The Steel Guitar Forum

When the switch is in the middle position the front neck pickup is not as loud as the rear neck pickup, moving the switch to either front or rear works fine, any ideas?

My Sho-Buds were that way and my 54 Dual Pro is that way.

Are they out of phase?

Out of phase might be the problem. I inspected the switch but didn't see anything obvious to me. Is this switch the same as the Tele three way switch?

This is a pretty common problem, I believe. I asked about it when I got my Dual Pro and people seemed to confirm the back neck (or back necks on a custom triple) were usually slightly weaker than the front neck when in the 'all on' position. Still, the necks should be balanced enough to play them both in the middle position.

If the back one is significantly weaker, it might need a rewind. This has also happened to me. You can get a rough idea of it needing the rewind if it's weaker and thinner than the front when selected by itself. You can also roughly measure the resistance on that pickup.

Lastly, once you have the pickups in good working order, I recommend making sure the wiring follows the 'alternate hookup' listed here:

https://www.hawaiiansteel.com/graphics/ ... al_pro.pdf

I switched mine to this hookup (takes very little to switch) and it made the tone knob much more useful, both for rolling off highs and for those 'boo-wah' sounds.

Will, when the switch is moved from the middle position to the front pickup it becomes louder and equal to the rear pickup

Andy, are you saying that when selected individually, both pickups seem to have about the same volume? And they both sound good by themselves?

If so, does the middle setting make the back neck too out of balance to use? It should be fairly balanced, though I admit I very rarely use the middle setting.

yes, when selected individually both pickups have the same volume but in the middle position the rear pickup stays the same and the front pickup loses some sound.

Hey Andy,
When you say 'rear pickup', do you mean the one furthest from the player loses signal? I think that's the usual setup. If the pickup closer to the player is the one losing volume, then I'm not sure what's going on. Could be wired in some weird way.

rear is closest to player