5 or 10-way pickup settings

[jax4pres]

Have SD's in an HH configuration on my Charvel DK24. How do I know what my wiring possibilities are? Have a 5-way switch and either want to add a push-pull or swap the 5-way for a 10-way switch. Long story short, I want to be able to add parallel settings, preserving some of the single coil settings, and adding a setting where both pickups are fully engaged. I know that I will need a schematic, but are there diagrams out there of different possibilities that I can look at? Didn't see any on this site.

PS - I know nothing about electronics so I will have someone do this for me.

 

[Chistopher]

What pickups are currently in there, what music do you play, and what types of sounds do you like?

 

[ehdwuld]

Check the website for the ten way switch you plan to purchase

Some of these work differently
And have different options

The schaller m switch gives different 5 way options than a standard 5 way

A 4 pole super switch has another set of options

 

[ehdwuld]

I use triple shot rings and a 5 way super switch
for 42 choices in my RG2

 

[Artie]

A pickup has 5 basic modes of operation:

1. Off
2. Series (Conventional)
3. Parallel
4. Stud Coil
5. Screw Coil

The two humbuckers then can be connected in the same:

1. Series
2. Parallel (Conventional)
3. Neck
4 Bridge

You can do any of those combos depending on what switches you decide to use.

 

[Mincer]

Thing is, option overload can be a real thing in guitar electronics. I always will wire a guitar with many possibilities, and then try to wire it with 5 positions I will actually use all the time, and that I can get to in 1 move.

 

[GuitarStv]

I agree with Mincer. I just want to switch between a couple of the best sounds the guitar can make. More than that confuses me and I end up fiddling with stuff rather than actually playing.

 

[Artie]

I tend to do the same. Although, I do sometimes do crazy wiring, just to hear what works, and what doesn't, and to help people with wiring diagrams.

But I have had my moments:

 

[Chistopher]

I think the natural progression for most people is they see that there are so many possibilities that you don't get on a production guitar, so they modify their guitars to have as many sounds as possible. Then with time they work their way into streamlining the instrument. I myself think the best possible wiring for a given guitar is one where I use most of the sounds just about equally, with minimal hand movements between them. I'm about to rewire my main Strat from a 5-way switch with "7-way" wiring to a 3-way switch with what would essentially be "5-way" wiring for this reason. 90% of the time I use one pickup on my Strat, and the other 10% is split pretty equally between neck/bridge and bridge/middle, which I access with the push/pull. The inconvenience of that little extra effort to skip through the notch positions is worth it to me because I rarely use those sounds.

 

[Mincer]

The most elegant way on an HH guitar to explore these possibilities is something like a HyperSwitch. After that, it is Triple Shot rings, though those are not easy to switch in a hurry.