Opinions on what resistor values I should use in my 3 way tone toggle switch

[toonskeez]

thanks for all the advice. While I'm waiting for all those resistors and alligator clips to arrive, I guess I can wire up everything else.
I've never even used alligator clips before. That'll show you how little experience I actually have with electronics and wiring. It's all fun though, even if I do sometimes get angry with all the delicate little fiddly bits and pieces.

 

[badscrew_projects]

You didn’t have electricity labs in school?

 

[Deaf Eddie]

I tried this and there is too much « honk » without any resistors.

I guess more honk (and less mud) is what I was going for...

 

[toonskeez]

You didn’t have electricity labs in school?

No, none, zilch. It just wasn't ever a part of schooling when I was growing up here in Ireland and I think it's pretty much the same situation. Kinda sad really. Too much focus on academia and no time allocated to practical stuff.

 

[badscrew_projects]

That’s weird, my kids here in France still had those, they were making circuits with batteries, small motors and lamps.

 

[wabashslim]

It's all fun though, even if I do sometimes get angry with all the delicate little fiddly bits and pieces.

Try soldering wires to individual microprocessor pins under a microscope while your cataracts are growing! And remember, you have to count those pins up to the ones you want....!

 

[toonskeez]

Try soldering wires to individual microprocessor pins under a microscope while your cataracts are growing! And remember, you have to count those pins up to the ones you want....!

Yikes, I'm not sure I'd have the finesse and patience for working at that microscopic scale, but who knows, never say never I guess.
I'm definitely more at home working with wood, cutting, shaping, sculpting, sanding etc. but a large part of that is probably because that's what I've spent most of my time doing. I guess maybe I just have to be a bit more patient during the wiring up phase. I tend to just want to get the guitar finished at that stage, but it's a large part of the guitar building process in and of itself.

 

[toonskeez]

That’s weird, my kids here in France still had those, they were making circuits with batteries, small motors and lamps.

I wish I been introduced to this kinda stuff from an early age, but hey, no point in looking back I guess. Nothing good comes from that.

 

[Steve Holt]

I wish I been introduced to this kinda stuff from an early age, but hey, no point in looking back I guess. Nothing good comes from that.

The good news is now we have youtube.

The biggest thing with soldering (and sorry if you already know this) is to apply the soldering iron to the part you want to solder, heat it up a few seconds, and apply the solder to the part NOT the soldering iron. Once you get a good flow, remove the solder, But hold the soldering iron to the part just a second or two longer. This helps burn off extra Flux and will leave a nice solder joint every time. Once I figured that out, I was rolling.

 

[toonskeez]

The good news is now we have youtube.

The biggest thing with soldering (and sorry if you already know this) is to apply the soldering iron to the part you want to solder, heat it up a few seconds, and apply the solder to the part NOT the soldering iron. Once you get a good flow, remove the solder, But hold the soldering iron to the part just a second or two longer. This helps burn off extra Flux and will leave a nice solder joint every time. Once I figured that out, I was rolling.

Cheers, yeah I know the part about applying the soldering iron to the part I want to solder, then running the solder to the area / component/s to be soldered (and not the iron), but I didn't know that you should leave the iron there a second or two longer (after removing the solder) to burn off the extra flux. Thanks for that tip. Invaluable info going forward.

 

[toonskeez]

Ok, so good news and bad (well not that bad) news. I wired everything up today (except the middle pup tone control 3 way toggle switch circuit. I used alligator clips to test things with that).
Good news is that everything works exactly as I wanted it to, regarding volume controls, tone controls, 5 way switch etc.; so that's massively good news in my book, as I would have been majorly p*ssed off if I had to go chasing down a problem somewhere in the wiring.
The 'bad' news is that that 3 way toggle switch (on-off-on), that I'm using to get three sounds for the middle pup tone, is not working as I expected.
When in the middle (off) position, it works as expected: tone is bright, as if it's bypassing any type of tone control.
However when I was testing different value resistors in one of the 'on' positions, no matter what resistor I used, I was getting the same dark tone. I tried resistor values from 20k up to 180k, all the way up to 470k. I used 470k as a kind of sanity test, to make sure it wasn't the resistors that were the issue. They were all giving me the same tone, as if a tone control was at around 3.
The way I clipped the components up to the 3 way switch were as follows:
Middle volume pot wire (soldered) to left middle lug on switch
One leg of a .033 cap clipped to right middle lug of switch and other leg of that cap clipped to a ground point (to a little wire that grounds lug on volume pot to that pot).
One leg of resistor clipped to top left lug of switch, other leg clipped to top right lug of switch.
So, any ideas what I'm doing wrong here?

 

[63 vibroverb]

I was surprised at these results. In my inexperienced view, I just presumed that tone at 8 would be much closer to 250 Kohms. Was surprised to see it at just under half of the 250K pot value. And to see the resistance to be just under 15 kohms when tone pot at 4 was a real surprise.

This is why I’m preferring to use linear pots for tone controls more and more. You get a more predictable sweep and treble cut.

Audio taper is still ideal for volume controls though - especially if you’re cleaning up a dirty amp.

 

[Deaf Eddie]

Take the resistor OFF.

