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I am about to purchase a Strat-style guitar. It has two humbuckers, and a 5-way switch. It only has one tone and one volume. I'd like to modify the 5-way switch so that one of the positions kills the neck humbucker.

Is this even possible? What's the best way to do this?

Ideally, I'd like the second bottom-most position to be the killswitch. (the one next to Bridge only)

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  • 'kills the humbucker'? You mean make it run single-coil? The pickup would need to be wired to allow that. We'd need the original schematic to be certain.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jul 24, 2020 at 17:35
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    The simplest way to achieve this would be to have a separate switch to interrupt any signal from any pup. It makes more sense, as you may want to use it from a different pup combination. Doing what you suggest will lose one pup combination - for what benefit?
    – Tim
    Commented Jul 24, 2020 at 17:43
  • I think we need clarification on the term 'kill' because with only 2 pups, a standard 5-pos switch would already be wired "weird"
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jul 24, 2020 at 18:12
  • I'm not sure how killswitch can be interpreted other than how @Tim described it. I do understand that ideally a separate control would do this. I really don't want to drill a hole in the body for a button or switch to do this.
    – Jason P Sallinger
    Commented Jul 24, 2020 at 18:59
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    There's plenty of room in the scratchplate without cutting into the body.
    – Tim
    Commented Jul 24, 2020 at 19:31

3 Answers 3

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A standard 5-way switch is a simple evolution of the old Strat 3-way switches, which consists of two linked 3-way selectors. The in-between positions just select two of the positions simultaneously, i.e. they put the inputs in parallel. In the standard Fender configuration, one of the linked switches is used only to select the separate tone pots, which may not be all that relevant to you, so you could use that sub-selector as the kill switch by repurposing one of the in-between positions as a short to ground. Just ignoring any tone pots for now (you can wire them independent of the PU selection somehow), and assuming you don't want any coil splitting, you can set up a kill switch for example like this:

Schematic for the proposed kill-switch

Of course, whether you want the kill position on the NeckH + MidS slot or the MidS + BridgeH one is trivial to change.

That said – I wouldn't do it this way. As Tim already commented, it's no problem installing a small dedicated kill switch in the scratch plate, no woodwork needed. Or you could replace one of the tone pots with such a switch. (A pull pot will likely be too slow for the kind of stuff you want to do with a kill switch.)

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  • Cool. This gives me hope. Thanks for the theory.
    – Jason P Sallinger
    Commented Jul 25, 2020 at 11:56
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    Like the animation! Clever.
    – Tim
    Commented Jul 25, 2020 at 12:24
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There's the option of changing a volume pot. for a piggyback type (push/pull). With nothing connected to one position (up or down) it will work as a kill switch - and save any woodwork.

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    “Nothing connected” is not a good way to do this, because it makes the line very sensitive to interference. Shorting to ground is much quieter.
    – leftaroundabout
    Commented Jul 25, 2020 at 6:36
  • @leftaroundabout - fair enough - but that's easily solved using a tandem pot.
    – Tim
    Commented Jul 25, 2020 at 8:48
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This is an old thread, but I think I have a real solution for you. tl;dr - you need a different switch.

I was trying to do a very similar thing - I have an HSS strat where the humbucker is not a 4-lead pickup and cannot be coil split. as a result, it's out of phase with the middle pickup and position 2 sounds horrible. I too wanted to make position 2 a killswitch and could not think of a way to do this with a regular 5 way switch - however, it is possible with a 5-way superswitch, such as this:

https://sixstringsupplies.co.uk/pages/super-switch-wiring-diagrams

Vintage strats switches had only three positions, and positions 2 and 4 were when players found out you could jam the switch into an in-between position to get pickups to function in parallel. So with the modern "standard" 5 way switches, position 2 and 4 are simply bridging positions 1/3 and 3/5, respectively. The superswitches have five independent positions - so if you want position 2 to be a killswitch, simply don't wire anything to the second lugs.

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  • I don't think this gives any info that the existing top answer doesn't give. Please read existing answers before posting, and only post if you have a sufficiently different answer.
    – Doktor Mayhem ♦
    Commented Jun 17 at 15:46
  • the above answer describes a hypothetical case with a standard 5 way two pole switch, and doesn't provide what OP is asking for. In fact, that solution requires an unspecified mod to the switch - a stock 5 way switch cannot do what OP is asking. My answer provides a full solution using new hardware - a 5 way 4 pole "super switch".
    – rustydomino
    Commented Jun 18 at 2:59

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