With the Five-Tone Tele scheme, you can select between:
NECK (plain ol' neck pup)
BRIDGE and NECK in SERIES (very Gibson-ish)
BRIDGE and NECK in PARALLEL (plain ol' Tele #2)
BRIDGE and NECK in SERIES/OUT OF PHASE(YIKES! What a stinger!)
and BRIDGE (plain ol' Tele bridge)
You asked for it, you got it... here's an MP3 of the Five-Tone Tele switch in action.
The switch is run through all five notches, neck to bridge, one notch at a time. It's Black Bart (be sure you scroll down and read that it has now been loaded with Fender Tex-Mex pups), playing the same riff (more or less, and please, no critiques of my guitar playing!) on each notch. The amp and guitar volume and tone knobs are untouched throughout - guitar vol and tone on "10." You are hearing it exactly as I played it, warts and all, just switching the pup selector for each time through the riffs. I hung a mic over the front of my amp and ran it into my computer's sound card. NO TWEAKS!
NOVEMBER 2006: OK, so you say you don't think you'll find a use for the series/out of phase tone? Check out the solo in this tune: "Eldorado/PB&J" from my '03 Christmas CD (produced for family and friends). All the guitar tones are ol' Black Bart, but played with a little enhancement here to better demonstrate the combos. The solo is the series/out of phase combo played through a Behringer V-Amp and recorded into my Roland VS840EX. The MP3 file is almost 3MB, so if you're on dial-up, click at your own risk...
MAY 2008: Life IS a work in progress. Check out this idea for using caps instead of jumpers with the series connections.
AN INSTALLATION NOTE: AS with ANY setting on a Tele where the pups are in series OR the neck pup is phase-reversed, if you have a "stock" neck pup with a metal cover, you will want to "un-ground/re-ground" the cover. This is desirable because with the stock wiring, the cover USUALLY has continuity with the neck coil's "-" lead, and that means that in series or out of phase pup selections, the cover is actually is on the "hot" side of the signal. To "un-ground/re-ground" it, all you have to do is run a new wire from the control cavity out to the neck pup's rout. Solder the end in the control cavity to any ground. On the neck pup, remove the existing short jumper that goes from the metal cover to the neck pup's "-" lead, and solder the new ground wire that you have run to the metal cover where that jumper was attached (NOT to the pup's "-" lead). Now the metal cover has its own path to ground, independent of the pup's leads. Here's a little more onfo: Ungrounding a Tele neck pup.
INSTALLATION NOTE #2: SOME TELE BODIES may require you to widen the control cavity rout on the "string" side, to accommodate this wider asymmetrical switch. A dremil tool or even a wood chisel will do the trick - just be sure you don't widen the cavity at its TOP OPENING, where it would show out from under the cover plate. Will you need to widen your control cavity? StewMac.com has dimensions available on their website. Try this: envision an imaginary line that runs directly through both of your control plate screw holes on the body (this allows for misaligned control-plate mounting). The SuperSwitch, as it is asymmetrical, will require 9/16" clearance between that line and the wall of the control cavity, from 1/4" below the top of the guitar to about 1-3/8" below the top, on the side of the cavity towards the middle of the Tele (the way I have it drawn up and wire 'em) for the length of the switch (call it 1-7/8")... Does that help?
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