Telecaster Guitar Forum - View Single Post - Wiring a humbucker w/4-way switch

Deaf Eddie · May 20th, 2009, 01:19 PM

You can wire the 4-way to give you your bridge pup in coil-shunt, although many players find that coil-shunting the single coil-sized humbuckers just gives them a drop in gain, rather than a new and different timbre as it does with full-sized humbuckers. So, your bridge pup would be working as a single-coil pickup, but it wouldn't SOUND like a Tele single-coil bridge pickup - just a weaker version of its humbucker tone. It IS easy to wire it up that way, if I haven't scared you out of it.

The stock modern Tele middle throw is the pups played in parallel. This is a sweet, "clucky" tone.

The 4-way mod (wired as Fender intended) adds a combos playing the pups in series, which is a fatter and slightly louder tone, reminiscent of a humbucker.

May 20th, 2009, 01:19 PM	#20 (permalink)
Deaf Eddie Tele-Afflicted Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Sunny San Diego, CA Posts: 1,740 14 Photos	You can wire the 4-way to give you your bridge pup in coil-shunt, although many players find that coil-shunting the single coil-sized humbuckers just gives them a drop in gain, rather than a new and different timbre as it does with full-sized humbuckers. So, your bridge pup would be working as a single-coil pickup, but it wouldn't SOUND like a Tele single-coil bridge pickup - just a weaker version of its humbucker tone. It IS easy to wire it up that way, if I haven't scared you out of it. The stock modern Tele middle throw is the pups played in parallel. This is a sweet, "clucky" tone. The 4-way mod (wired as Fender intended) adds a combos playing the pups in series, which is a fatter and slightly louder tone, reminiscent of a humbucker. __________________ YMMV - I been wrong before...