Tonefiend Forum

Hi Joe,

I've just ordered an 11 way rotary switch (as the title would suggest) and am somewhat nervous, nay, petrified about how to even begin to wire it.

It has 24 connections on two layers, have you even an inkling yo how this may be done, or where I could find a circuit diagram, it's going in a strat mongrel of mine, which currently has a Seymour Duncan vintage staggered (middle) in the neck, a JB jr (neck) in the middle, and an SD full distortion in the bridge!

These are all gorgoeous pickups, each selectable by its own on-off switch, fed to a standard v/t/t with a coil split on the second tone. I'll get a new pickguard and wallop the rotary near where the mini switches are, possibly having to rout a little, depending on space.

Am I in over my head?

This will be my most ambitious endeavour to date!

Take my comments with a grain of salt, as I tend to speak authoritatively without tons of experience in what you are trying to accomplish. In fact, you actually haven't said what you want to accomplish. You have a switch and you want to do "something" with it.

24 connections would indicate you have 2 poles to play with. So you have a 2 pole, 11 way switch. When I went to rewire a 2-pickup guitar including different pickup wiring arrangements (series/parallel, reverse phase, etc.) I found that I needed a 4-pole super switch. The challenge with only 2 poles is that you can't lift both ends of two pickups to rearrange them. With 3 pickups, at the minimum you'd want 3 poles, which would allow you to make various parallel combinations. Any time you want to allow a pickup to be reconfigured for series/parallel or phase reverse you have to be able to switch both sides of it.

You could possibly leave the toggle switches IN, and then use this 11 way thing to drop in different tuning caps. My thought though is that 11 positions for tuning caps is excessive, because the difference between adjacent settings will be slight.

Now, if you could give us a hint at what you WANT to do with your guitar's wiring, it would be easier to propose a solution.

And, uhhh... what's a "blower"?