Elan Pickup Switching scheme
Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 2:25 am
I have a couple Elans, and was never sure exactly how the pickups were wired, but had a pretty good guess. So I buzzed out the switch with a meter today. The Elans have two 4 wire humbuckers with Black and blue end wires, and orange and yellow wires where the two coils connect to each other. On the neck humbucker, the blue wire is hot, the black wire is ground. On the bridge humbucker, it is the opposite, blue is ground, black is hot.
The 5 position switch does this (1 is bridge position, 5 is neck position)
1) Bridge Humbucker, Neck Off
2) Bridge Single Coil (Or/Yellow grounded), Neck Single coil (Or/Yellow hot)
3) Bridge Humbucker, Neck Humbucker
4) Bridge Single Coil (Or/Yellow Hot), Neck Single Coil (Or/Yellow Grounded)
5) Bridge Off, Neck Humbucker
So it's pretty much how I thought it would be. There is never a position where you hear just one single coil pickup. I'm thinking that the guitar would be more versatile if one of the 2 or 4 positions was just a one single coil without all the phasing that you get when two are on. So I'm considering making that mod on one of my Elans to see how it sounds.
The 5 position switch does this (1 is bridge position, 5 is neck position)
1) Bridge Humbucker, Neck Off
2) Bridge Single Coil (Or/Yellow grounded), Neck Single coil (Or/Yellow hot)
3) Bridge Humbucker, Neck Humbucker
4) Bridge Single Coil (Or/Yellow Hot), Neck Single Coil (Or/Yellow Grounded)
5) Bridge Off, Neck Humbucker
So it's pretty much how I thought it would be. There is never a position where you hear just one single coil pickup. I'm thinking that the guitar would be more versatile if one of the 2 or 4 positions was just a one single coil without all the phasing that you get when two are on. So I'm considering making that mod on one of my Elans to see how it sounds.