4 Way Tele Switch Question - Strat Pickup Neck

[oharadan]

Hey everyone,

I got a question if you all can help me please. I just put a fender strat bareknuckle pickup in my tele neck spot and love it.

But the 4 way switch i have set up like this;
https://bareknucklepickups.co.uk/mai...one__4_way.pdf

has something wrong with it. The neck pos (#3)and the neck and bridge in series pos (#4)sound the same, I hear no difference. The 4 pos should be louder should it not? I have checked my wiring 3 or 4 times already. Also pos #2 sounds kinda weak for some reason.

My question is can I actually use the 4 way switch with the strat pickup or am I doing something wrong. Btw I have a bareknuckle bg 52 bridge pickup and an oak bigsby 4 way switch with both 500k pots and a .022 cap. Plan to change these to 250k this week.

Thanks for any help
Daniel

[ScottJPatrick]

try flipping the leads from the neck pickup, sounds out of phase,easy cure if that@s the case.

[oharadan]

Ok thanks I can try that... what exactly should i do?

Do you mean swapping the black (ground) and white(hot) leads around....so black to where white is and white to where black is.

[ScottJPatrick]

that's it. if that isn't the problem make sure you check all the connections again as these switches can be a bit fiddly, watch out for drops of solder dropping into the switch.

[oharadan]

I had a chance to try it today... the pos 2 3 and 4 all sounded the same. Weird... so i changed it back.

One thing i did was change the heights of the pickups and now the neck and bridge in parallel sounds way better and not so weak.

I still don't hear any diff between pos 3 and 4 (neck and neck and bridge in series), I checked the switch and re soldered but no luck.

Any other advice please? Thanks.
Daniel

[doof]

sounds very similar to a problem i had. In the end it turned out that the blade of the switch was too wide, and just couldn't physically swing far enough to engage that last position. i had to file it down to make it a little less wide. here's a link to my thread about this:
http://www.tdpri.com/forum/tele-tech...ssembling.html

just ignore what i wrote regarding the order of the positions in the very first post, i had it backwards :) i hope that helps you in some way!

[oharadan]

We have lift off!!!!!!!!!

Just unscrewed the 4 way switch and took it out, and what do you know... It goes perfect when not screwed into the guitar. Turns out the switch wasnt getting its full range of motion when screwed in just like yours.

Ahhh so I'm not going crazy looking at my average solder job for a fault..

Just spent 10 mins with a file and now i have all 4 pickup selections, really digging the neck and bridge in series, very humbuckerish.

Thanks so much for saving me lots of time and probably money as well..

Also i switched the neg and pos wires around again because I think it was actually out of phase, but now I'm not sure. How do I know what is in phase and not?

[ScottJPatrick]

if it still sounds thin and trebly in pos 2 it's probably out of phase but the humbucker would also be, flip the wires again a couple of times and you should hear the difference.

[doof]

I'm glad to hear you could fix the problem! Thanks go to soulman969 and sjtalon for helping me to solve the issue when i had it. Enjoy your new sound!

[Geo]

Did you turn up the guitar volume all the way when checking? On series
signal passes through the neck if wired so, first, then to bridge so
volume must be up to get full series output.