# EYB/Schaller Megaswitch "E" - wiring diagramm anyone?



## petereanima (Jun 24, 2008)

as the blaze bridge i ordered for my 7420 is laying around at home for a few weeks now, and finally also the new potis and the new switch (why changing only the pickup when everything is old already?) - but unfortuneately its not the switch i ordered. i orderd the megaswitch M, but have received the "E" type. first confusion. second was: this one has only 7 pins instead of 8 (as all others seem to have).

third: i originally wanted to go:

1. bridge ser.
2. bridge par.
3. both
4. neck par. OR inner coils of bot
5. neck ser.

but the instruction only states:

1. bridge hb
2. bridge s-c
3. outer single-coils of both
4. neck s-c
5. neck hb

could easily live with that, thats not the problem - but it all together confuses the f*** out of me...

now its the time where i have to say that i'm a total noob on guitar-electronics, altough i play for almost 15 years - ss.org turned on my interest, so i'm trying to understand, but this is my first try - so its kind of an information overflow at the moment...

have already searched here and also googled and found some diagrams, but all are for wether the M model switch, or dimarzios speecial or the stock-ibby switch, which is kinda useless in the end.

so, what i found for the megaswitch is that its pin-assignment for 2 humbuckers is:

1[FONT=&quot][/FONT]​ empty[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
2[FONT=&quot][/FONT]​ neck pickup hot wire[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
3[FONT=&quot][/FONT]​ output to volume pot[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
4[FONT=&quot][/FONT]​ ground to volume pot[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
5[FONT=&quot][/FONT]​ neck pickup coil tap[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
6[FONT=&quot][/FONT]​ bridge pickup coil tap[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
7[FONT=&quot][/FONT]​ bridge pickup hot wire[FONT=&quot][/FONT]

so, i think i understand at least the half of it and, sorry for the poor-looking paint-file but it had to be done quick, this is what i figured out until now (the yellow ones are in real WHITE wires!):







as you can see - i still have 2 wires of each pickup to connect - black and green. and also the seperate ground pin on the switch is empty...

the old stock-bridge-PU only had a red and a white wire ('and a bare one going to ground on the vol-pot.). i understand that the green wires of the PUs are the ground-ones...damn...the whole to-ground-thing-stresses the hell out of me as i do not know if i should go to ground on the switch, to ground on the vol.pot, to-groudn from switch to-volume?...does it matter anyway? i mean ground = ground, isn't it? 

any help is appreciated.


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## scott from _actual time_ (Jun 24, 2008)

petereanima said:


> i orderd the megaswitch M, but have received the "E" type. first confusion. second was: this one has only 7 pins instead of 8


actually, the G ground pin off to the side is your eighth pin.



> third: i originally wanted to go:
> 1. bridge ser.
> 2. bridge par.
> 3. both
> ...


none of the Megaswitches will do that configuration. you would need a 24-pole superswitch to do that. and you would probably need a bridge pickup with 4-conductor wires coming out of it, which the stock 7420 bridge pickup doesn't have.



> i still have 2 wires of each pickup to connect - black and green. ... the old stock-bridge-PU only had a red and a white wire


this is because one of the wires from your 7420 stock bridge pickup is the same as the black and green soldered together on DiMarzio wiring diagrams. i don't know if it's the red one or the white one.



> i do not know if i should go to ground on the switch, to ground on the vol.pot, to-groudn from switch to-volume?...does it matter anyway?


yes it does matter. everything should be grounded to one place, and the back of the vol pot is what most people use. so solder the pickup ground wires there, and make yourself a new wire of your own to go from the switch G to the vol pot. the G on the switch needs to be connected to ground; it is not already grounded.

good luck.


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## petereanima (Jun 25, 2008)

thank you!!


so i have to go from the switches G-pin AND from pin no. 4 (which is labeled as "ground to vol.pot) to the volume pot?




scott from _actual time_ said:


> and you would probably need a bridge pickup with 4-conductor wires coming out of it, which the stock 7420 bridge pickup doesn't have.



thats what surprised me most - it has. but the neck PU only, not the bridge.


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## scott from _actual time_ (Jun 25, 2008)

petereanima said:


> so i have to go from the switches G-pin AND from pin no. 4 (which is labeled as "ground to vol.pot) to the volume pot?


yes. the pin #4 must be connected to ground because the switch will use that ground whenever some pickup wires need to be grounded to coil-cut the humbuckers. so you must connect that one. 

the G pin is just to ground the body/casing of the switch itself. you can connect that, but in guitars with metal foil shielding inside the control cavity, the body of the switch will already be electrically connected through the shielding to the volume pot, so you don't always have to connect the G pin. (many switches don't even have a G pin.)



petereanima said:


> thats what surprised me most - it has. but the neck PU only, not the bridge.


that's because the neck pickup on Ibanez two-humbucker 5-way switch guitars is wired in parallel in one switch position, and to wire it in parallel you must have a 4-conductor pickup. the bridge humbucker isn't ever wired in parallel, so they take the cheap way out and use only 3-conductor cable. 

companies will always take the cheap way out whenever they can to maximize their profit.


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## petereanima (Jun 25, 2008)

thanks! 

in the meanwhile i re-did my wire-drawing to what i think now should work...my problem was that i didn't knew the colour code of the remaining stock-ibby-neck-pup, but i compared the wiring-drawing of the 7420 from ibanez.com with the one of the 7620 which was posted hear several times (the one with dimarzios in it) - so i think that the only difference is that green and white are changed (ibby green = dimarzio white and vice versa).

any comments of the functionality of this thing would be nice!






yellow on the drawing is still white IRL. when 2 wires are soldered together (e.g. black & white/yellow on the blaze) i did it then in grey as you can see.


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## scott from _actual time_ (Jun 25, 2008)

petereanima said:


> i compared the wiring-drawing of the 7420 from ibanez.com with the one of the 7620


that's exactly the best way to figure them out. nice job! 



> any comments of the functionality of this thing would be nice!


it's always impossible for me to tell from wiring diagrams. the best way to find any tiny mistakes is to wire it up and see what happens. you can check which coils are active in each position by plugging the guitar into an amp and tapping on the pole pieces with anything metal. if a coil is off, you might hear a small sound, but if the coil is active, you will hear a definite click or thud through the amp. if anything isn't right, note which switch position it's in and what coil(s) are wrong, then go back to the diagram and figure out how to fix it.


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## petereanima (Jun 26, 2008)

thanks again!


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## petereanima (Jul 9, 2008)

just in case somebody is searching for a solution with the E-megaswitch -> the second drawing works perfect.  blaze bridge is now pwning in my 7420


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