Switch gone bad?

[pete12345]

Hi all- I think I broke something

Been fiddling with my squier strat recently, putting in the strat lover's strat mods, and now I can't get anything at all out of it. All positions are dead.

All I get is hum, similar to an unplugged lead. The volume control makes the hum louder or quieter.

The thing is though, with the pickguard off and facing the strings, I can get some signal through when I cross the switch terminals to a pickup, leading me to suspect the switch may be broken, as the pickups seem to work ok. Could that be the problem or does it sound like something else is gone?

Pete

[D2o]

Apr 22, 2008 9:53:21 GMT -5 pete12345 said:

Hi all- I think I broke something

Been fiddling with my squier strat recently, putting in the strat lover's strat mods, and now I can't get anything at all out of it. All positions are dead.

All I get is hum, similar to an unplugged lead. The volume control makes the hum louder or quieter.

The thing is though, with the pickguard off and facing the strings, I can get some signal through when I cross the switch terminals to a pickup, leading me to suspect the switch may be broken, as the pickups seem to work ok. Could that be the problem or does it sound like something else is gone?

Pete

Pete,

I am going to direct you here, where - if you can stand the little written excursion we ended up taking off the path, you may expect to have some very sound advice from sumgai. With a little luck, this may give you a basis on which you can refine your findings:

guitarnuts2.proboards45.com/index.cgi?board=wiring&action=display&thread=1462

I hope it helps.

[ChrisK]

I would start with measuring the resistance of the guitar at the output jack for all positions of the switches. Make sure that the volume is set at the full-on position.

Also, since you indicate that the volume has some effect on the hum picked up, in a particular switch position (your choice) measure the resistance with volume control set at "10", "8", "6", "4", "2", and "0".

This will tell you/us what's going on.

[pete12345]

Fixed it ;D

I did my usual thing in this sort of situation, and pulled the broken switch apart. (It's an import switch btw) Turns out that in soldering wires to the terminals, some of the springy contacts inside had become bent, and werent contacting the common terminal anymore. I just bent them back into position and it works fine.

For the record, I also figured out that there is absolutely no difference between the import 3 and 5 way switches. The only difference is in the way they are assembled. There are 5 detents at the top of the casing, and 3 at the bottom. On the switch blade, there is a ball bearing which is pressed against the casing by a spring. Depending on whether the spring/bearing is assembled on top or below, you can get a 3 or 5 way switch.

I also took the opportunity to wire up the lower tone control as a parallel blender between the bridge and neck pickups. Normally, this blends in the neck in the B or B+M positions, and the bridge in the N or N+M positions. In series mode though, it blends out the neck pickup from N*B and (N+M)*B. Quite useful.

Pete

[ChrisK]

For the record, I also figured out that there is absolutely no difference between the import 3 and 5 way switches. The only difference is in the way they are assembled. There are 5 detents at the top of the casing, and 3 at the bottom. On the switch blade, there is a ball bearing which is pressed against the casing by a spring. Depending on whether the spring/bearing is assembled on top or below, you can get a 3 or 5 way switch.

There is a similar lack of differences between the Fender standard 3-way and 5-way levers except for the detent mechanism.


Thanks for the tip, it appears that one can change the import switch for the desired mode.


Off-Shore Lever Switches