5-Way vs. 3-Way Opinions / Experiences

thegummy

Has anyone ever had a 2x pickup guitar with a 5-way blade switch instead of a 3-way blade and felt that they wished it had a 3-way (or changed it to one)?

In general I would be mostly interested in either neck, neck+bridge and bridge settings but I'm wondering if having a couple of coil split options on positions 2 & 4 would be worth adding "just on the off chance" and would have no downsides or would it be preferable to have just the 3 positions.

What I think could be troublesome might be switching to the middle position quickly in the middle of playing. Is this easy to do on a 3-way or is it still a bit trickier than switching to the extreme sides?

Funkfingers

Ibanez often does HH guitars with a five-way lever selector switch that offers the three obvious humbucker permutations plus couple of pseudo-Fender tones. 

Current Paul Reed Smith core series guitars use a circuit in which the 2 and 4 positions on the selector switch are one humbucker plus one coil from the other humbucker. My musical collaborator has a Custom 24 wire this way. He loves it. I prefer a hybrid of the Eighties and Nineties circuitry. I had to use a Freeway 3x3-03 switch to achieve the coil combinations that I desired.

thegummy

Funkfingers said:

Ibanez often does HH guitars with a five-way lever selector switch that offers the three obvious humbucker permutations plus couple of pseudo-Fender tones. 

Current Paul Reed Smith core series guitars use a circuit in which the 2 and 4 positions on the selector switch are one humbucker plus one coil from the other humbucker. My musical collaborator has a Custom 24 wire this way. He loves it. I prefer a hybrid of the Eighties and Nineties circuitry. I had to use a Freeway 3x3-03 switch to achieve the coil combinations that I desired.

Do you ever have trouble switching quickly to the "2 full humbucker" setting? 

BTW, I bought that book you recommended, looks good, look forward to reading it!

Funkfingers

thegummy said:

Do you ever have trouble switching quickly to the "2 full humbucker" setting? 

Not particularly.

thegummy said:

I bought that book you recommended, looks good, look forward to reading it!

IMO, the book is a dull read but an invaluable reference source - especially once you reach that age when you begin to ...



... er ...




... forget stuff that you used to know.

Sporky

You could always have a 3-way and a couple of push/push pots to do splits. Or a rotary switch to get up to 6 selections.

flying_pie

I don't like coil splits personally. I find the volume drop compared to full humbuckers them off little use and they don't sound close to proper single coils. I had a HH with a 3 way and individual push pull coil splits but rewired it to just a regular 3 way humbucker. Much better that way IMHO 

Funkfingers

thegummy said:

Do you ever have trouble switching quickly to the "2 full humbucker" setting? 

Funkfingers said:

Not particularly.

I have just remembered why I don't have difficulty flipping to the middle position on a lever selector switch.

1. I do not use that position as much as the others.
2. Wherever possible, I use sprung switches.

With the sprung CRL type switches, it is sufficient to move the switch knob just over half way towards the next *notch*. The spring finishes the task automatically.

Thus, on a five-way switch, neck pickup to middle is two short pushes on the switch knob in quick succession. There is no need to find the stopping point. 

martinw

I've had both 3 and 5 way on my Stormshadow DBS (basically an HH Strat.)
It was a standard 3 way, and the 5 way was a Megaswitch P with PRS style switching.
I liked the simplicity of the 3 way, but in the end went back to the 5 way as I missed the versatility. 
Oddly though, on other guitars (SG, 335) that only ever had 3 ways, I've been quite happy.

kin

a three way is good fun but i would imagine a five way to be absolutely exhausting!