Wiring BKPs to an import 3 way switch...

[GeoffSOTS]

Hey guys, im new here and just recently purchased my first set of BKPs, more specifically a set of Ceramic Warpigs. I installed them in my Jackson Demmeliton King V (alder body, maple neck, ebony board). But, they sound a bit off to me, maybe its because I'm an EMG user switching to passives..but these are BKPs hottest pickups and i just dont feel like they are screaming...pinch harmonics are a bit tough to pull off even under super high gain, and single notes just don't have the sustain that im used to with active pickups...
So, im calling my wiring into question, as i could not find a diagram on how to wire these to an import 3 way switch, i had to make educated guesses based on previous wiring experience.
Do you guys have a confirmed diagram on how to wire this set to an import 3 way? 2 volumes, no tone

the switch has 8 tabs, looks like this

[Dave Sloven]

I don't know how to wire this switch but I presume you have the guitar working somehow.  Have you tried bypassing the volume pots straight to the jack? Do the pickups sound 'hotter' then?  If so and you like that sound maybe try using 1meg pots

[GeoffSOTS]

hmm, ive never considered bypassing the pots... so to do this, you would wire both neck and bridge red wires straight to the tip of the jack? and both pickups' black and bare wires to the jack ground?

also, after some more research...i realized i had installed my bridge pickup 'upside down'. i just thought it was in the 'right way' due to the orientation of the writing on the back, but i guess i was wrong..not even sure if it makes a difference with the pickups have 2 rows of poles...but i think it improved the sound of the bridge.
overall, im happy with the sound of these pickups...but im really just having trouble with the pinch harmonics. i dont believe this is a technique issue, and i dont buy into pinch harmonics are 100% technique...pickups do effect how they are translated... i had ZERO problems squealing out pinch harmonics with the EMGs that were in this guitar beforehand...i have zero problems doing them on my my other guitars with EMGs, Blackouts, and Invaders... i have zero problems hearing them acoustically.... but with these pickups, i can really only get good pinch harmonics with the bridge pickup on the A string, under super high gain. And with the neck pickup, getting them is a chore...and they just sound weak...It feels like the pickups are running at 80% or something.
I LOVE the chugs, mutes, thrashy rhythm stuffs and overall grind with these pickups, but i don't know... maybe i would be happier with another flavor of BKPs?
Maybe Painkillers or Miracle Mans?

[Toe-Knee]

here you go try this first



If this works ill modify it for 2 vol no tone

[Toe-Knee]

Here you go i got bored. Enjoy my paint skills  :D

[Dave Sloven]

Yeah apparently you can bypass the pots that way.  The recommended way though if you like that as an occasional effect would be to wire up a push-pull or push-put pot of a value you prefer with such a switch.  That way you can turn it on when you want to for that effect, and the rest of the time be able to roll back the volume and tone. It might be useful temporarily for diagnostic purposes though.

I get pinch harmonics easily from my Cold Sweat bridge.  I have to admit that I have not tried it with my A-pig but that pickup is out of the guitar at the moment so I can't go and test it.  I dare say it's fairly easy though. I can probably go get one out of the stock Gibson P-90 in my SG Junior later today. Then again I have an amp and pedalboard that tend to emphasize any kind of squeally stuff (Peavey 6534+ and a Mooer Dark Secret being the main culprits in my set-up).

[GeoffSOTS]

Here you go i got bored. Enjoy my paint skills  :D

awesome man, thanks for going to the trouble to do this... i think i had it wired correct already...
assuming your black wires in the diagram are the hot leads (red wires) from the pickups...i just added the black and bare ground wires (shown in purple)... and this is how i have it wired.

[GeoffSOTS]

Yeah apparently you can bypass the pots that way.  The recommended way though if you like that as an occasional effect would be to wire up a push-pull or push-put pot of a value you prefer with such a switch.  That way you can turn it on when you want to for that effect, and the rest of the time be able to roll back the volume and tone. It might be useful temporarily for diagnostic purposes though.

