Sidewinder Guitars Telecaster Special / Fat Tele 5-Way Wiring Kit

Telecaster Special / "Fat" Tele 5-Way Wiring Kit by Sidewinder Guitars
For 2 Pickups (SC + 4-Conductor HB)/Lever Switch/Master Volume/Master Tone

Thanks for your interest in our Tele wiring kit! I've put in a great many hours researching and testing to find the best components and I've assembled them here in these kits. I'm confident that you'll find they breathe some new life into your axe!

This kit supports the very versatile Telecaster Special (aka "Fat" Tele), which sports a Tele single coil bridge pickup and a humbucker in the neck position. It's a beastly combination made all the more flexible by a 5-way switch that provides coil splitting functionality without push/pulls or micro-switches. Customer requests have prompted us to include a diagram for the opposite configuration as well: Humbucker in the bridge with a single coil in the neck. The available switching options are as follows:

SC Bridge / HB Neck
1-Bridge
2-Bridge + Neck (Split)
3-Bridge + Neck (Full)
4-Neck (Split)
5-Neck (Full)

HB Bridge / SC Neck
1 - Bridge (Full)
2 - Bridge (Split)
3 - Bridge (Full) + Neck
4 - Bridge (Split) + Neck
5 - Neck

I'm sure it goes without saying, but please note that the coil splitting options presented in these configurations require humbuckers with 4-conductor wiring. 2-conductor humbuckers are not capable of these tricks without extensive modifications that are not covered here. Also, please be aware that this kit is designed around the blade switch / master volume / master tone configuration typical to Telecasters, not the Gibson style toggle switch / 2 volume / 2 tone configuration seen in models like the '72 Deluxe or Tele Custom.

While your guitar, pickups and rig will sound different from mine, the sound clips posted in this listing will give you an idea of the tones presented by this configuration. (While the player makes it look like there is only one track, there is actually a full set including both clean and dirty samples)

What's in the kit?


Oak Grigsby 5-Way "1/2" Super Switch. Why settle for anything less? These switches are a real gem. With two sets of fully independent lugs, you can accomplish things that just aren't possible with a standard 5-Way switch. And this single wafer "1/2" Super Switch is much thinner than its massive dual wafer cousin, allowing it to fit in a Telecaster control cavity without modification! Mounting screws and a standard Telecaster "barrel" switch tip are included.


Bourns Pro Audio 500k Pots. These are sweet, sweet pots. They sound great, they're durable, they're consistent, and they're smooth as silk when you turn them. I've included a linear taper pot (B500) for volume control and a logarithmic taper pot (D500) for tone control. I always found myself frustrated by volume and tone controls that were very drastic at one end of the sweep, then did very little across the rest of the sweep. The tapers of these pots provide even roll-off across the range of the pot. It is my opinion that the linear taper volume pot combined with the 50’s wiring (see “Wiring Diagrams” below) produces the smoothest and most useable guitar volume control possible. They have a 3/8” mounting bushing and 6mm USA spec “fine knurl” (24-spline) split shafts. I've included a second mounting nut and washer so you can adjust the height of the pot to get your knobs at just the right height. Check out our store for a variety of control plates and knobs if you’re interested in a new  look, you need to replace an old battered part or if you just want to ensure that you’re set up with compatible hardware.


Pot Shaft Adapters. We have opted to provide 6mm split-shaft pots in all of our kits in order to make them easily compatible with a wide variety of knobs. Telecasters traditionally come equipped with 1/4” solid-shaft pots, which means that for many customers their existing knobs will be just a bit large for a proper fit. For those instances, we provide these brass adapter bushings. Simply slide the adapter on the 6mm shaft, then slide your 1/4” knob on and secure with the set screw as usual. The soft brass of the adapter has to give a bit for a secure fit, so just give the set screw a little extra torque and you’ll be set.


470k Resistor. As far back as people have been tinkering with Telecasters, they've been asking, "What pots do I use if I mix single coils and humbuckers: 250k or 500k?" The common wisdom is that humbuckers sound great with 500k pots, but that they can make single coils shrill. On the other hand, single coils sound bright and punchy with 250k pots, but they tend to make humbuckers sound muddy. So what is a guitar player to do? You wire the guitar up with 500k pots to make the humbucker happy, then you run a parallel resistor to ground from the single coil pickup lug on the selector switch. The result is that we can change the load "seen" by the single coil pickup when it is selected. Without getting into parallel resistance calculations here, a 470k resistor in parallel with the 500k pots will show the single coil pickup about 240k. Installation of this resistor is optional.


