What else can I do with a 5 way switch besides pickup/coil selection?

DarkMatter

DarkMatter

Unprofessional Toneologist
I'm starting a new project and I wanted to keep the routing very simple.

Bridge = Humbucker
Neck = single coil
Volume pot only
Blade style switch rout

I can use a super switch if necessary. Are there any neat tone shaping tricks I can wire up so that I have a more options besides bridge, bridge+neck, neck? I thought about putting my lil 59 in the neck and doing a PRS style splitting arrangement, but I have a similar setup taking advantage of hybrid humbuckers in another guitar.
 
Re: What else can I do with a 5 way switch besides pickup/coil selection?

You could wire different cap values to the super switch it would give you more tonal variation.
 
Re: What else can I do with a 5 way switch besides pickup/coil selection?

Artie posted a cool setup for H-H with a superswitch that is different than the PRS setup. Your obviously sub the neck for a single coil sized humbucker.

View attachment 71281

If you want to go out of the box, you could use it to switch tone caps, do series parallel between pickups, set one pickup out of phase with another, switch in a preamp, add in a resistor/capacitor "tone" circuit, etc.
 
Re: What else can I do with a 5 way switch besides pickup/coil selection?

Securb said:
You could wire different cap values to the super switch it would give you more tonal variation.
Click to expand...

I thought that would work. Is this similar to having a tone pot set at 10? Definitely an option I may try.

PFDarkside said:
Artie posted a cool setup for H-H with a superswitch that is different than the PRS setup. Your obviously sub the neck for a single coil sized humbucker.

View attachment 71281

If you want to go out of the box, you could use it to switch tone caps, do series parallel between pickups, set one pickup out of phase with another, switch in a preamp, add in a resistor/capacitor "tone" circuit, etc.
Click to expand...

Artie has some sweet wiring setups but I'm strongly leaning towards having a true single in the neck. Your latter 2 suggestions are appealing. Do you know where I might find more info and/or diagrams?
 
Re: What else can I do with a 5 way switch besides pickup/coil selection?

Wire the humbucker and neck together with the humbucker phase reversed?
 
Re: What else can I do with a 5 way switch besides pickup/coil selection?

My current #1 has this combo.
2 humbuckers, 5 way super switch
Bridge
Outer coils series
Outer coils parallel
Inner coils series
Neck

The neck humbucker is a hybrid with massive coil mismatch. It was a custom shop piece with a 5k coil and 3.5k coil wound to be as different as possible. This gives my 3 middle switch positions more distinction, but I never use the parallel position.

For this guitar, given that I have only a single coil rout in the neck, even if I use my lil 59, wiring like my #1 probably wouldn't give me as much variety. I may go to a setup like this if my other experiments don't please me, but right now I'm wanting to try something different.

The tone filter idea sounds interesting. I've been looking around the web and found that a bass cut can also be achieved passively which may be very useful on this guitar.

I'm wondering if this is possible;

Bridge wide open
Bridge with high cut
Bridge with bass and high cut
Neck with bass cut
Neck wide open
 
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