So happy with my guitar mods! Q about rotary switch I used...

[Skreddy]

I found a switch in a surplus store, and I'm wondering if they're still available in production somewhere...

What is a rotary switch called that has 1 common pole, 3 switchable poles, 6 positions, and the following table of connections (I'll number the "common" pole as 0), not necessarily in order...

0-1
0-2
0-3
0-1-2
0-1-3
0-2-3

I sat down with a piece of paper yesterday and (almost) worked out how I can get six different tones out of my guitar with this switch.

My Ibanez SZ520 has undergone lots of pickup changes, and I finally settled on Fender SCN Tele pickups as my favorites.  The only problem is the guitar has too much boomy, rumbly, swampy low end, so I installed a 1M pot in parallel with a .0022mf cap and wired up the signal to pass through this assembly for a "bass contour" control.  I found that 1M is way too high, as it was just an on/off situation with only 1/10 of a turn.  Changed this to a 250k pot, but still there were only 2 distinct tones.  So I decided to put in a rotary switch for different selections.

The switch selects the following options:
1 - straight wire
2 - .001mf
3 - .0033mf
4 - .0022mf in series with .0033mf
5 - .001mf
6 - .001mf in series with .0033mf

Looks like I'm missing a straight .0022mf setting.  I'll see if I can't improve that.

But anyway, this guitar is really fun to play now!  I can get as juicy and liquid and rumbly as I want or dial in as thin and twangy a sound as I'd like.

I'll follow up with pics, etc., in a bit.

[Skreddy]

[Mark Hammer]

I love it when a guitar can be easily morphed from one personality into another.

On my Coronet, I have a P90 at the bridge, and a custom Alnico SC that I wound to match the unusual string spacing.  The 500k neck volume has an over-valued compensating cap (1500pf I believe) that effectively doubles as a bass cut once you turn down to 6 or less.  Once you go below 5, you're into Nile Rodgers and Johnny Guitar Watson territory.  The bridge pickup also has a compensating cap, but closer to normal value.  The tone control is simply a 3-position toggle with  tone lift in the middle and 2 different treble-cut caps in the side positions.  Between the two volume pots and the tone toggle, there are a myriad of tones you can get from Motown rhythm scratches to Angus Young bridge howls.

I bought a budget Parker P44 recently (not a "true" Parker Fly), which comes with some very so-so humbuckers and a piezo bridge pickup.  You can select mag, mag+piezo, or piezo, and can nicely blend mag and piezo.  There is also a push-pull tone pot with coil cancel.  The mag volume pot came uncompensated, so I dug in there and stuck a 470pf cap on it tp help get a little more bite when the volume is turned down a hair.  Mixing in a bit of N+B using coil cancel, and some piezo bridge, gets nice rhythm tones.

People should keep an eye out for some of those offbeat rotary switches (and occasionally switched pots) in surplus places.  Sometimes you can do really interesting things with them.