Gear Discussion Forums > Bill's Shop: Projects, Mods & Repairs
G3 6-way Switch Mod
Bass VI:
Hello All,
In response to requests for an explanation of this scheme I did when I built my G3/Ripper clone " The Anna Tomick " model ( too long story ) I'll try to give fairly clear instuctions as to what it does and what I did.
AFAIK this should work for any stock G3, I used essentially the same parts and values on mine. One warning, this will change your bass from "stock" and though I feel it's a significant improvement, please don't hold me responsible for burnt fingers, solder splashes, lost sleep...........and I apologize in advance if my desciption isn't really technical, it was pretty hit or miss, me and several sets of jumper wires and no reall "theory".
What you will need:
One NOS 6-way switch, I picked up several from our friends on eBay, they don't have any listed at the moment (you can use a 6 position 4 pole switch like Allparts sells but it is deeper and will probably require routing...)
http://www.allparts.com/store/electronics-switches-ep-0920-000,Product.asp
I used one of these (above) on the original but this one (below) is much more elegant
Here is the Allparts switch
And the NOS switch
As for anything else, it should all be in your G3 ;D
What it does....
Pos 1 Neck pickup
Pos 2 Neck/Middle
Pos 3 Middle
Pos 4 Middle/Bridge
Pos 5 Bridge
Pos 6 Neck/Bridge
As you see, it eliminates the "buck and a half" all three pickup setting, position 6 could be wired that way with another jumper but the Neck/Bridge (which you can't get with the stock setup) seemed more "natural" to me.
Now the process.....
Unsolder the three way toggle, I assume (hopefully :-[) that these will be the white wires. Gibson used several different color schemes, what you want is to find the "hot" wire (white in the pic), the other two, the one that appears to be soldered to the plate on the bottom of the pickup (black) and the "other one" (in this case orange) both solder to ground....this pic may make it a bit clearer......
In the above pic the white wires go to the switch, the others to ground, in this case the back of the volume pot. I believe ( but since I have no original G3 to look at ) that you should be able to unsolder the wires at the switch and leave everything else as is, if I'm wrong let me know and I'll try to modify the scheme.
For the actual connections please refer to these crude illustrations....
The lower ring refers to the terminals on the bottom of the switch (closest to you when installed on the pickguard) the upper being the row of terminals next to the guard itself.
Neck pickup hotwire connects to upper ring terminals 1,12,13
Middle hotwire to lower ring 3,4,5
Bridge to lower ring 2
Now the jumpers
Connect upper ring terminal 2 to lower ring terminal 1 and then to upper ring 8 (this terminal[8]* is the output to the volume pot )
Connect lower ring terminal 2 to upper ring terminal 10
*Connect [8] to volume pot, use whatever connection previously coming from the toggle, in my case it was the middle lug.
Here are several other views hopefully they will help you visualize what I have tried ( all I can say is I tried! ) to explain.
Best Wishes, hopefully this will explain more than mystephy! Please let me know if anyone needs more info or a better pic. Really any decent tech should be able to figure out what's going on I did! and building/finishing not wiring is my strong suit.
Cheers!
Scott
chromium:
Nice write up, Scott- and a novel idea! I had grabbed a few rotary switches (from the L6-S I think...) from our Ebay friends thinking they'd make cool custom varitones, but I haven't done anything with em yet. I'm always a sucker for a neat electronics hack!
Pilgrim:
Has anyone published a varitone mod for a bass like my EB-3? Inquiring minds, and all that. The 3-position rotary selector for bridge/both/neck is handy, but it also presents opportunities.
Dave W:
--- Quote from: Pilgrim on October 20, 2008, 06:54:17 PM ---Has anyone published a varitone mod for a bass like my EB-3? Inquiring minds, and all that. The 3-position rotary selector for bridge/both/neck is handy, but it also presents opportunities.
--- End quote ---
Derek at Big D Guitars offers a bass varitone. I don't know if anyone here has used one.
chromium:
Craig Anderton had a Varitone-like passive tone control in the "Electronic Projects for Musicians" book that could work too.
I found a schematic for it here: http://freestompboxes.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=498&start=0
That circuit reminds me a bit of the setup in the Howard Roberts guitar, where you could adjust the amount of "choke" with a potentiometer. Always thought that might be more useful than the all-or-nothing choke engagement on the old EBs.
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