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Fender Telecaster 4-Way Switch Kit for Left Handed Guitar
I was looking to replace my stock three way Tele switch with a four position switch configuarion and upgrading the eletronics at the same time. I'm a left handed guitar player and my Tele is also a left handed (LH) guitar. I was wondering if there were any issues with using a kit for a right handed (RH) guitar for a LH guitar. And as it turns out, yes.
If you plop a RH kit into a LH guitar the pots would all be upside down and turn the wrong way. No big deal aesthetically but a pain when adjusting the pots form min to max. On LH guitars the pots are left handed taper audio pots, which means, they turn in opposite direction than the right handed pots that we are used to in most analog audio devices like amps, radios, etc. In general, LH guitars pots turn in the opposite direction of RH guitars. I say in general because it's not always the case depending on the nmanufacturer, the model and the year.
An article discussing the merits of left handed taper pots can be found here.
There are a number of pre-wired kits available for RH guitars but only a couple of LH kits out there that I have found so far, namely:
- Wiring Harness Fender Telecaster - 4 Way Switch-LEFT Handed from Starr Guitar System Regular price $72 USD or $95 CDN. This pre-wired kit comes with CTS 250K Left Handed Taper Vintage Style Audio Pots and other quality components.
- Pre-Wired guitar harness | Telecaster 4-way harness kit | Left Handed from James’ Home of Tone £65 GBP or $103 CDN. With this pre-wired kit you have a choice of 250K RH or LH taper pots with or without a treble bleed circuit. For more info on treble bleed circuit see below.
Both of these kits come with excellent info and wiring diagrams and fit in easily into a standard Fender Tele with no drilling and/or chiselling required.
If you want to go from scratch, StewMac has a Premium Wiring Kit for Telecaster with 4-way Switch which goes for about $53.21USD or $70CDN. The kit contains all the components you need except that the pots are RH. A LH pot option is not available.
Since I'm pretty handy with a soldering iron and a friend of mine needed a couple of RH pots, I bought the StewMac kit and two extra CTS LH pots.
The kit incudes:
- Switchcraft output jack
- two 250K CTS solid-shaft control pots
- Orange Drop® capacitors: .047uF and .001uF
- Oak Grigsby 4-way lever switch with mounting screws
- Switch knobs: black barrel and top-hat
- Non-shielded cloth-insulated push-back wire: 22 AWG white, 12" long
- Non-shielded cloth-insulated push-back wire: 22 AWG black, 24" long
- Braided-shield push-back wire: 22AWG, 12" long
- Instructions and a wiring diagram
Switch Positions
The four switch positions are:
- Position 1 Bridge pickup
- Position 2 Neck and Bridge in parallel
- Position 3 Neck pickup
- Position 4 Neck and Bridge in series
Note, positions 1 2 and 3 are exaclty the same as a standard stock Tele with a 3-way switch.
Position 4 is meant to produce a more beefier and a little more powerfull overall tone.
Installing the Kit
The kit arrived as advertised and contained all the components listed above. The instructions and diagram were easy and straight forward to follow. A very useful video from Six String Supplier showing you how to install a pre-wired 4-way switch kit can be found here. This video addresses all of the caveats you may encounter.
What does it sound like?
Well, position 4 does really give the Tele a beefier and a little more powerfull overall tone. Almost sounds like a humbucker but not quite.
The upgraded electronics have also improved the overall tone of my Tele in the other switch positions, exactly what I was looking for.
A video by Darrell Braun show you what a 4 way switch can do to the tone of your Tele. He uses a Obsidian pre-wired kit which goes for $93 USD or $122CDN. Although my StewMac kit doesn't sound quite like his demo, it is useful nonetheless and demonstrates the potential improvements in tone quality you can achieve when you upgraded your stock Tele electronics and add an extra switch position.
The Treble Bleed Circuit
A Treble Bleed (TB) circuit involves fitting a capacitor across the lugs of the volume pot so that when the volume is turned down, there is no drop off of treble. Without the TB cap, the sound definitely changes when rolling back the volume.
A discussion about this circuit can be found here.
Fender incorporates this circuit in all American Professional Series guitars and according to them can help your tone at all volumes. Check out this article from Fender.