I get pinch harmonics easily from my Cold Sweat bridge.  I have to admit that I have not tried it with my A-pig but that pickup is out of the guitar at the moment so I can't go and test it.  I dare say it's fairly easy though. I can probably go get one out of the stock Gibson P-90 in my SG Junior later today. Then again I have an amp and pedalboard that tend to emphasize any kind of squeally stuff (Peavey 6534+ and a Mooer Dark Secret being the main culprits in my set-up).

Thanks man! Ill have to look into this and the 1 meg pots...sounds pretty cool. would definitely have to wire in a kill switch of some sort.
As far as the pinch harmonics go...there's no way my setup would be a problem: 6505+ w/ maxon supertube OD into a 4x12 with WGS retro 30/liberator speakers
Appreciate the input hough man!  :D

[Dave Sloven]

My set-up is quite similar ... alnico Warpigs in an Explorer into 6534+ and Orange 4x12 V30 cab with a Maxon OD-9, ISP Decimator, yadda yadda the usual death metal stuff ... personally I find that the output of the Warpigs is so huge that I can't get a clean on the 6534+ like I can with the Cold Sweats in my SG.  Like I said I haven't tried pinch harmonics on that guitar - to be honest I don't play that one very much, I mainly play my SGs - but I find them easy to get on the Cold Sweat, and indeed when I first got it I had to improve my left-hand muting as they were a little too easy to get. Apparently the Miracle Man is similar in that respect.  I got the Warpigs for downtuned stuff in the C#-A# standard range, with the SG handling E-D standard (at a pinch, it's more suited to Eb than D but I am going to try Heavy Core strings on it soon).

The pickups and electronics are out of my Explorer at the moment because I am having it rewired with new pots and cap and SC Triple Shot pickup rings (these have microswitches in them) so that I can turn any coil on or off and go from series to parallel operation.  I was thinking of installing 550K or 1meg pots but I may just install 500K pots with a 500K push-push wired up as a blower switch on the bridge pickup.  That would effectively give me as bright and loud a sounds as 1meg pots on full or even louder, and then I could go back to the fairly dark sound of the 500K pots when needed.

The Peavey amps are tricky to get working right with such high output pickups if you have any desire to play clean through them.  The most clean sound I can get from my Peavey with these pickups is a warmish slightly overdriven clean that sounds like my clean channel with the Maxon set at zero-three-max (i.e. as a fairly dark boost) with my SG with the Cold Sweats (those are quite bright when they want to be).

I have the Warpig guitar for playing stuff like Autopsy, i.e., old school death metal, but I am trying to brighten it up a little for playing stuff like Venom, which is all in C# standard but fairly bright.  Hopefully with the pots bypassed I will be able to get a sound like that with the help of my 6-band EQ pedal.

I'd be surprised though if you can't get pinch harmonics from a C-Pig.  Maybe you have the height of the pickup too low?  Also Warpigs can respond very well to moving up the bolt style pole pieces.

[GeoffSOTS]

My set-up is quite similar ... alnico Warpigs in an Explorer into 6534+ and Orange 4x12 V30 cab with a Maxon OD-9, ISP Decimator, yadda yadda the usual death metal stuff ... personally I find that the output of the Warpigs is so huge that I can't get a clean on the 6534+ like I can with the Cold Sweats in my SG.  Like I said I haven't tried pinch harmonics on that guitar - to be honest I don't play that one very much, I mainly play my SGs - but I find them easy to get on the Cold Sweat, and indeed when I first got it I had to improve my left-hand muting as they were a little too easy to get. Apparently the Miracle Man is similar in that respect.  I got the Warpigs for downtuned stuff in the C#-A# standard range, with the SG handling E-D standard (at a pinch, it's more suited to Eb than D but I am going to try Heavy Core strings on it soon).

The pickups and electronics are out of my Explorer at the moment because I am having it rewired with new pots and cap and SC Triple Shot pickup rings (these have microswitches in them) so that I can turn any coil on or off and go from series to parallel operation.  I was thinking of installing 550K or 1meg pots but I may just install 500K pots with a 500K push-push wired up as a blower switch on the bridge pickup.  That would effectively give me as bright and loud a sounds as 1meg pots on full or even louder, and then I could go back to the fairly dark sound of the 500K pots when needed.

