3 way switch on a pickup

[Bobby Harris]

How do you hook 3 way switch on a pickup you may not can but I was wondering if you can. Thanks

[Bill Ferguson]

You need to explain a little more.
Are you trying to hook up a 3 way switch for a D10 so that you can switch between pickup?

I have never heard of using a 3 way switch on a single pickup. What would be the reason?

[Jack Stoner]

Some humbucking pickups have separate leads for each winding. You could have, for example winding #1 to one connection on the switch, winding #2 to another connection on the switch and both connected on the 3rd switch option. Basically wiring an "on-on-on" switch the way a D-10 is wired. I don't know if the two different windings would produce any difference in tone, but a single coil pickup and a dual coil humbucker will have some difference.

[ajm]

We don't know what your are trying to do.
We don't know if you have an S10 or a D10.
We don't know what pickup you have.

To rephrase what Jack said............

Some pickups have 3 leads, some have 4.
Let's assume that we're talking 3.

You could possibly wire it up:
1) Full humbucking.
2) Coil tapped/split for a thinner/more trebly single coil sound.
3) And MAYBE (the experts can weigh in on this) wire it up so that both coils are in parallel. I wouldn't count on this one, though. It MIGHT give you a thinner sound, but with the added perk of being noise cancelling (humbucking). This is easier to do with 4 leads as found on a lot of 6 stringer humbucking pickups.

[D Schubert]

Or, you could hook up a single pickup the same way that a Fender Esquire is wired, with a three-way switch, volume, and tone controls......

[Bobby Harris]

Schubert I thank you hit the nail on the head. Thanks everyone

[Wiz Feinberg]

I bought a pair of L-705 wide mounts that have split coils. I intended to replace the LXR-16s that are in my Emmons, but never figured out how to wire a 5 way lever switch to utilize the split coils. Any help with a schematic would be appreciated. In the meantime my old pickups are still in the guitar, with their 3 way lever switch.

I will start a new topic about this project.

[Godfrey Arthur]

Then there's the 5 way 10 position Free Way switch.

Just to introduce this marvel of electronic gadgetry.

Check out the PDF for the posibilities.

https://www.stewmac.com/freeinfo/i-2058 ... agrams.pdf






Unless as mentioned if you're using a single pickup using a switch will involve the pickup being wound with multi-taps which means there are separate leads that come off the pickup to make the pickup work at different numbers of windings.

A normal Strat pickup has 8,000 windings (turns) so tapping would take a lead at say 4,000 windings and then at 8,000 to get you two leads or taps.

If no multi-taps, then you'll need two pickups to justify using a switch as in most guitars with more than one pickup.

The single coils in the photo below show three wires coming from each single coil pickup on a Tele.


Or if it's a humbucker, you can coil tap those as it will be inherently a "two pickup" device.


This is best done with a humbucker already set up for coil tapping.

[D Schubert]

My Telecaster body, Loni Specter square neck, one single-coil pickup. I originally installed an overwound guitar pickup with Fender Esquire circuit. The volume-only and volume-tone positions were musically useful, the third position with bassy capacitor was very muddy. I rewired to give me a wide-open bypass position, volume-only, and volume-tone. That was better, especially with a volume pedal. More recently, I found a triple-tapped single coil pickup that is even more to my liking (Don Mare Stingray).

[Thomas Stone]

Numerous options available for using a 3-way switch with a single pickup.

If it's a humbucker, you can wire it for series, parallel, coil split, or out of phase.

If it's a single coil, an option would be a 3-position tone control.

As usual, it all depends on what you're trying to achieve.