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Switches And General Electric Tech Questions


grape nut

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I have a few questions, some of them are specificly about my guitar. so I made a bad diagram of my guitar but I can't figure out how to post it. so can someone help me with that. but here are a few of my questions anyways. I have an old sammick guitar I'm cheap I want to replace the pickups but not the switch. are there any sound differences between the swithches i use. also, theres a wire that seems to go nowhere into my body, out of the volume knob. why?(not the one that goes to the jack). the rest of my questions concern the weather or not I can still wire certain things with my switch. and weather or not it uses the same electronic mechnicm stuff as a fender switch or other quality companiees.

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Dude the wire running from volume IS the ground wire. Switches don't really change unless it has more places to switch to, they all work the same way. There are ones like the super switch which allow a lot more switching possibilites. If the pickups are the sametype as your current ones there shouldnt be any problems. if it is strat style just wire the ground wires to the top of the v pot and the other wires to the ame positions on the switch as your old one.

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I'm replacing them with some humbuckers I got off of ebay, they claimed to be off a 2003 PRS santana SE, I asked my guitar teacher a couple questions about splitting wires and stuff, and he said he didn't know much, but he suggested wiring them as single coil pickups into some of the positions on the switch, and I want to know if I can do it with my switch, it looks to me like I woudln't be able to. which is kind of why I wanted to post the picture.

also, while I was looking at all the electonic stuff in the pickgaurd I tore a wire from the switch. I thought I read somewhere that that could mess something up after I go about replacing them. (I still havn't gotton around to getting a pickgaurd) is that true?

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And you guys wonder how techs can charge $30+ just to install a pickup....
:D

grape nut, seriously, you gotta give a little to get any real help - what switch, which wire, you still haven't even mentioned what kind of guitar you're working on (that's right, Samick makes more than one model)! And please, I'm not being a jerk, but using weather when you mean whether is confusing at the very least. If you will slow down and attempt to clearly tell us what you have and what you need, there's probably somebody around here who can help you. Please be as specific as possible, and pics or clear descriptions are always helpful, especially which color wire from which pickup hooks up where. As it stands currently, all we really know is that you want to replace some pickups and you don't know how.

To answer your other question, yes, accidentally disconnected wires will just about always cause problems. :D

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Ah damn. Sorry about my bad grammer, I don't know what happened, I had good grammer until school ended.

Well since no one will explain how to upload a picture on this forum I'll describe it. There are two sides of wires connecting to the switch. On each side there are three spaces to connect. On one side are the three wires from the pickups (hot I think). On the other side there are the tone, wires coming from the pots. The siwtch is a piece of metal with, I guess, wings on the end, so when you are inbetween pickups its touching both spots. My guitar teacher said I could do things like on the second and fourth positions make the humbuckers act as single coils, and in the mid maybe have it phase or something like that. Maybe he was tired, but I don't think I could do this with this switch or most 5 way switches.

also, how can I get rid of that broken wire?

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You can't actually upload a picture to the forum. All the pics you see in threads here are hosted elsewhere (last I heard a lot of folks were using photobucket to host their pictures, but I don't pay close attention since I have my own server space). For more info on how to do it, try a search for picture hosting.

It sounds like you've got a 5 detent, two pole 3-way shorting switch, which is going to severely limit the choices you have, since position 2 is simply positions 1 and 3 and position 4 is positions 3 and 5. The easiest solution is to wire each pickup to a separate side of the switch, and hardwire the tones to the pickups. That would give you pickup A in 1 and 2, pickup B in 4 and 5, and both pickups in 3.

As for the broken wire, you'll have to figure out where it's coming from and reconnect it - what does the other end hook up to?

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