How Pickup Switching Works

[Phostenix]

This question came up in another thread.
Since this forum doesn't resize pics, I know that the jpegs I'm going to post will completely whack out the thread due to their width, so I decided to start a new thread.

Feel free to join in with how you do this.

I would appreciate if someone could explain the way pickup wiring works, how do we get all the different setups ?

Thanks

I usually start by drawing up the pickup coils in question on a piece of paper like this:

In this case, it's a 5-Way switch & 2 humbuckers. The wiring colors are based on "standard" SD colors.
The magnetic polarity is based on what I've found on the internet about SD pups, but my experience has been different - subject of another thread.

Next, I fill in the connections that I want for the different pickup selections.
I number them left to right to match how they look when you're playing the guitar.

In this example, the choices are:

1. Bridge humbucker
2. Outside coils
3. Both humbuckers
4. Inside coils
5. Neck humbucker

The diagram looks something like this:

Then, I draw up the pickup selector switch (Super Switch in this case) like this:

The numbers on the switch are how the positions wire when the switch is installed upside down (when you're soldering it).
It's backwards of the coil drawings, which does cause confusion from time to time, but I just can't work backwards on everything.
I need to see the coils as they are when playing & the switch as it is when soldering. YMMV


Then, I label the switch with the required connections:

Then, I connect things that are common & made it look more like a wiring diagram:

 

[Phostenix]

Strat Switcing Example

Strat Switcing Example

OK, so here's an example of a non-standard Strat switching setup.

Here's my 5-way and 3 single coils worksheet:

Here are the 5 choices I want:

1. Bridge
2. Middle & Bridge in series
3. Neck & Bridge in parallel
4. Neck & Bridge in series
5. Neck

Here are the connections:

There are a number of ways to approach this, but the main thing to understand is that with the 5-way Super Switch, you only have 4 poles that can be switched.

With 3 single coils, you have a total of 6 wires to potentially switch, so something has to give.

In normal Strat switching, that's not a big deal, since the ground wires never get switched - they all stay connected to ground all the time.

But, in my example here, 2 of my positions have pickups in series. Now we have to switch some grounds.

I end up needing to switch 2 grounds (Neck - and Middle - ) to get what I want.
I can leave Bridge - connected to ground, but I still can't switch all 3 hot leads because I don't have 5 poles to switch.

What I can do, though, is connect Neck + to the output all the time and switch Neck - to turn it on or off.

And, of course, Bridge - is connected to ground.


Here's the wiring of the Super Switch for that setup:

You might notice that there is no longer a way to switch the tone pots in or out of the circuit - there's no switch pole for those.

You might also notice that Middle + only ever gets connected to the output (and only 1 time here).

So, the alternative solution is to connect Middle + to the output (volume pot) all the time and just switch Middle - to turn it on or off (just like the neck pup).

That frees up a switch pole for Tone Pots (T1 & T2 in my drawing).
I'm showing it with no tone pot attached in positions 2 & 4 for the series positions. You could wire the tone pots as you like.

Here's the 2nd version:

Is it OK to leave a pickup connected to the output like that all the time? Some people don't like that. Fender does it on at least some Tele's.
There's a way to resolve that, but I'll let you try to figure that out.

 

[Phostenix]

Re: How Pickup Switching Works

I didn't go into the decision making process for what gets switched on the 5-way.

In the middle position, you need 2 wires connected to the output & 2 wires connected to ground. It would require 4 poles to accomplish that switching and you wouldn't have any way to make the series connections for the positions 2 & 4 (since those connections don't go to either the output or to ground).

That's why I had to switch individual wires instead of the "normal" switching to the output.