Understanding the 5-way Switch

Whether it's controlling your Stratocaster or your sleek Ibanez shredder, the 5-way switch is the most common switch choice for 3-pickup guitars out there today. And yet, as popular as it is, the unassuming 5-way is one of the least understood switch types used in guitar wiring.

Whether you're thinking of wiring your new guitar build, modding your existing axe, or even creating some mind-blowing wirings for your 2-pickup guitar, an understanding of the 5-way switch and how it operates is central to getting your wiring correct.

In general there are 3 flavours of 5-way switch out there. These are the standard Fender switch - having 8 pins, 4 to a side - and 2 kinds of import switch having either 7 or 8 pins in a row across the bottom.

No matter which configuration you have, the operation of the switch is identical in all cases. You need only identify the specific pin configuration provided by your switch to apply it to your own particular wiring design.

The most important thing to know about the 5-way is that, internally, it operates as a 2-pole / 3-way switch. This means that internally the switch is made up of 2 lots of 3-way switches as shown below left. Each 3 way switch directs one of 3 input signals (or a combination of them) 1, 2, 3 to the output 0.

In terms of the Fender standard 5-way, each set of 4 pins on either side represents a single 3-way pole.  For the 8-Pin Import switches, the leftmost 4 pins correspond to one pole, and the rightmost 4  pins correspond to the second pole. The 7-pin configuration is identical to the 8-pin, except for the fact that both poles share the same central output (0) pin.

With each pole operating independently, the following connections are made in the 5 switch positions:

Switch Position	Blue (0) Connected to	Orange (0) Connected to
1	Blue (1)	Orange (1)
2	Blue (1) and (2)	Orange (1) and (2)
3	Blue (2)	Orange (2)
4	Blue (2) and (3)	Orange (2) and (3)
5	Blue (3)	Orange (3)

It's operation is pretty straightforward once you know the pin assignments! For a standard H-S-H set-up, only one pole of the switch is required to give a simple 1: N, 2:N+S, 3:S, 4:S+B, 5:B switching configuration since all these combinations map directly to a single column in the table above.

 

The second pole comes into it's own when coil tapping can be employed to split humbuckers into single coils. For example in the wiring diagram given below.

Les Paul Jnr Double Cut: Wiring for a Single Pickup

Looking at the wiring for the Les Paul Jnr, I came across this interesting schematic from the Guitar Wiring Blog which provides for multiple tone options from a single, single-coil source. The circuit uses two on-on switches to provide both a tone bypass function and the choice of 2 different capacitance values when the tone circuit is engaged.

Here's how it works. Firstly we start with a standard single-pickup circuit with a volume pot and tone circuit:

We then add two cutoff switches (both controlled from the same physical switch) to provide the ability to completely remove the tone circuit when required:

To this we then add a second switch that selects between 2 separate capacitor values when the tone circuit is active:

And there you have it. Cool huh? A big thanks to the Guitar Wiring Blog for this idea.

For me this is an especially great idea for the Jnr as it only has the single P90. I have two push-pull 500K pots waiting on my workbench for just such an application, and so this seems too good an opportunity to pass up! I really think this baby is going to sound great with the tone bypass engaged. Makes me wish I could afford a new P90 pickup for this baby as well (I've had my eye on the GFS Dogear P90 for a while now) but the boss has frozen all guitar upgrade funds for the time being. This said, I'm planning on wiring in a wire terminator so that I can swap out the pickup very easily in the future :).