Help With Routing Les Paul Style Toggle Switch

[beet_root]

Hey im making a telecaster and i want to put a Les Paul style toggle switch on the upper 'horn', im not sure how to go about this so any help would be much appreciated.

how much wood should i leave for the switch to screw onto? someone suggested about 5mm?

what shape and size? fender seem to do a small rectangular shape and gibsons are round and quite big?

any advice?

thanks , casey

[erikbojerik]

A lot of the "how big, how thick" questions you can answer once you have the switch in hand; I wouldn't cut wood without having the switch in my possession. There are several different kinds, and they can all be a little different. I tend to favor the Les Paul approach with a big hole covered by an appropriate cover.

Your bigger issue may be the wiring channel from the switch to your control cavity. With old vintage LPs with 1-piece bodies, the way Gibson did it was to use a big honkin' drill bit and drill a single round channel diagonally through the body, from the output jack to the pickup switch. I've done this on a drill press and I'll never do it again...really difficult to keep the bit from wandering toward the top/back with the obvious danger of busting through.

Another way of doing it is to rout a channel in the main body and slap a drop top over it, but you obviously can't do it with a 1-piece body.

Yet another way is to drill a smaller channel from the neck pickup rout into the switch cavity.

[beet_root]

Alritey thanks for that i think ill go get a switch soon then, would i best with a long shaft switch or a regular?

for the wiring im drilling through to the neck pickup and foloowing the rest of the wires into the control cavity, its going to be nashville tele with the toggle switch allowing the bridge/neck combo.

Ill probly go with the gibson style it blends in better i think.

thanks for the help