Custom Shop Home: Electronics

Ballurio Guitars offers a number of control cavity electronics, ranging from simple volume and tone to active electronics.  We use the best components such as Grayhill, PEC and CTS. In the following tables you will find standard electronics control patterns that are used in our standard model guitars.

Available Control Layouts:

2 Way	3 Way	4 Way	5 Way

Control Wiring Patterns for all current models:

Wiring Patterns Descriptions:

Note: 1. Custom wiring circuits are available on an individual basis, contact us for more information.

Additional Information:

1. What is a Shock Reduction Circuit?
   At Ballurio Guitars we wire both a 220K resistor and .001mfd capacitor (rated at 500 volts) in parallel between the the electronics ground and ground wire to the bridge on all our guitars.  This simple safety device is a precaution.  It will reduce any shock that may occur through contact with the guitar's strings to about 40 volts which, although unpleasant,  is not a lethal shock.

2. 250K or 500K potentiometers?
   Both 250K or 500K potentiometers are used with our passive pickup systems.  Using 500K potentiometers will provide a brighter sound than the lower 250K, although the 250K will provide a slightly warmer sound.  The higher value potentiometers place less of a load on the pickups, preventing treble frequencies from "bleeding" through the potentiometers and being lost to ground; therefore, traditional humbucker wiring configurations use 500K potentiometers to retain high frequencies to maintain a brighter overall tone, and single coil wiring configurations use 250K potentiometers to add warmth by reducing some of the higher frequencies. This is not a "hard and fast" rule, either potentiometer values may be used when unique wiring is required.

3. What is a "Standard & 6-way Tone Selector" and how does it affect tone?
   The standard tone circuit found on most guitars is an RC circuit or resistor/capacitor circuit (as the name indicates a combination of a resistor and capacitor). These standard tone circuits lower frequency by connecting a capacitor in parallel to the source... a pickup through a resistor.  The resistor often ends up being a logarithmic potentiometer, which does affect tone, albeit not in the best manner.  These circuit are often used as an "all or none" arrangement, thus many guitarists rarely use their tone control.  At Ballurio Guitars we have two tone circuits incorporated into our electronics.  One is a standard tone circuit which uses a linear  potentiometer, resulting in a more controllable tone circuit with improved tonal variations.  The second tone circuit uses a rotary switch connected to an array of different capacitors across the circuit.  This type of tone control provides greater sound variation and improved "repeatability" in finding that perfect tone setting.

4. What is a TC Volume / "Treble Compensated" Volume?
   Each of our main volume controls have a capacitor and resistor in parallel across two terminals of the volume potentiometer.  In passive control systems, volume potentiometers reduce high frequencies faster than low frequencies when attenuated.  The "treble compensated" volume "bleeds" or allows some of the highs to bypass the volume potentiometers.  This helps to maintain a consistent, bright tone at lower  volume settings.

5. Why three & five wire PU configurations?
   Our pickups combine the two coil finish wires internally using a single wire as the "coil isolation" output where wire 1. North Start (hot) Wire 2. Series link (coil tap) and Wire 3. Shield (or bare) to Ground. With this type of pickup, you can still do coil splitting (North or South coil) by using the single coil tap wire in place of the center two that are tied together in most diagrams. The disadvantage of two-wire humbuckers is that they can NOT be switched to parallel mode or reverse phase of mode.

6. What is Coil Isolation, series/parallel & reverse phase?
   1. Series-In Phase (hum canceling): A standard humbucker wiring configuration resulting in the highest power output and best overall bass. 
   2. Single Coil Isolation (not hum canceling): North and south in traditional side-by-side coil design, and top and bottom on stacked coils.  The North orientation is used in Ballurio balanced sets for the bridge PU and South for the neck PU.  Single coil tone has a sharper attack.  Configurations between the PU coils provide many options, both hum and non-hum canceling.
   3. Parallel-In Phase (hum canceling): Single coil tone with no hum. Best option for clean, bright tone without the noise of a single coil.  Lower power output with strong treble attack. 
   4. Series-Out of Phase (not hum canceling): Thin sound with good power.
   5. Parallel-Out of Phase (not hum canceling): Thinner sound with low power.