Jerry Donahue Tele Wiring

[Greg Robinson]

Hi everyone,

I had a customer query me about hot-rodding his Tele switching/wiring scheme. He was curious about the wiring in the Jerry Donahue signature Tele. Since I have never tried a guitar with this setup, I thought I might try and simulate the circuit response to get an idea of what it might sound like. I used the circuit found here, and simulated it using LTSpice.

The first attachment is the simulation circuit. I've used rough models of average Tele bridge and Neck pickups. Each of the switch positions are broken into discrete circuits.

The positions are as follows:
1: Bridge
2: Neck and bridge parallel "half-out-of-phase" - series resistors are placed inline with both pickups, and a bass-cut cap is placed in series with the neck pickup, before the two pickups are put in parallel "out-of-phase" (I prefer the more correct "opposite polarity").
3: Neck and bridge in parallel
4: Neck
5: Neck with tone control bypassed.

And here's the frequency response. I put the level and phase on separate plots to make it more clear.

Anyway, I thought you might be interested to see the results!

[Mark Swanson]

I'd have to hear a guitar wired that way before I had anything to say about it...seems like one or two of those positions would be of no use to me. But, until I heard it I can't say.
I play a tele on every gig. And I would miss the series sound that I have wired into mine, that is a big powerful tone that a regular tele just doesn't have.

[Greg Robinson]

Yeah Mark, I'm reserving judgement, but it seems fairly convoluted and a bit gimmicky to me.
I too love the series mod for Tele's! I now don't even bother stocking regular three way switches, I've never had anyone turn down the 4 position mod when offered.