1/16" Heat Shrink Tubing. Use this heat shrink tubing to insulate the leads of the resistor, preventing potential shorts.


0.022uf Orange Drop Tone Capacitor. You know them, you love them! Suffice to say that these caps sound great, are quite robust, and are exceptionally consistent. I meter each batch that I receive and find them to be well within the advertised 5% tolerance.


Switchcraft Output Jack. Simply the best there is. Beefy. The mounting bushing is 3/8” diameter x 3/8” length. A second nut and washer are provided so you can adjust it’s position if desired.


Cloth push-back wire. The only way to go. Top-notch quality, easy to work with, stays in shape when you bend it and no stripping required. I've included 4 feet each of white and black, so no need to worry about running short. Remember that you do not strip this wire, just work the insulation back from the end with your fingers.
26 AWG Ground Wire. This small diameter, stranded wire is perfect for bridge or tremolo grounds or for bonding components for grounding.


Common 4-Conductor Humbucker Color Code Chart. These wirings require that the humbuckers be configured with 4-conductor leads, and that you know which wire is which. This chart is provided to assist, but it’s always best to consult the documentation specific to your pickup.


Three wiring diagrams. A wiring kit would be pretty useless without good diagrams, right? There are lots of them out there, some better than others, but I've drawn up my own and I think you'll find they are complete, accurate and easily understood. The first is the Telecaster Special / "Fat" Tele 5-Way wiring for single coil bridge and humbucker neck. The second diagram is the Telecaster Special / "Fat" Tele wiring modified for a humbucker bridge and single coil neck. These diagrams utilize a modified volume/tone circuit. It addresses the issue of treble loss when rolling down the volume by applying the “Gibson '50s wiring” concept to the Telecaster tone circuit, and it does it without messing up the pot taper or getting shrill at the low end the way a “treble bleed” circuit can. In addition, and in a less quantifiable fashion, I find it has the effect of really "opening up" the sound of the guitar, producing a very dynamic instrument overall with fantastic note bloom. The reason I show it by default in the diagrams is because I believe it is the most functional configuration paired with the components in this kit. However, if you prefer the standard circuit with its tendency towards warming the tone as the volume is rolled off, the necessary wiring changes are detailed in the last diagram diagram. It is a very simple modification, consisting of moving just one end of one wire, which means trying both to see which you prefer is simple!




















* A note on the linear taper volume pot: The linear taper volume pot has garnered a bad rap on internet forums, and it really isn’t deserved. Linear taper pots can and do function quite well as a guitar volume control, and have been used to great effect as such by notable guitar makers like Gibson, Carvin and Ibanez. The linear taper is just that, a consistent change in resistance across the entire sweep of the pot. “But human hearing is non-linear!” This is true. In highpower audio applications like guitar amplifiers, a linear taper volume control will seem to turn UP very abruptly from zero. For that reason, the audio taper stretches out the sweep between zero and seven or so to allow for a slower increase in volume at the low end. To make up for this, the increase in resistance accelerates rapidly from seven to ten. Put that taper in aguitar volume pot and what you find is that when turning DOWN from ten, you are right into the steepest part of the taper, meaning that you get a very rapid change with a small move of the knob. If you use your volume to control how hard you drive your amp, dirty-to-clean happens very quickly.  After that, from seven or so on down, you are in the stretched out part of the taper, meaning that not much happens as you continue to turn the knob. A linear taper will have the effect of slowing down the change at the top end of the pot, so you get much finer control over dialing in your guitar-amp interaction. In short, linear and audio tapers can both serve as guitar volume controls with excellent results, but they will perform differently. Most every wiring kit out there offers audio tapers in both volume and tone controls, and there are a couple of very sound business reasons for this: 1) It’s what people expect to see; and 2) It’s much more cost effective  to maintain an inventory of just one taper for a given pot resistance value. I offer my kits with a linear volume as an alternative, and because it’s what I use and in large part Sidewinder Guitars is about me sharing what I find success with.


















Thanks for your interest in
our kit! Please check out our store for a wide selection of wiring kits for a variety of applications.




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