Help needed: Fender with 3 mini toggles leaves me clueless

[Axelman8]

Hey there,
I could really need some help on a switching issue.

My dad has this modded 1979 american fender that has 3 mini toggle switches. The toggles have up / mid / down.
On upper position, the pickup's are in phase
On the mid position the pickup is off
On down position the pickup is out of phase

My dad would like to keep the mini toggles as the work now, but also wants to have a working 5 way switch.

We have some connection questions.
1: The 5 way switch is not connected at all. What could the 5 way switch do in this configuration and how to wire it?
2: The tonepots are connected, but not working properly. Any thoughts are welcome. They are 250K

We were discussing the use of the 5 way switch, but we are clueless.
It would be great to use the 5 way switch as normal, and keep the in and out of phase option from the mini toggle switches.
There is thought, that if it would be possible to add condensators to the 5 way switch like #1: 2.2nF, #2: 6.8nF, #3: 10nF, #4:15nF, #5: 22nF, so when switching the tone would be effected. That would be great, but would it work?

There are no schematics of this mini toggle build, so based on the actual wiring connections I hope that someone here has any thoughts.

Thnx

 

[Wired]

Paging @Joe Bfstplk

 

[Joe Bfstplk]

Hey there,

Goedemorgen!

I could really need some help on a switching issue.

My dad has this modded 1979 american fender that has 3 mini toggle switches. The toggles have up / mid / down.
On upper position, the pickup's are in phase
On the mid position the pickup is off
On down position the pickup is out of phase

My dad would like to keep the mini toggles as the work now, but also wants to have a working 5 way switch.

We have some connection questions.
1: The 5 way switch is not connected at all. What could the 5 way switch do in this configuration and how to wire it?

It could do a number of things as an auxiliary switch instead of as the primary pickup selector.

The way the switch behaves is:
1, 1+2, 2, 2+3, 3 connected to common, with two sections simultaneously doing that. A replacement switch is available which can do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 connected to common with two sections, which is what you would need for your capacitor idea below

2: The tonepots are connected, but not working properly. Any thoughts are welcome. They are 250K

Need a better picture to be able to see where they are connected.

We were discussing the use of the 5 way switch, but we are clueless.
It would be great to use the 5 way switch as normal, and keep the in and out of phase option from the mini toggle switches.

If the center-off switches were replaced with regular DPDT switches, this is possible. You would lose the capability of selecting all three or neck+bridge, but gain the simplicity of operation of the 5-way lever. You would also gain the capability of using a capacitor in place of the one phase switch crossover wire to do the Bill Lawrence "1/2 Out Of Phase" trick, which would help a lot with keeping the level from dropping quite so much when using OOP tones.

There is thought, that if it would be possible to add condensators to the 5 way switch like #1: 2.2nF, #2: 6.8nF, #3: 10nF, #4:15nF, #5: 22nF, so when switching the tone would be effected. That would be great, but would it work?

With a replacement switch as noted above, yes.

There are no schematics of this mini toggle build, so based on the actual wiring connections I hope that someone here has any thoughts.

I did three mini toggles for on/off/oop ages ago in the '80s. It is not terribly complicated if broken down into compnents. The biggest question is where the tone controls are hooked up, currently.

Thnx


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View attachment 126885

 

[Axelman8]

Goedemorgen!

Goedemorgen

Thank you for your reaction. This is very usefull information. Will report back what solution worked for this guitar.

Cheers

 

[Axelman8]

Paging @Joe Bfstplk

Thnx man, your tag was successful