How to Wire a Blend Pot?

If you're looking for some new, unique tones with your old two-pickup guitar, this mod project will be helpful. In this article I will show you how to wire a pickup blend potentiometer together with a classic 'volume+tone' stack. It is a guitar wiring system without common pickup selector. The blend pot will take its function, in quite original way.

Diagram:

Simple Wiring in the Music Man Axis Style

Sometimes simple is best. This is what you can think when you're looking on the Music Man Axis or some Charvel guitars. The MM Axis is a two pickup guitar with a simple, 3-way toggle pickup switch and one pot – volume. This is completely enough if you want to get just clear, distinct signal – especially if your guitar is made from some high-grade wood and got some nice pickups.

This is the wiring diagram for that kind of axe:

Simple and Popular „Volume + Tone” Guitar Wiring

This time I would like to show you some very popular guitar wiring. It's based on two humbuckers, two pots (volume and tone) and a 3-way pickup selector in the „import style” (China, Korea). This is a very common configuration, especially in guitars made in Asia.

Simple Guitar Wiring With No Pots

Today's guitar wiring project is something really simple. There's no potentiometers, only switches. For some of you it can be an advantage. The wiring is simple in mount, and also simple in use. No pots, means no treble losses caused by them.

Switches in the wiring: neck pickup on-off-on (second „on” is reversing the phase); bridge pickup on-off: master on-off. If you like to play on two pickups together, the reversed phase function will give you a new, extra tone.

Diagram:

Wiring Inspired by Jerry Garcia's Guitar

If you're a fan of guitar DIY and The Grateful Dead (with Jerry Garcia as a lead guitarist), this wiring diagram can be interesting for you. It's based on Jerry Garcia's guitar - The Tiger.

This is not a copy of the Tiger's wiring. It's designed to get most of Tiger's tone options, but it's also customized to be mounted in guitars that you can easily buy today.

Here is my project:

Wiring for P90 Pickups (Soapbars, Dog Ears)

This guitar wiring is designed for use with P90 and similar, hot output single coil pickups. To my taste, it's especially good for crunch and hi-gain drive tones.

Gentle Tone Control - Another Guitar Wiring Schematic

This is the cool guitar wiring if you like to warming your guitar tone by a gentle turns of the tone potentiometer's knob. For my taste, it works the best on bright or medium-bright pickups (not very hot humbuckers)

Guitar Wiring With Untypical, Flexible Tone Control

This guitar wiring is for those of you, who like to using a guitar on-board tone control in many ways, even for very subtle differences.

It's based on one volume potentiometer, two tone pots and two capacitors.

Single Potentiometer Wiring With an Useful Tone Control and a Treble Bleed Capacitor

Probably you have been seen guitars with only one potentiometer - volume. The reason of using this kind of wiring is need for minimal impact on tone from potentiometers, when a tone control is not really necessary. But what we can do, if we want some tone control and we want also a natural guitar tone (no big impact from pots)?

We can make this kind of compromise:

Avoiding a Tone Control Circuit for a More Natural Tone

In this schematic you can see, apart from standard elements, a DPDT on-on switch, wich can be an external element or a part of a push-pull potentiometer. It's used to switch off the capacitor and tone potentiometer together with their grounding. In effect of thi operation, the sound will be more natural (no impact from the tone cap. and the tone pot.).

It can be done in all types of wiring (3x single coil pickup, 2x humbucker; two pots, four pots etc.)