Switching options for P90/Humbucker combination

[Tortex 71]

Alrighty, have worked out a neat way of getting neck + bridge in parallel on the superswitch. Result!  :)

A spin-off question tho, as I'm still getting my head around winding directions and magnetic polarities...

If I wanted to try the neck pickup in series with one coil of the bridge, would I be correct in thinking that the screw coil (connecting the white of the bridge to the shield of the neck) will give some hum cancellation?

[MrBump]

That looks ace - I too was puzzled by the controls behind the bridge...

Really nice finish.

[Tortex 71]

Pickup selection sorted. When a four-pole SuperSwitch won't get you where you want to be, and you want to avoid cluttering the front of the guitar with extra stuff, where do you go next? Six poles on your selector:

[WezV]

yeah, thats my idea of a nightmare!!

[badgermark]

Sweet zombie jesus! Now THAT'S a switch. I'll stick with a 3 or 5 way thankya very much. I have some fancy wiring on my esquire- holydiver humbucker in the bridge with a tele 3 way switch- coils in series (normal HB, coils in parallel, split slug coil. Have to admit the 'fancy' positions don't do much for me, i like the basic humbucker sound more than the others, so they don't get used at all.

Let us know how you get on with it once you have everything wired, and if you get round to using all those crazy switching options.

[Philly Q]

Pickup selection sorted. When a four-pole SuperSwitch won't get you where you want to be, and you want to avoid cluttering the front of the guitar with extra stuff, where do you go next? Six poles on your selector

That's insane!  Does it even fit in a Strat?

[Tortex 71]

That's insane!  Does it even fit in a Strat?

Difficult to say without trying it. Just looking at the front of a Strat it'd be a close shave between the side of the switch and the neck tone pot, but it might just go. To be honest I wasn't 100% sure it'd fit the cavity on mine without a bit of extra routing until I test-fitted it, but it went in with a bit to spare.  8)

Got it all wired up now. After a bit of experimentation to find the widest/nicest range of sounds, have gone for the following.

1. Bridge conventional
2. Bridge parallel
3. Neck + bridge parallel
4. Neck + bridge inner
5. Neck only

In the end only needed one of the "extra" two poles to get these.

And you're right Mark, chances are it'll spend the bulk of its time in positions 1 and 5, but the whole point of building this guitar was as much to learn what's possible as anything else. Plus, as I come from the land of Strat I'm just used to having a five-way. The three middle options sounded interesting and different when I was testing, and with the FrankenSwitch I can have them all without cluttering the thing with toggles, push-pulls, or something that looks like it should be on a Jaguar or the Red Special.

Now it's done, I can work out which tones I genuinely like and use, so by the time I do another one, I'll have the benefit of the experience. The only annoying thing is that I cut my fingertip while making the FrankenSwitch, so going to need that to heal a bit before I can play properly. Doh! :x