Cap switch?

Dannymec · Post by **Dannymec** » Mon Sep 13, 2010 8:30 pm

Hey, I was looking at making my cyclone more of a unique instrument to me and I came across a few ideas.
First off, the cyclone has a jaguar switch, but since there's three pickups and each has it's own separate on/off toggle, there is no choke switch like on a jag. I was thinking about adding one to the control plate. I took it off and started to look at the wiring and thought of something else entirely. Below is the wiring diagram:

It's a little hard to tell, but the capacitor is only connected to one prong on the tone pot and then grounded. Would it be possible to have a switchable capacitor? I have an extra .022uf capacitor that I was thinking about adding. If I wire in a toggle to switch between the two caps, would it different caps affect the tone? And would it work at all? I don't know much about electronics and therefore can't figure this out on my own. I've seen some guitars use .047uf caps, maybe a switch between a .022 and .047?

paul_ · Post by **paul_** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 12:10 am

A few fenders have used capacitors or resistors on switches to provide a different tone (broadcasters used resistors and telecasters used caps til '67, and all an Esquire's switch does is cycle through different ones as the guitar only has one pickup), but I don't know if going from .022 to .047 on the tone pot would be a useful option on a guitar or not, it certainly wouldn't while the tone knob is full on.

How they usually do it is to wire a switch that takes the tone knob out of the circuit and uses a different capacitor for a preset treble reduction (the type you get when backing off the tone knob). It sounds like a Jaguar's rhythm circuit, basically.

Dannymec · Post by **Dannymec** » Wed Sep 15, 2010 5:27 pm

I tried it yesterday and I couldn't tell too much of a difference before soldering it up. I ended up ditching the idea and going back to stock.

wantsasupersonic · Post by **wantsasupersonic** » Sun Sep 19, 2010 4:56 am

My Gretsch has a tone switch. I like it alot. Basicly it uses a gibson like 3 way switch to switch between two caps. the guitar also has no tone pot, 3 volume pots. and a kill switch all from the factory. I really like the varitone switch like BB king has on lucille. I want to try something like it on my SG.