ASK-HBS – Ibanez JS1200 Mod

Question

Hi. Love this site. Need help, tho.

I’m having difficulty finding/understanding what should be (IMO) a simple mod to my Ibanez JS1200.

HH (Dimarzio) with P/P volume and tone. It uses a simple 3-way toggle PUP selector. The tone splits the PUPS when pulled up. That’s all good.

But I want the tone portion to affect the bridge PUP only – no tone on neck in both down and up positions.

I’ve tried a few different wiring configurations of the neck pup in an attempt to take the tone pot OUT of its signal chain while still splitting the coils when the P/P is pulled up (both PUPs split).

Can you direct me to a diagram showing what I’m trying to accomplish?

I’ve been all over Fralin, Dimarzio, Ibanez users’ sites, etc. Can’t find any instruction/discussion on this exact configuration.

Thank you for any help.

Ken

Answer

Hello, Ken thanks for the great question. I could not find a good wiring diagram for the JS1200, but I think we can figure it out. In most guitars that use a single tone control for multiple pickups, the signal comes out of the three-way switch and goes to the volume control. The tone control gets the signal from the volume, so it controls both pickups, but we can split up the two components to do what you want. The coil-split can be left alone and will work the same.

Here is how the finished diagram should look.

Fig 1

I hope this helps and gets you going. Let us know how it turns out and if you have any other questions.

Thanks for reading Humbucker Soup!

Ken’s Response

That was an amazing and well thought out response !!

I never considered the noise. You’re absolutely right!

Thank you again.

I’m just gonna stick with the on/off on each pickup and rock out!