Esquire wiring will lil 59 humbucker.

musicalstash

Recently bought this esquire which was wired up as 

https://ibb.co/4V8yh7H

Black lead to the centre (red/white tapes) with caps either end of the 3 way switch really bassy in the neck and really trebly in the bridge position .  

I  I have tried  wiring it up as a series / parallel but couldn't really hear any difference in the sound. 

Is there any other recommended mods on an esquire with a lil 59 pickup, looking for something a little more restrained and more in keeping with a telecaster tone but still having the humbucker option.

All made difficult with the import switch I need to swap out at some point. 

Thanks 

Funkfingers

My smartphone cannot cope with your image file. Hence, I cannot eyeball your wiring for errors.

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Series/single/parallel wiring via a three-way lever selector switch is easy enough. IMO, the sounds produced are dark/noisy/weak.

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Your initial Esquire wiring intrigues me. A typical choice would be:
1) volume pot only or direct to jack.
2) volume and tone pots in circuit
3) volume pot and capacitor/resistor network.

The network could give the faux "bass guitar" tone of Leo Fender's original circuit or the so-called Eldred mod (a wah-like honk filter).

BillDL

Image now HERE or HERE on Imgur

https://imgur.com/a/bBv95dp

WTF is embedding images so inconsistent?

Funkfingers

Thank you. 

The rectangular green capacitor on your selector switch contributes a treble cut function, similar to an original Fifties Telecaster circuit.

The round brown capacitor is also a bleed but it is difficult to understand what it is contributing without knowing how or where the selector switch body is grounded.

It could conceivably be doing the Roy Buchanan thing. On the other hand, some of the necessary jumper connections are absent from your guitar.

musicalstash

Funkfingers said:

Thank you. 

The rectangular green capacitor on your selector switch contributes a treble cut function, similar to an original Fifties Telecaster circuit.

The round brown capacitor is also a bleed but it is difficult to understand what it is contributing without knowing how or where the selector switch body is grounded.

It could conceivably be doing the Roy Buchanan thing. On the other hand, some of the necessary jumper connections are absent from your guitar.

Thanks, there is a big difference with the neck position (very bassy ) and the middle but the treble position sounds the same at the Middle so not too sure if it wired up wrong or intentional.

Would it be worth wiring it as a eldred mod to get the additional tone. 

https://ibb.co/PxbwM1Z

https://ibb.co/8zrX3rZ

ICBM

On the original wiring, the only difference between middle and treble is that the tone control doesn’t operate in treble, so if you’ve got the tone control up full anyway, you won’t hear much difference.

If you don’t hear a difference between series and parallel, something is wired wrong - they should be dramatically different.

Personally, my favourite switching mod for an Esquire is the ‘empty slot’ mod…

CasperCaster

I'm personally not a big fan of many preset tone circuits, so for a single bridge humbucker with a lever switch and volume and tone (as you have) I leave the knobs doing their usual functions and re-pupose the 3-way lever switch to do series/ parallel/ split, as per the attached image.

https://i.imgur.com/RNexhSU.jpeg

The image just shows the principle of how to wire it i.e the black boxes are the commons for their respective poles, whilst the open circles are the terminals for each switch position - for any given switch you'll have to map the image to the actual connections on that switch. A jumper instead of 'R' is a straight coil split. Using a resistor instead of a jumper will give you a partial coil split such as PRS use i.e. the split retains a degree of hum cancelling and a more robust tone. If you use a resistor then smaller values of 'R' sound more single coil like, whilst larger values of 'R' sound more humbucking. Most people typically use something in the range of 1.5K Ohms to 5K Ohms. If you were to use a potentiometer rather than a fixed resistor then values below about 7-8K tend to sound single coil like (but increasingly warmer with increasing resistance). Values over 10K tend to sound inherently humbucking with some added single coil character (single coil character decreases as resistance continues to rise). By the time you get to around 30-40K the effect is done - it's just fully humbucking by then so adding more resistance has no sonic effect.

Funkfingers

@CasperCaster Regarding your wiring diagram.

Where did you find a CRL-style three way lever selector switch with its common/collector terminals at the same end of the switch body?

They are usually diagonally opposed.

CasperCaster

@Funkfingers I didn't! As per the second part of my post after the image link, it just shows the principal, not the actual locations of the terminals. It would need to be translated to the actual switch you use.

Funkfingers

Understood. 

You think like an engineer or an electrician. 

Unfortunately, the average amateur tweaker tends to follow guitar circuit diagrams by the relative physical locations of the components illustrated.