The selector switching system...

[dasherf17]

Hi, All!
I acquired a Burns Deja Vu (full guitar) along with the Burns necks and bodies (Hank Marvin/Deja Vu) a couple weeks ago I posted about previously.
It's my first Birns and I couldn't have made a better choice for something "different". I really love it.
Curious, tho, I would like an explanation as to the function of the 5-way switch and the lone push-pull tone pot. Does the pot only turn the front pickup on/off and is the 2/4 switch position for reversal of phase and is the front pickup used at all with the 5-way?
It's a good investment, but I just wish to know how everything works on this one...

[chas]

The push-pull is to turn on the neck pickup in addition to whatever position the selector switch is in. That means you can have bridge & neck on together or all 3 pickups - so it allows the extra couple of pickup combinations that aren't possible with just the 5-way.

Positions 2 & 4 (bridge & middle and neck & middle) aren't out of phase, though it's often been described as being so because of the tone they produce together. It's really just the positioning of the pickups relative to one another that gives that tone. If you want to hear real out of phase, reverse the two wires of one of the pickups, then try it with another pickup on - it's incredibly thin & nasally.

On 'modern' guitars you often find one pickup (in the case of 3 pickups the middle one) are reverse wound & reverse polarity (RWRP) which when used together with another pickup is still in phase, but gives you hum cancelling which is how a humbucker works. So on a Strat you get hum cancelling on positions 2 & 4....which kind of seems a bit pointless....(if you hear a bit of background hum in a moment of silence when recording in an enclosed space, just turn around until it disappears, and just stand in that position ).

Chas.

[Uncle Fiesta]

There are those who claim that positions 2 and 4 sound better when the middle pup is not RWRP - and I'm one of them!

[artyman]

I know there's a drop in volume on mine in positions 2 & 4

[JimN]

I know there's a drop in volume on mine in positions 2 & 4

That's always been the case, whether with the Marvin, the 1964-onward Bison, or the origin of them all, the Stratocaster. It's because the middle of the frequency spectrum is attenuated, and that's where much of the apparent volume is located.

[Uncle Fiesta]

It's frequency cancellation basically. And because the neck and middle pickups, or the bridge and middle, are closer together than the neck and bridge on a two-pickup guitar, you'll get a greater overlap of frequencies, therefore a greater volume drop.