Am I using the right switch?

[raymondl3]

Hi. I was referring to a Bartolini schematic to wire a Lane Poor M-style 4 for bass / dual / treble coils. The diagram shows a DPDT center OFF switch. After wiring it up I was able to get bass and treble coils loud and clear but the middle position is almost inaudable.

I tried several other combinations but could never get it right.

Should I use a center ON dpdt for this project?

Thank Yo

 

[line6man]

Center on would just short everything together and give you no output period.

That wiring is correct for NC/Series/SC.
Did you try inverting the phase on one coil like i suggested earlier?

If you want to rule out the switch, remove it from the circuit and wire the pickup in series. If you have the same problem then it's not the switch.

 

[raymondl3]

I tried red on positive/ black and white in the middle; then white on positive / black and red in the middle; then I went back to black on positive but red and bare on right / white and green in middle; then white and bare on right / green and red in middle.

I never got the right results. I came closest with the second rewire; it produced NC / Series / Parallel (I think)

 

[raymondl3]

I am using one half of a dpdt. The Bart schematic shows a single spdt. A dpdt is just two spdts so that shouldn't be a problem, right?

 

[line6man]

Yes, a DPDT is just two SPDT switches. No problems there.

 

[raymondl3]

I wired the pickup for parallel and connected it directly to the output jack; it still produced the barely audible sound. I tapped on bothe coils and they were present.

Then I tried a few more combinations directly to the output jack: (see picture)

 

[Stealth]

The weaker parallel is probably due to phase mismatch: swap the lead and the ground of one of the pickups in parallel and retry, you might get a better sound.

 

[raymondl3]

The weaker parallel is probably due to phase mismatch: swap the lead and the ground of one of the pickups in parallel and retry, you might get a better sound.

Thanks. I'll try that tonight.

 

[raymondl3]

I decided to do a test to identify coils. See diagram. I could not isolate the south coil (treble). Is this a special kind of pickup? My original intention was to wire the pickup for north coil / series / south coil.