 

[Steve Holt]

Ok, so good news and bad (well not that bad) news. I wired everything up today (except the middle pup tone control 3 way toggle switch circuit. I used alligator clips to test things with that).
Good news is that everything works exactly as I wanted it to, regarding volume controls, tone controls, 5 way switch etc.; so that's massively good news in my book, as I would have been majorly p*ssed off if I had to go chasing down a problem somewhere in the wiring.
The 'bad' news is that that 3 way toggle switch (on-off-on), that I'm using to get three sounds for the middle pup tone, is not working as I expected.
When in the middle (off) position, it works as expected: tone is bright, as if it's bypassing any type of tone control.
However when I was testing different value resistors in one of the 'on' positions, no matter what resistor I used, I was getting the same dark tone. I tried resistor values from 20k up to 180k, all the way up to 470k. I used 470k as a kind of sanity test, to make sure it wasn't the resistors that were the issue. They were all giving me the same tone, as if a tone control was at around 3.
The way I clipped the components up to the 3 way switch were as follows:
Middle volume pot wire (soldered) to left middle lug on switch
One leg of a .033 cap clipped to right middle lug of switch and other leg of that cap clipped to a ground point (to a little wire that grounds lug on volume pot to that pot).
One leg of resistor clipped to top left lug of switch, other leg clipped to top right lug of switch.
So, any ideas what I'm doing wrong here?

Glad to hear that the wiring worked out at least

 

[toonskeez]

Take the resistor OFF.

Ok, but then that leaves me with just one tonal sound for my middle pup. That's one less sound than if I were to leave a resistor there.
At least if I were to leave a resistor between the top left and top right lug of the switch, I'd have one bright sound (middle position) and one dark sound (up or down position).
I think the problem is that I'm not connecting the resistor properly OR it could be that the cap is connected wrong.
Two people have suggested two different ways of doing it with resistors. I've tried one of those ways and it doesn't seem to work. I'll try your way tomorrow and also some other ways and see what happens.

 

[Deaf Eddie]

Here's how I do it on an on/OFF/on 3-way - no resistor, just two caps:

So, you are just connecting to the mid pup's hot on its way to wherever you send it...
Could be a pickup selector or volume pot.

The three stops on the 3-way will be mellow, bright (no cap), and dark
For cap values, those are just suggested ranges - pick your poison.
Smaller cap values are brighter, bigger cap values are darker.

This is how I have rewired a couple of a Gretsch "mud switches."
Works for me.

 

[toonskeez]

Here's how I do it on an on/OFF/on 3-way - no resistor, just two caps:

View attachment 1044580

So, you are just connecting to the mid pup's hot on its way to wherever you send it...
Could be a pickup selector or volume pot.

The three stops on the 3-way will be mellow, bright (no cap), and dark
For cap values, those are just suggested ranges - pick your poison.
Smaller cap values are brighter, bigger cap values are darker.

This is how I have rewired a couple of a Gretsch "mud switches."
Works for me.

Thanks, I'll give it a go.

 

[toonskeez]

Here's how I do it on an on/OFF/on 3-way - no resistor, just two caps:

View attachment 1044580

So, you are just connecting to the mid pup's hot on its way to wherever you send it...
Could be a pickup selector or volume pot.

The three stops on the 3-way will be mellow, bright (no cap), and dark
For cap values, those are just suggested ranges - pick your poison.
Smaller cap values are brighter, bigger cap values are darker.

This is how I have rewired a couple of a Gretsch "mud switches."
Works for me.

Ok, I'm a bit stuck on this one. In your diagram above, is each cap going separately to ground? or are you soldering them together and then to ground? As I am currently testing it (with a .022 and .047 cap), I do it as in your diagram, but each cap going to ground separately. Also, I notice that when in the middle 'off' position, there is noticeable hum, but it goes away when I ground the middle right lug of the switch, so I'm guessing I need to ground that lug?
I don't fully understand how exactly an on-off-on switch works, so that's also hindering my progress.
For what it's worth, I do notice a subtle darkening to the tone when clipping a cap in place like you have in your diagram, but the problem I'm having is that there's no difference in tone between a .022 cap and a .1 cap (which I also tried).

 

[Steve Holt]

So my understanding is that an On-Off-On Switch works exactly like an On-On (DPDT) Switch but with a middle function that disables it.

So here is the up position (note if you have a slider switch like on a jaguar, the position of the switch matches which lugs are On, but if you have a toggle switch it might be opposite. Always good to check and confirm with a multimeter)

The 4 lugs in the red box are no On. But they're not connected across. The blue boxes indicate which lugs are connected to each other. You can connect them with wires for different setups, but without jumpers, they are not connected.

The middle two lugs are common and they're now connected to the lug above them.

In the Off position there are no connections. If you have wires bridging different lugs, the current will still flow through the wires, but the switch is not making any connections to any other lugs on its own.

In the down position it's the opposite of the first. The common lugs are now connected to the lugs below them, and they're still not connected across.

In this example that @Deaf Eddie posted, it shouldn't matter whether you connect the two caps together and then connect to ground, or just connect each to ground. Either way they'll both be connected to ground, so they'll be connected to each other.

 

[Steve Holt]

Not sure on your buzzing issue. The way I had your middle switch drawn up was to connect one side of the capacitors or resistors to one pole on the switch, connect the other side to the other pole, and then send the common to ground, makes the connections easy that way as you have a good lug to solder each end of the caps to, and then one ground.

If you're saying that grounding the circled lug makes the hum go away in the Off position, I can't see why what would be the case as it wouldn't really be doing anything, but since if that solves it, then it solves it.