Tele Custom/Deluxe Wiring Question

[skh515]

I’m thinking about turning a Tele into a Tele Custom or possibly a Tele Deluxe.

The way I would normally wire a two pup, dual Vol & Tone guitar is:
Pickup to Vol/Tone to Switch to Jack.

Since the Tele Custom and Tele Deluxe have the switch above the strings, like a LP, this would mean transversing the guitar about three times. This would take like, what, 10ft of wire?

My idea is this. I carefully open up the shielded pup wire and pull out, at least part of, the ground wire. I then run the grounds to the 3-way switch so that when the switch is on, the pup is grounded and the circuit is complete. Then I can run the rest of the wires from the pups to the Vol/Tone pots to the jack.

Will this work? Is this the best way to do it? Any other comments or concerns?

Thanks,
Steve

[ArtieToo]

Re: Tele Custom/Deluxe Wiring Question

So, basically, you're talking about doing something like this:



Putting the switch on the ground side of the circuit, rather than the hot side?
That should work fine, just as long as you realize that the same audio signal flows through the ground side of a pup circuit, as the "hot" side.

In other words, it doesn't really matter whether you run the ground "up to the switch" and back, or the hot. The electrical path/distance will be about the same.

Edit: BTW - You should only need to run the hot wire of each pup up to the switch, and then one wire back to the volume control. Shouldn't require more than about 2 feet of wire. Maybe 3 max.

[skh515]

Re: Tele Custom/Deluxe Wiring Question

Yeah, I guess the idea is to run the signal (+ or -) to the switch first, but without combining the two signals until after they run through their respective Tone and Volume pots, or Volume and Blend pots.

[ArtieToo]

Re: Tele Custom/Deluxe Wiring Question

Ok, I think I understand what you're saying. You wanted to run dual volume and tone controls, but maybe, switch the grounds, instead of hot?
(Hope I have that right.)

If thats correct, it would look like this:



Which wouldn't really work well. When you only had one pup selected, it would still be affected by both volume and tone controls.

So, this would be the more conventional way:



Note, that in both diagrams, the blue dots represent where the wires would go up to the switch, and the red dots, where the wire would come back down from the switch. Either way will present about the same amount of wire to do the job.

I hope I'm on track with what you're asking.

[skh515]

Re: Tele Custom/Deluxe Wiring Question

Yeah, I think we're on the same page. Only, looking at the top diagram, I would run the signal into the individual Tone pots, then to the Blend and final the Volume before connecting to the output.

This should also give me the '50s mod Lew is so fond of, if I'm not mistaken.

Would that work?