Looking for Teisco Spectrum 5 wiring

[edvard]

I have a friend who is wanting to do a restoration after the previous owner gutted it to his liking.

Here's a demo video that shows all the myriad switch combos, and what they do to the sound:



Does anybody have a wiring diagram, or even a decent high-resolution gutshot that I can trace the wires from?  I'd also love to try doing the same wiring on a "project guitar" at some point, but I have too much else on my hands at the moment. 

As you can see in this shot of the super-rare plexi version: joelasqo.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Henry-Kaiser-1.png
there are mini-transformers between the pickup positions.  Anybody ever seen anything like that used in a guitar?

Thanks

[newey]

Definitely the holy grail of Teiscos! Although, I suppose one of the '90s reissues rather than an original?

No one has posted any diagrams of this that I can recall. About all I can tell you you probably already know.  It's wired for stereo; with the cable plugged into the forward jack, you're in mono mode. Plugging a second cable into the rearward jack and connecting to a second amp gives you the stereo option, which is controlled by the red slider to the rear of the colored pickup slide switches (upwards is stereo, down is mono).

In stereo operation, you get the bass coils for strings 4-5-6 to one channel, and strings 1-2-3 through the other channel. This is the same sort of stereo wiring that Gretsch used to do on the White Falcons. Presumably, in stereo mode the pickups are selected in the same way by the 5 pickup selection slide switches. This is about all I'm sure of, the rest below is speculation . . .

In mono mode, the 5 pickup slide switches control the 6 pickup coils. Just a guess, I'm not sure how those split-coil pickups are wired- but my best guess is that the coils are selected in a "ladder-like" fashion.

So (I'm guessing), the red switch towards the bridge gives the Bridge bass and treble coils, the next switch over (the orange one)gives the bridge bass coil in parallel with the mid treble coil, the yellow switch gives the mid bass coil + mid treble coil, the green switch gives mid bass coil + neck treble coil, and the purple switch gives both neck coils.

Just like walking up the steps of a ladder. . .But again,just speculation on my part.

You might try posting this over at the VintAxe forums, there's some Teisco types who hang out there.  Maybe someone has a diagram.

If we are to figure this out with no more information, though, we'll at least need to know what types the various switches are.  Single pole? Double pole?

[edvard]

Walking up the ladder... now that makes sense.  But what are the mini-transformers for?  or maybe those aren't mini-xfos at all, but something else entirely...    So many questions...

Regarding VintAxe.com:
In all my internet searches, I did find ONE post at VintAxe with the same question and another member replied that they had (or could get) photos.  I have emailed them (they included their email in the post, so I took advantage...), but no response so far.
www.vintaxe.com/cgi-bin/eboard30/index2.pl?frames=no&board=vintaxe&mode=Current&message=2172

Also, let me sleep on it and I'll prolly be able to scrape up a wiring diagram that works as you speculate, which would be useful in other contexts as well.  Now, the self-canceling switches on the original had one happy flaw; you could push down any combination of them, though I don't think Teisco meant for this to happen. But there it is, so we can just as happily use plain ol' toggle switches and get down with it.

[experiment]

Bumping this convo, I'm also looking for this. I have 90s reissue. I found that eastwood recently released a reissue, so I emailed Michael Robinson if he would share their diagram hoping I'll get a reply.  Their website shows:

Blue = (Front/Pair).

Green = (Center/Pair)

Orange = (Rear / Pair)

Yellow = (Phase)

Red = (Phase) -

which might be wrong, differs from this link www.offsetguitars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=90590

5: Blue = (Front / Pair)
4: Green = (Center / Pair)
3: Yellow = (Rear / Pair)
2: Orange = (Phase)
1: Red = (Phase)

I may post some images later.

Cheers,

[newey]

Experiment-

Hello and Welcome to G-Nutz2!

The original question was due to the OP having one of the guitars with the wiring gutted. If you have one of these guitars(and, unless it has similarly been de-wired), then we can probably figure out the wiring with some photos and perhaps along with a diagram you could draw.