software

hi guys! how's everyone doing? i hope this isn't an annoying question for you all, but i've decided to start doing my own guitar work rather than taking to the shop, and i'm currently trying to wire my h/s/h guitar with a rotary selector switch. it has 6 positions, and i have 2 push-pull pots (one for volume, one for tone, each one to put each humbucker in parrallel). i've looked everywhere for a diagram, but this is obviously an odd configuration, and i've had no luck so far. can anyone help me out, or let me know a web site which might have some info to help me? (i'm just new at this, so hopefully nothing too hard to follow).

the switch has the following markings on the non-soldering side:
S4
S2
MR,BW
NR,MW
S5
NW
S1
S3P1

thanks heaps!

simon

welcome to the forum simon!!

the push/pull swiches are pretty easy but the rotary switch might be tricky. what are the six positions supposed to be?
what type of pups are you going to be using? different manufacturers use different color codes on the wires

hi, thanks for the reply jeremy! the humbuckers are dimarzios, the single coil is a fender (my other guitar which i'm working on next has duncans in it though!). the switch was meant to be a 7-way, so i could have every imaginable combination of the three pickups in use, but when i received it, it only actually has 6 positions, unless there's something i'm missing??? it is a spare part from a danelectro baritone guitar. it was the only supposed 7-way rotary selector i could find. i can live with it being 6-way. i just need the usual strat style 5-way positions plus the neck and bridge only.

thanks again!

simon

Can you post a photo of the switch? It's hard to come up with a schematic if you don't know what the wafers look like.

I'm guessing you'll have two wafers with 14 contacts divided into two banks of seven on each wafer.

If that's so it should look like thisit's the second one on this page:

from : localhost/don't know how to just show the photo in this post.

thanks again guys!

OK so it's this one.I can see that you have four separate wafers there unlike the rotaries I have seen on PRS guitars which have stackable wafers so that schematic i did is not much use to you although it could be adapted as the pin protocol is correct. I'm guessing that it will be some form of sequential contact arrangement like a conventional lever switch. Unfortunately I can't see what the contact layout is but I can take a guess.I just sat and had a think about this and i realised a few things.

Is it possible it is a 7-way after all? It looks too small to have the requisite 28 contacts in the matrix board for a 6-way independent sequential switch. If it had shared contacts it would have to be a 7-way or a 5-way but would only have a matrix of 20 contacts. The downside of this is that switches with shared contacts aren't as easy to programme.

Can you take a photo of it or scan a sketch and upload it to from : localhost/imageshack.us/? From there you can derive a URL which you can post here (use the little image insert box above the reply text box or post your images URL between the HTML tags (IMG) and (/IMG), replacing the round brackets with square ones)

I have to go and fix guitars for a living now but I'llthink about this during the day and see if i can cover the other possible options and post something tonight.

i don't have a scanner or camera, but this is the best i could come up with:

_______________________________
|,---(o) (o) (o) (o) (o) (o) (o)------\ |
|| | |
|| ______ | |
|| (o) (o) (o) (o) (o) (o)|(o) [O]| | | lt;--- S3
|| | '--------' | | P1
|| ,---' | |
|| ,(o) (o) (o) (o)-(o) (o) (o) / |
|| | ,------------' ,------'-----------' |
|| | | ,----' |
|| | (o) (o) (o) (o)-(o)-(o) (o) |
|| | '-------, \ / \ \ |
|| '----, | \ / \ \ |
|\[O] [O] [O] [O] [O] [O] [O] |
|_______________________________|
the bottom row (the [O] ones) from left to right are labeled:

S4
S2
MR,BW
NR,MW
S5
NW
S1

not sure if you can make any sense of that...but it's the only way i could do it. thanks so much for all your help!

simon

god dammit!!! even that won't work because the spaces got removed!!!! i should just save any further bother and kill myself!!!!

from : localhost/img159.imageshack.us/img159/8...diagram1hm.jpg

ha ha! i did it! hope it works for you!

thanks again!

simon

Right, so it looks something like this:The one thing you forgot to put in was the direction of rotation of the switch, but either way the thing's got me slightly foxed at the moment.

I'm guessing that the sliders move left-right on my diagram.

It appears from this that the contact matrix has internal connections that are designed to do one specific thing; this will probably prevent you from doing what you want to do.

You'd have been better off with a stackable wafer switch like the ones shown here
from : localhost/img-europe.electrocomponents....W352187-05.jpg

You'd need two 2-pole 6-way wafers, the switch body, some hook up wire and a couple of wafer screens. It would probably work out more expensive than the Dano switch but it would be guaranteed to do the job.

These are available from a very large UK supplier RS. Go to from : localhost/wwwrs.com

Follow this path Electrical, Automation amp; Cables gt; Relays, Switches amp; Indicators gt;Switches gt; Rotary Switches gt; Rotary Switch Kits

Unfortunately their site is so large and complex that direct links to internal items from outside don't work. You may need to register to be able to browse the online catalogue.

