3-ways and 5-ways - Deaf Eddie

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In this drawing, the pickups are wired to the commons, and the switchable lugs are jumpered together and on to the output: You can see that the neck pup is connected to the output in two throws; the bridge pup is connected in two throws. NEXT: Here's a Strat, where they use one pole (one side) to select the pickups, and one pole to select the tone pots: On a Strat, the COMMONS are connected and routed to the volume pot. Because the commons are jumpered together, when the neck pup is selected, the neck tone pot is also in the circuit. The same goes for the middle pup. Remember, when this switch was first used, Strats also only had THREE throws, and Leo used the same switch in Strats and Teles.
SOME HISTORY: The #2 and #4 throws (where the Strat's "quack" is) came about because players discovered that because of the way that original 3-way selector was designed ("make before break" style), if you carefully got the lever to stick in the "in-between" spot. I'm sure Leo selected this particular switch to eliminate possible "popping" sounds when switching between pickups. In between the original #1 and #2, (and #2 and #3), the switch's wiper would actually make contact with the next lug BEFORE it lost contact with the previous lug - so you heard TWO pickups on your Strat at once! Some Strat player figured that little trick out, fiddled with the switch until he got it to play two pups at once, finding the QUACK - and the rest is history. It was a happy accident, but it was flat amazing! All they had to do was to add two mechanical "stops" to the 3-way switch, so that it would stay at the "touching-two-lugs" point in its travel. There's no difference in the lug layout of the standard 3-way and 5-way, it's just a matter of how we wire them up. After a third-party began marketing these 5-throw/3-way switches with two extra "stops" at throws #2 and #4 (as I recall, late sixties, early seventies), Fender finally made the 5- way selector switch stock on Strats (mid-seventies, if memory serves). The wiring didn't change, just the switch, and only slightly - two new "notches" were made in the mechanical action of the switch, so that it would consistently stop while contacting two of the lugs - so we could all get the magic "in-between" tones. ****** The other two switches in the first drawing are examples of other 5-ways. They still have two poles, but the poles are in-line and one after the other. Can you see them?
Page 1: Lever-style Pickup Selectors The le
Page 5: On a Tele, they used BOTH poles for

3-ways and 5-ways - Deaf Eddie

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