PRS Rotary 5-way / Duncan P-rails ?

[derker]

Hey guys-

Anyone here have experience wiring up a PRS Rotary 5-way switch? I would like to use it to control a P-rails in the neck (the pickup is finally on the way!) in conjunction with a 3-way toggle. The rotary switch would be used to control the mode of the P-rails in the neck (parallel/series/P-90/rail/off) , and the 3-way toggle would function as a normal 3-way pickup selector. I posted a thread about a week ago about the subject but I dont think anyone saw it!

Is this possible?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

[Robert S.]

Re: PRS Rotary 5-way / Duncan P-rails ?

The new style PC rotary switches from PRS wont be of much help but a rotary mega switch would do the trick.

 

[derker]

Re: PRS Rotary 5-way / Duncan P-rails ?

Thanks for the reply! The rotary switch I have is not the more recent PCB rotary 5-way, but the older multi-tiered switch. Do you think that one is usable for my purposes? Thanks!

 

[Robert S.]

Re: PRS Rotary 5-way / Duncan P-rails ?

You have the right switch.

 

[derker]

Re: PRS Rotary 5-way / Duncan P-rails ?

Awesome. Do you know of anywhere that would have a wiring schematic for this rotary switch? Maybe not specifically for the p-rails, but anything that could help me figure out which terminals need to be jumped together, and how I should deal with the leads coming from the p-rails. Using the individual taps should be relatively easy to figure out with a multimeter, but how would I go about having both parallel and series on the switch?

Do you know of any appropriate reading material?

Thanks again for your help, I'm stoked to get this thing working!

 

[derker]

Re: PRS Rotary 5-way / Duncan P-rails ?

I'm trying to figure out the different wiring combinations for the P-rails; try and bear with me!

Black / Red + White / Ground = Series
Black + Red / White + Ground = Parallel
Black / Red / White + Ground = P90 (rails off)
Black + Red / White / Ground = Rails (P90 off)

Am I correct?

If so, my next step is figuring out how to wire up the rotary terminals together. It's going to be a task, any help is appreciated. :bigok:

 

[lyongraulty]

Re: PRS Rotary 5-way / Duncan P-rails ?

hey, your project looks similar to mine. I'm putting a p-rail in my les paul and want to use a rotary switch to control the functions. hermetico has provided a beast of a wiring plan using 3 rotaries (one for each pickup + one to replace the 3-way toggle), but you can take what you need from it. here it is

 

[derker]

Re: PRS Rotary 5-way / Duncan P-rails ?

Hey man, thanks for the reply.

Is that a 6-way rotary in the diagram? What do the 6 positions do?

 

[lyongraulty]

Re: PRS Rotary 5-way / Duncan P-rails ?

Yes there are three 6 way rotary switches in this diagram. (they are the two tier 4P6T types.) These positions on the for the pickup controls (the ones on the left) are as follows:

Pos / combo
1 . coils in series, in phase (regular HB)
2. inside coil (rail)
3. outside coil (P90)
4. coils in parallel, in phase
5. coils in series, out of phase
6. coils in parallel, out of phase

The pickup selector is wired as follows

Pos / combo
1. Neck
2. Neck and bridge in series
3. Neck and bridge in parallel
4. Bridge
5. Neck and bridge in series and out of phase
6. Neck and bridge in parallel and out of phase

However, after trying this I couldn't get it to work, so I went back to the 3-way toggle. I added a phase switch on one of the pickups to get that hollow, out of phase sound. But if you do want to go this direction there is a good plan here: http://alexplorer.net/guitar/mods/rotary.html

Take a look at this thread https://forum.seymourduncan.com/showthread.php?t=149009
It will probably help you out.

let me know how it turns out and I'll do the same. Once I get my mod done I'll post a youtube video of it so people can hear the sounds. There are plenty of demos of just the basic sounds, but not a lot of the phasing mods or the series/parallel switching.