I'll study the switch diagram on my way into work today and see if I can work out how it might be made to work, but I'm not hopeful...

Ok Jimbo me boy, i've got it sussed. Pretty obvious really.

The thing is, are you feeling brave? Do you like a challenge, thrive on adversity that sort of thing?

What you are looking at in that picture you drew is a 4-pole, 6-way independent action,sequential contact, PCB mounted switch mounted on an etched PCB with a dedicated circuit.

This PCB is no use to you at all as it is for the Danelectro for which the switch was designed.

The switch is probably a standard electronics component and Danelectro have produced their own PCB for it which makes the programmed connections they need.

So you need to reprogram it.

Are you up for it? Success will depend entirely on your skill so while I can show you what to do i can offer no guarantees you will be able to do it...

hell yeah! it's not like i can make things any worse! at least this way there's a chance i might not need to buy another switch! even if it's a slim chance...i'll learn something and it'll be fun! as long as there's no way i can damage my pickups or amp or fry myself in the process! thanks so much for taking me unde your wing like this! how do we start???

There's no danger involved ;D, and it'll be a cool learning experience even if you don't succeed first time. The worst than can happen is you'll lose the 13 bucks you paid for the switch...

I can't promise you won't burn your fingers a bit as well.

You'll need a soldering iron, obviously, preferably a 25W with a needle point or at least a very small tip. You'll also need a desoldering pump or, as i call it, a soldersucker! This is like a spring loaded syringe with a heat resistant teflon tip. You press the plunger down until it locks then heat the solder up and press the trigger. Hey presto, the solder's sucked into the nozzle.

What you have to do is remove the PCB from the switch contacts. There are 28 of these little suckers so get the coffee pot on, fire up your iPod and get set for a long night...

If you are feeling really ambitious you could try making your own PCB to replace it; you can get PCB etching kits, i guess from Radio Shack if you're in the States (are you?) and you can get an etch resist pen to mark out the tracks for a one off project like this.

More importantly, you need to establish what the pin protocol of the switch is.

DON'T PANIC!

I'm almost certain that what you are dealing with is a stack of four wafers each of which is a switch in its own right, so although there are 28 pins you only need to concentrate on seven.

Of these seven pins one will be a slider which makes contact with each of the others in sequence. I'm willing to bet it will be one of the pins on the end but I may be wrong so you need to do some meter testing. I hope you've got one or can borrow one otherwise we won't get very far...

With the meter on the continuity beeper turn the switch fully to one extreme. Locate one probe on the end pin and then touch the other probe to each of the other pins in turn. You'll get a beep when it makes contact. Make a note of which pins were in contact.

Move the switch through one step then repeat the process. Make a note of the pins which were in contact. One of them will be the same. This one is the slider. It may help to have a couple of OHP pens to hand (overhead projector pens; what we used before computers and PowerPoint), one red, one blue. You could mark the sliders with red and the pickup contacts with blue.

Once you've established which the slider contacts are, you then have to establish the contact sequence. This is almost certainly linear, but you need to check to be certain.

Proceeding on the assumption that it's a linear sequence, this is how you program it logically.

Assign one wafer to each pickup and decide which position you want each pickup to appear in.

For example, you assign wafer A to the bridge pickup. You want this pickup in positions 1,2 and 6, so you connect pins 1,2 and 6

You assign the middle pickup to wafer B and you want this pickup in positions 2,3 and 4 so you connect these.

You assign the neck pickup to wafer C and you want this pickup in positions 4,5 and 6 so you connect these pins.

You then make connections between all the connected pins and take the output from these.

It should look something like this
You'll have one wafer left over which you can use for tone switching or coil splitting.

I'm not sure how much room you'll have betwen the contact pins. going by the size of the chicken head knob it looks pretty cramped. I'd suggest using 5 amp fuse wire to make the connections. solder it to pin 1A first, then thrad it round pins 2A, 2B, 3B, 4B, 4C, 5C, 6C, then slip a bit of heat shrink tubing over it and make a jumper back to 6A. You should have nine contact pins connected by the time you've finished.

If there's anything you're unclear on let me know and i'll try and clarify.

Best of luck. Who Dares, Wins and all that.

wow! ok i need to grab a few more tools before i'm set to go. thanks so much for all your help...i'll keep you posted!

simon

I don't get any e-mail notifications of topic replies and i can't afford to live on here so PM me or e-mail me {octavedoc(at)f2s.com} when you are tooled up and if you need any help in real time I can also be available on iChat or YIM if need be.

will do! thanks again!

simon

Simon, if this all goes titz up, you might want to think about this switch from Allpartsthe URL of the catalogue page is
from : localhost/used these myself for Gibson multitone switches and they are pretty robust, although they take up a bit of space.