Electric Guitar Wiring question that I can't get answered.

[Justin Verrall]

Sorry no real TLDR. Hi all I'm an apprentice mechanical engineer (So a failed EE). I've had this project that is both about the wiring for an electric guitar and some more complicated wiring. It is probably at this point so far beyond me and apparently all of the guitar community (I've been on and off trying to get answers for years now) that I've decided to just go to people that poke and prod at this stuff every day and if I have to I'm going to find an electrical engineering tutor at a university and ask him. I will post some things that my help but I have this thing called a Fernandes sustainer (Will upload pdf) and it 'sustains' a string that is being played but it requires high output "active" pickups in the bridge position. Because of this humbuckers are 'normally' suggested, where I'm having trouble is that I want to put single coil 'powered' pickups called Fishman Fluence pickups ( https://www.fishman.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/single_width_install_guide-small.pdf ). I want to know if this is possible to merge the two circuits using two pots (One vol one push pull tone) along with the sustain pot and if so how and if it's complicated how much will I have to electrocute myself to make it work and if it's REALLY complicated ... Well should I just get and electrical engineering degree and probably learn more than I need to to make it work? I will add photos of what I have done so far.

 

[rjenkinsgb]

Hi,
I've not seen that type of sustainer before; but from reading the instructions what I suspect may be a problem is that a single coil pickup may directly detect the magnetic field from the "driver" coil "pickup" that the sustainer device uses to drive the strings.

That's likely why it says a humbucker and with a minimum distance, to avoid direct coupling between the two parts.

All you can do is try it!

Use the "five way" wiring diagram, as that fits with two pickups plus the driver coil.

If it does not work or you get a howl rather than sustain, you could try adding tinplate boxes around the rear of the driver coil and each pickup, or "baffles" between them, to try and weaken the magnetic coupling between the various sections.

[Professional electronics engineer and also amateur luthier].

 

[unclejed613]

the reason you should use humbuckers is that a humbucker cancels out the effects of external magnetic fields, while single-coil pickups don't. the driver coil will create a magnetic field that will be picked up by single-coil pickups. humbuckers will cancel the effect, and as shown the cancelling coil should be the one closest to the driver coil of the humbucker. this sustainer works much like an "e-bow" except it's built into the guitar.

 

[Justin Verrall]

Hi,
I've not seen that type of sustainer before; but from reading the instructions what I suspect may be a problem is that a single coil pickup may directly detect the magnetic field from the "driver" coil "pickup" that the sustainer device uses to drive the strings.

That's likely why it says a humbucker and with a minimum distance, to avoid direct coupling between the two parts.

All you can do is try it!

Use the "five way" wiring diagram, as that fits with two pickups plus the driver coil.

If it does not work or you get a howl rather than sustain, you could try adding tinplate boxes around the rear of the driver coil and each pickup, or "baffles" between them, to try and weaken the magnetic coupling between the various sections.

[Professional electronics engineer and also amateur luthier].

Hey thank you for taking the time to reply. That makes sense and I think you're probably right. In that case do you think if I modify the wiring from the fishman pickups (They are described as a stacked single width pickups) I could get a similar effect as the humbuckers?I found the guitar that uses a SSS set up with my type of sustainer but it's all in Japanese so I can't really get much from it other than they are some kind of single coil like pickup 本田 毅 NEW MODEL “P-PROJECT NA-TH-5” 受注開始！ | FERNANDES OFFICIAL WEB SITE

I'm going to try and do a little bit of experimenting to see what I can do but I think my biggest worry is frying the board. The sustainer comes with 500k pots but fishman ask for 25k pot's. I have no idea if that will make things difficult in anyway so I'm tempted to fins some 475k resistors and put them in series before any wires that will got from the pots to the pcb which I'm assuming will make the pcb register the pots as at the very lest 475kish pots or is it not worth worrying about? This is the fishman wiring diagram 514-300-129_r0 Install Guide, Fluence Single Width (fishman.com) . I'm going to take out one of the tone pots too so there's only one tone one vol and the sustainer pot in there.

A lot of this is just based off assumptions that these fishman pickups should be able to provide the "output" and all I need to do is figure out how to get it to work. I'm going to wire it up outside of the guitar first so I can turn it on and see if anything is about to let out the blue smoke and then probably jerry rig something that would hold it above my guitar and see what sounds it's making haha. Wish me luck.

Edit: I found this photo that says what the wires on the bridge pickup are meant to do if that helps?

 

[Justin Verrall]

Update! I have it powered.. Not running but nothing has exploded so bonus! I also found a link to one tone one vol for single width so I've been wiring it up a little like that. I think as long as I don't push any thing more than 9V it should be good Fluence Single Width UBP Wiring Diagram (fishman.com)