Metric 3-way Toggle Switch

Installation and wiring instructions for the 3-way Toggle Switch, including diagrams for Les Paul, SG, Jimmy Page Les Paul, and other 2-pickup guitars.

This double-pole 3-way switch is commonly used for Les Paul^® and other 2-pickup guitars.

Notes on wiring
Reduce unwanted electrical noise by using shielded coaxial cable for your longer wiring runs (for example, the connection between the controls and the output jack). Coaxial cable contains a center "hot" conductor which is shielded by an outer braid used for the ground wire.

For short connections between components, use standard non-shielded wire. Typically, white wire is used for hot and black for ground to the bridge.

About our kits
Stewart-MacDonald wiring kits contain black and white non-shielded wire, plus shielded coaxial cable. Extra black wire is included for running a ground to the bridge.

#1802 Wiring Kit for Two-Pickup Guitar

This wiring diagram is suitable for any two-pickup guitar with humbuckers, single-coils or a combination of both (master volume, master tone).



#0133 Les Paul Wiring Kit and #0125 SG Wiring Kits




Alternate volume control wiring
You can wire both of the volume controls of a Les Paul (or any other dual volume control instrument) so that you can blend the volume of the pickups independently. This solves the problem at the middle position of the selector switch, in which turning down one volume control affects both pickups.




#0126 JPLP Wiring Kit

The JPLP (Jimmy Page Les Paul) wiring kit allows you to coil-cut the bridge pickup using a push-pull tone control. The other feature of the JPLP wiring is that in the middle position of the pickup selector, the bridge pickup is out-of-phase with the neck pickup.

In this setup, the bridge humbucker cannot be a 2-conductor pickup. The pickup must have a 3 or 4 conductor wires, plus a shield or bare wire. Follow your pickup manufacturer's specs, and wire the series-link (coil-cut) to the push-pull pot as shown in the diagram. Connect the bare wire and the typical "hot" wire to ground (typically the back of the volume pot). Then wire the typical ground wire to the input lug of the bridge pickup volume control. This should give you an out of phase sound in the middle position. If not, simply reverse the bridge pickup's hot and ground wires.