking love the way Jaguar basses look and felt like I'd be able to get away with a similar setup by taking advantage of the three switches on the bottom horn. Basically, I want to use either Nordstrand Dual Coils (preference) or Seymour Duncan NYC dual coils. The top switch would be a single/dual coil selector for the neck pickup, the middle switch would be the same for the bridge pickup, and the third switch would be a series/parallel selector. Each pickup would get stacked volume/tone knobs, and the third hole would be the input. Despite my best efforts, I am horribly incompetent with a soldering iron and don't know a thing about wiring schematics, so while I think this is a stupid cool concept I have no idea how feasible it is. Could any of you legends help me out?
It's easy to do it like RB's with Nordstrand's own diagram: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1941/7837/files/Dual-Coil-Diagram.pdf
Solid start, but one thing I forgot to mention is that for the Jag control plate, you can only fit DPDT switches in the slots - three position on-on-on switches are too long. Ideally, I'd wire it like the Roscoe Beck, but if I want to keep the Jag motif and use the control plate I don't know where I'd find 3-position switches that are the same size as a DPDT switch.
I found this diagram and think it could work if I 1. drop the 3-way pickup selector and rely completely on the volume pots, 2. change the individual pickup pickup switch from 3-way series/single/parallel to 2-way dual coil/coil tap, and 3. keep the master series/parallel switch. 2 Humbuckers/3-Way Toggle Switch/2 Volumes/2 Tones/Series-Split-Parallel & Master Series-Parallel All three switches could then be DPDT sliders that fit in the standard Jaguar plate. Thoughts?
If you coil split it could get noisy, unless you have both pickups on full volume. The way the drawing currently is you'd have series/parallel for each pickup & then series/parallel between the pickups. note that parallel remains hum-bucking
Perhaps the top horn switch plate that generally has 2 sideways pots and 1 switch could fit a 3 way slider switch in one of the "potholes" as they are a bit longer than the switch holes
Very good point! I was going to keep it passive and only use the bottom horn plates, but I could slap a Gibson-style 3-way switch on the upper horn very easily. Would doing this rather than the individual volume/tone pots help reduce noise?
Also, I found some custom Jag plates that can fit a pair of on/on/on slide switches, so I could put the pickup series/single/parallel switches there and use a Gibson 3-way switch on the upper horn to basically get the same switching options as a Roscoe Beck without the weight. AND Warmoth can custom route bodies and Jazzmaster pickguards for this!