The Peavey amps are tricky to get working right with such high output pickups if you have any desire to play clean through them.  The most clean sound I can get from my Peavey with these pickups is a warmish slightly overdriven clean that sounds like my clean channel with the Maxon set at zero-three-max (i.e. as a fairly dark boost) with my SG with the Cold Sweats (those are quite bright when they want to be).

I have the Warpig guitar for playing stuff like Autopsy, i.e., old school death metal, but I am trying to brighten it up a little for playing stuff like Venom, which is all in C# standard but fairly bright.  Hopefully with the pots bypassed I will be able to get a sound like that with the help of my 6-band EQ pedal.

I'd be surprised though if you can't get pinch harmonics from a C-Pig.  Maybe you have the height of the pickup too low?  Also Warpigs can respond very well to moving up the bolt style pole pieces.

On the contrary,  the pinch harmonics are actually clearer and more pronounced with the pickups lower..the higher the pickup gets to the strings, the more muffled/harder to pull off they are. And its not really that i cant get them...because the A string seems to produce them just fine..but on all the other stings they sound off/quiet...Maybe i should experiment with the pole pieces. Thats probably a good idea.

I also tune down to A standard with the pigs...well, all my guitars really haha. but right now I'm experimenting with it in drop C, and i actually like it a lot! i haven't played drop C in about 7-8 years now. C tuning also makes the pickups sound a lot brighter...They dont sound too dark to me in A, pretty much spot on. Tuning up to C makes it almost too bright, i had to dial some lows back in and tame the highs a bit. But yeah, the guitar is alder, which seems to be a perfect candidate for the pigs.

And yeah those triple shot rings seem pretty awesome from what ive read. But i have almost no use for cleans...I stay on the lead channel 100% of the time. Something like that would be overkill for a simple Bridge for rhythms, neck for leads guy like me :)
interested to hear how it turns out though!

[Dave Sloven]

Try dropping the pickups a bit and raising the pole pieces.  The pole pieces on my SG are jacked quite a bit.  I only haven't done the ones on my Warpigs because I haven't bothered finding the correct allen key for the bolts yet.  Sounds like it will do the trick for you.  Drop the pickups until you are getting those pinch harmonics where you want them, then start raising the poles to increase the output.  People who find the Warpigs a bit 'woofy' in their guitar tend to do this.  I've seen both Warpigs and Aftermaths with the pole pieces raised up a long way.

I use the clean channel mainly when I want to play Black Sabbath songs with clean passages in them.  I use the Explorer for playing Sabbath stuff in C# standard, the SG for E or Eb Sabbath stuff

[GeoffSOTS]

Try dropping the pickups a bit and raising the pole pieces.  The pole pieces on my SG are jacked quite a bit.  I only haven't done the ones on my Warpigs because I haven't bothered finding the correct allen key for the bolts yet.  Sounds like it will do the trick for you.  Drop the pickups until you are getting those pinch harmonics where you want them, then start raising the poles to increase the output.  People who find the Warpigs a bit 'woofy' in their guitar tend to do this.  I've seen both Warpigs and Aftermaths with the pole pieces raised up a long way.

I use the clean channel mainly when I want to play Black Sabbath songs with clean passages in them.  I use the Explorer for playing Sabbath stuff in C# standard, the SG for E or Eb Sabbath stuff

cool, thanks! ill try messing with the poles.
would like to see a pic of the explorer! ive always wanted one

[Dave Sloven]

I hope tweaking works out for you.  BKPs are very adjustable, which means you have to adjust them really to get what you want. They are not 'plug and play' pickups.

There is a thread on my Explorer with photos.  It will look different with the Triple Shots, which are black, and I think won't look as good as the gold-plated brass but I'm prepared to sacrifice some looks for functionality. I'm kind of wishing I went with white or zebra bobbins though given all that black.

https://bareknucklepickups.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=30213.0

[GeoffSOTS]

They are not 'plug and play' pickups.

This is exactly what i've come to discover. Im liking the C-pigs more every time i play them, and do slight adjustments.

That explorer is pretty sick man....i say just black it out. black triple shot...black hardware..black bridge...the white pickguard is enough to offset it.