3 way toggle danelectro

[AcousticGlue]

I put a new 3 way selector on guitar and middle position does not work. Tested switch and it has continuity in middle when testing poles 1 and 3. It appears this should not be so? Position 1 and 3 work for bridge and neck pickups. Middle has silence. The way its wired is tone/volume to pole one and the other tone/volume is to pole 3. Middle pole has white wire. Toggle switch looks exactly same as what came off guitar. Wired same way. Tested wiring with out toggle and works if you just tie wires together. It appears when circuit is cut off by middle position it shouldnt pass anything hence you get both pickups. Any ideas? Is switch bad since testor shows when in middle position that poles 1 and 3 show continuity?

[Dave Labrecque]

I put a new 3 way selector on guitar and middle position does not work. Tested switch and it has continuity in middle when testing poles 1 and 3. It appears this should not be so? Position 1 and 3 work for bridge and neck pickups. Middle has silence. The way its wired is tone/volume to pole one and the other tone/volume is to pole 3. Middle pole has white wire. Toggle switch looks exactly same as what came off guitar. Wired same way. Tested wiring with out toggle and works if you just tie wires together. It appears when circuit is cut off by middle position it shouldnt pass anything hence you get both pickups. Any ideas? Is switch bad since testor shows when in middle position that poles 1 and 3 show continuity?

Um... what forum did you think you were posting on?

[CurtZHP]

Tested switch and it has continuity in middle when testing poles 1 and 3. It appears this should not be so?

For clarification: You get continuity between the center pole and pole 1 when the switch is in #1 position. Likewise you get continuity between center and 3 when in the #3 position. Correct? Where are you seeing continuity when the switch is in #2 position (in the middle).

Trying to get my head around this....
You have one signal coming from one set of tone/volume controls (bridge pickup), and another signal coming from the other set (neck pickup). So you have two signals coming from two different sources. Those signals go to the switch. A signal has to go somewhere, and in this case, for sake of simplicity, the destination is the output jack. So if the sources go to opposite ends of the switch, the center pole of the switch goes to the jack. When the switch is in position #1, one signal is routed to the jack. When the switch is in position #3, the other signal is routed to the jack.

You say when the switch is centered, there's silence. This tells me that the center position is the "OFF" position for this particular switch, meaning that no connection is being made between the center pole and either of the other poles.

Are you sure you have the correct type of switch? It may look the same, but the guts are probably not.

[Leadfoot]

Have you looked at this Seymour Duncans website? I think they have every conceivable way to wire different pickup configurations that there is, all with nice drawings too. If what you're looking for isn't there, I don't know.

When the switch is in the middle, both pickups should be wired in parallel.

[AcousticGlue]

is bad switch. Circuit should be cut off allowing both pickups to play via 1 and 3 in parallel.

[CurtZHP]

Glad to hear you found the culprit.