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You can usually put the finish of one coil to the beginning of the next coil and you will have two pickups in series. Providing they are both wound in the same direction and have the same magnet polarity they will have proper phasing. If you ground the beginning from both coils and make both…

One neat thing about the old cloth braid push back wire is that you can slide it back from the solder joint about 1/2″. Then you can carefully snip the stranded 22 gauge lead wires at 1/2″ away from the switch solder joint. After you work on your pickup and put the wires through the…

I would check the connections on each end of the cord. The solder joints can become fatigued and break shorting out the signal. Check the length of cord for internal breaks. At times the center conductor or shield can break and become intermittent causing the instrument to short in and out. Check for worn plating…

By reversing the neck and middle pickup lead hookup wires on the lever switch (3 or 5 way) you will be able to get the following pickup combinations. It is best to use 250k volume and tone controls. In the drawing below the wires from the tone are connected to the treble and middle pickup….

You can put a RC Network (resistor & capacitor) between your #2 and #3 lug of your volume potentiometer. The #1 lug is grounded. Fender used a .001 mfd capacitor. I like using a passive control and it’s quite simple to do. I like using a 150k resistor in parallel with the .001 mfd capacitor….

The easiest thing to do is reverse the hot leads on the #2 and #3 lugs on each volume control. The #1 lug is usually soldered to ground on each volume control. This will reverse the circuit to the lever switch before going to the jack. You will have independent volumes for the bridge and…

Using a 5 way lever switch can combine the bridge and middle pickup in the # 2 position and combine the neck and middle pickup in the # 4 position. The # 1 position (bridge pickup alone), the # 3 position (middle pickup alone) and # 5 position (neck pickup alone). When in the #…

There are many instruments and custom wiring circuits that determine what combination of pickups can be used. A tone circuit can have active or passive components to enhance the sound of an instrument. Natural enhancement is done by the combination of woods, hardware and amplification. Below are a few common instruments and how the selector…

3-position switch Position Pickups Tone control Neck Middle Bridge 1 2 1 On On 2 On 3 On On 5-position switch Position Pickups Tone control Neck Middle Bridge 1 2 1 On On 2 On On On 3 On 4 On On On 5 On On

There are many types of switches used for various guitars and models. The typical Centralab # 1452 lever switch is a 3-way switch used on the Fender Broadcaster, No-casters, Esquires, Telecasters and Stratocasters. Now the modern switches, such as the Mega-switch, Super-5-way, are being used to modify the wiring in standard instruments. Slide switches are…