Passive Electronics ~ Luthiery Laboratories

Passive Electronics

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Passive electronics are un-powered - no battery. They modify the output from the pickups only by taking away - they can remove frequencies and reduce volume, even induce distortion, but they cannot add anything. The only power they have to work with is what is generated by the pickups.

Passive electronics are the most common by far on guitars and basses. There are three main classes of passive electronics:

Volume controls, which use a variable short to ground to reduce output volume. A balance control is two volumes centered on one shaft that can be used to reduce either side.

Tone controls, which are two types: A treble control uses a variable short to ground through a capacitor, forming a low-pass filter. A bass control uses a variable bypass to output around a capacitor, forming a high-pass filter.

Switches, which control the wiring of the pickups. Switches can control the wiring inside the pickup, and also the wiring between multiple pickups. Switches can also be used to select from multiple tone capacitors and many other things.

Factory guitar wiring tends to be very simple, usually just volume-tone-switch. This keeps manufacturing costs down. You can find diagrams here for all kinds of passive circuits you'll never find on a factory guitar.

Learn how to solder !!!

Electronics & Wiring

One of the fun things about building electric guitars is wiring them up. Factory wiring tends to be simple, minimizing the amount of fussy handwork required. Many manufacturers keep strictly to 'classic' designs, seldom if ever changing anything. These designs are generally simplistic, often crude or even stupid, and sometimes outright flawed. There is no need for you to do this. I don't. Here are some of the things I have done over the years. I don't claim to have invented any of this, although some of these schematics I have never seen anywhere else, and had to derive them myself.

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Drill Press

I took a drive over to Harbor Freight - purveyor of fine {sarcasm} Chinese tools & hardware - and picked up this little drill press. With a coupon, it cost me just over fifty bucks. This is not what I would call a good drill press, in fact, it is pretty crappy. The base and the table are stamped, not forged, and small. The quill travel is a measly two inches, parts that should be steel are aluminum, parts that should be aluminum are plastic, vibration is excessive, and the 3/8" chuck has a disconcerting wobble to it. I knew all that when I bought it, and I never would have if I did not already have a much better one, or at least a decent one. What I wanted from this drill press is small size and lightweight, so I can add it to my inside workstation, and not have to leave the heat/ac to go drill a hole in the garage. This press weighs well under 40 pounds and doesn't take up too much space on my inside workbench. My 'good' drill press is not something you'd want to move around a lot.

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