A few months ago someone (Eliot, maybe?) mentioned interest in a switchable Tele/Esquire, which got me thinking. Anyway, I sketched out a couple of ideas at the time but only recently had a chance to draw them up properly and test them out on the bench… and I probably got a little carried away in the process. I ended up with five different designs, each with versions for both 3 and 4-way Tele's. I don't know if they'll be of use to anyone, but I figured I post them anyway. I haven't mounted them in a guitar yet, but I have tested them on my 1-string test rig with a set of Toneriders (one of the designs will be going into my current Tele build).
For those unfamiliar with Esquires, they just have a Bridge pickup and a selector switch that provides three settings: Volume only, Volume & Tone, Volume & cap/resistor filter. Basically, three flavours of Bridge. So, the goal was to come up with a circuit that would allow a typical Bridge + Neck Telecaster to be switched over to a Bridge-only style Esquire. I think the traditional Esquire circuit is a little restrictive in this situation, so I've included some variations which I think are more flexible and generally useful, so feel free to skip ahead to the last two designs (here and here).
I've tried to make the schematics as clear as possible and to show what connects to where using the different colours, but not necessarily how it should be connected. For instance, all of the caps are drawn with coloured wires connecting them to show where they connect, but in reality you would probably connect them directly between points just using the cap legs (with heatshrink where needed) etc. The 0.047uF cap connected to the Tone pots can be changed to 0.022uF's, if that's your preference. On the standard Esquire circuits I've listed the caps as 0.05uF, but just use 0.047uF's. The grey wire linking the pots on all the schematics is only needed if your shielding or control plate isn't already linking the pot casings. And, I'm sure Lawry can pull me up if I've made any glaring mistakes… which is probably likely.
First up, a standard 3-way Tele that switches over to a standard Esquire using a mini toggle switch. It uses a 3-way lever switch, 3PDT mini toggle, and 0.05uF (0.047uF) caps with a 3K3 resistor.
Tele mode: 1. Bridge, 2. Bridge + Neck, 3. Neck.
Esquire (Bridge only) mode: 1. Volume, 2. Volume & Tone, 3. Volume & filter caps.
Here's the same circuit applied to a 4-way Tele. This requires the 4-way Tele mod on the Neck pickup (to separate Neck - from ground/shield), a 4-way lever switch, 4PDT mini toggle, 0.05uF (0.047uF) caps and a 3K3 resistor.
Tele mode: 1. Bridge, 2. Bridge + Neck (parallel), 3. Bridge + Neck (series), 4. Neck.
Esquire (Bridge only) mode: 1. Volume, 2. Volume & Tone, 3. Volume & filter caps, 4. Mute (no output).
(most 4-way circuits have the series setting in position 4 but I prefer still having the Neck in the last position on the switch)
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