Some users of guitar interface cables like my DIY cable project have noticed an unreasonable amount of feedback when using Apple’s GarageBand iPad app.
Good news- Apple rolled out an update to GarageBand yesterday which appears to resolve this.
Thanks PaulB for letting me know!
In this article, Pete Biltoft at Vintage Vibe Guitars gives an in-depth explanation of humbucker coil splitting and tapping. You may also find my earlier posts useful: Humbucker Wiring and Coil Splitting.
Thanks again to Pete for the permission to post this here!
October 2012
Howdy!
The topic for this tech tips newsletter will be Coil Splitting and Coil Tapping.
Coil Splitting and Coil Tapping are two methods which can be used to extend the range of tones on can get from a magnetic pickup.
First, a few definitions:
Coil splitting refers to disabling one of the two coils of a humbucking pickup by shunting that coil’s output to electrical ground.
Coil tapping is most often used to describe a single coil pickup which has a coil start and more than one coil end (output tap).
Because I intend to devote most of this article to Coil Tapping, let me start with Coil Splitting.
Here’s the table of contents for the whole DIY pedal building series:
Now that we’ve modeled the enclosure and printed a drilling template, we’re ready to jump out of Sketchup and into the real world.
In this video, I’ll be demonstrating how to accurately drill the holes in a diecast aluminum 125B guitar pedal enclosure, preparing to install the electronics. I’m using the drilling template we printed in part 2. The pedal I’m building is a modified Ross compressor, using a printed circuit board purchased from GuitarPCB. More
Here’s the table of contents for the whole DIY pedal building series:
This is part 2 of my new series on building guitar effects pedals.
This part of the project ended up being far more grandiose than I originally intended. I started out planning to just show how to model this diecast aluminum 125B guitar pedal enclosure, to make sure my PCB and components would fit properly inside. But by the time I was done with it, it was essentially a complete beginner’s how-to course for Google Sketchup. (Note, Sketchup is now part of Trimble instead of Google). More
This is the first post in a series on building guitar effects pedals. It’s going to be a bit out of order- I’ll be starting with what is usually considered the finishing touches- putting the pedal in an enclosure, modeling and laying out an enclosure in Google/Trimble Sketchup, drilling the enclosure, painting and finishing it.
Then hopefully later, I’ll go back and do a project showing how to build a simple boost pedal from scratch.
Here’s the table of contents for the whole DIY pedal building series:
This first video is the motivational intro: here are some of the things I’ve done, and yes, you can too! If you have some interest in electronics and guitars, what better way to improve your knowledge? You can get started with little or no electronics experience, and you’ll learn a bunch along the way. More
My new Epi Les Paul Tribute Plus arrived yesterday for my birthday, and it’s a beauty! These things are hard to find- none of the local stores have inventory, and every online retailer is backordered. I managed to get Guitar Center’s last one in the country(!) – from the store in Tonawanda, New York. The store manager there was great- sent me some pics, played it for me to confirm it was all good, gave me a great July 4th discount, and shipped it over for free. Thanks Chip!
Cosmetically, it’s really nice. Clean, well-defined flamed maple top and cream bindings. The cherryburst finish looks near-perfect- with rich warm coloring- not the bright overexposed yellow in the pictures at Guitar Center’s website. The Grover locking tuners feel fantastically smooth, and the switch, knobs and jack all seem good. And after some quick adjustments, it plays pretty well (but still needs some fine tuning).
The ’57 Classic pickups sound really dynamic, rich and beautiful – they’re warm when played gently, and crank when spanked. Love em. There’s quite a range of sounds with the push/pull series/parallel switching on the tone knobs. When a tone knob is pulled, the humbucker’s two coils are wired in parallel giving a lighter, brighter, thinner sound, somewhat reminiscent of a single coil (though different). It’s completely different from the ultra-thick and heavy series-humbucker sound (knob pushed in). This is a really versatile setup: a total of 8 different sounds using the 3 switches, not to mention the variations you can get by adjusting the volume knobs in the middle switch position.
In my tone capacitor video, I demonstrated the typical use of the capacitor as a low-pass filter in a guitar tone control. On a home stereo, this would be called a treble control, as it is used to roll off the high-end treble frequencies.
But what if you also want a bass control- a high-pass filter to roll off the low bass frequencies?
In the circuit diagram shown here, from the G&L S-500 guitar, you’ll find both a treble and bass control. They call it their PTB system (which presumably stands for passive treble bass, but I’m just guessing here).
I wrote about my love of looping back in 2010, when the new JamMan Solo and JamMan Stereo were announced.
Now, I’ve finally replaced my old Oberheim Echoplex Digital Pro with a shiny new JamMan Delay.
This unique pedal combines a looper with a nice delay modeler. It doesn’t do everything my old Echoplex did, but it’s a nice leap forward in technology- with stereo recording, tons of memory (and SD card expansion), stereo recording, USB connectivity and software librarian, not to mention some really nice delays.
But before we get to happiness, let’s first talk about a major manufacturing issue, nearly a total deal-breaker. If I hadn’t figured out a solution, I would have had to return the JamMan Delay and seek looper nirvana elsewhere. More
Update: 10/19/2011, added links to part #s at radioshack, mouser and mammoth.
Here’s the exciting conclusion to the series, following up the intro in Part 1, and the electronics course in Part 2.
The main goal here is to cram all the parts into the narrow confines of the jack, so we don’t need to use an external box or enclosure.
In addition to the cable and jack parts listed in Part 1, here are some of the things you’ll need:
Following up on Part 1, it’s time now to get into the heart of the project:
In this video, I talk about how JFET’s work, then work up a circuit diagram (as shown at right).
Then, I prototype the circuit on the breadboard of my Radioshack Electronics Learning Lab Model 28-280, and finally play through the circuit to show how it sounds.More