Onboard distortion and varitone

[The Passenger]

I am relatively new to guitar wiring and I was wondering if anyone knows how to wire two pickups like this: Volume/Volume/Tone/Varitone/Black Ice.
I would like to stay passive but I can't find any diagrams that make sense to me.

 

[SGD Lutherie]

The Black Ice only works well with fairly hot pickups. It's not going to sound like a distortion pedal. If you want to try that, save your money and just go to a local Radio Shack and buy a silicon diode. For $2.79 you can get a pack of 25! You only need one though. Then wire that up to a pot the way you would a tone cap.

Are you talking about a real varitone with an inductor, or a decade switch with tone caps? Either way they also wire up similar to a tone control, between the hot and ground.

 

[The Passenger]

Thanks.
I'm talking about a switch with tone caps. Also, how hot do the pickups have to be for the Black Ice to work?

 

[SGD Lutherie]

OK, a switch with tone caps isn't really a Varitone, which is a midrange filter. The tone switch wires up like a regular tone control. The caps are all grounded on one end, and the other goes to the switch, which has it's wiper connected to hot. You wire a cap to each position, and leave the first one empty for a bypass.

The Black Ice says it needs pickups 10K or hotter. You are paying $30 for a diode in a blob of epoxy. It would cheap to buy a diode and try it out. I've put one of these in a couple of guitars back in the 70's. It worked great in the guitar that had a preamp. In the passive guitar it got a mild farty type tone. But try it, you might like it.

You wire the diode between the hot and ground, like a tone cap. You can either use a switch or a pot. If you use a pot it should be 500K or more.

 

[The Passenger]

Thank you. You've been very helpful.