Help with rotary or super switch wiring

[Jedi Clampett]

Still working on a single humbucker bass wiring.
The existing control panel has room for two pots.

I am planing on adding a switch for Humbucker mode and single coil cut mode. The pick up is a Rio Grande
Pitbull which is made by taking two of their 1951 single coil pickups into a humbucker.

So this is what I hope to have

Switch between Humbucker and Single coil mode, followed by homemade black ice non powered distortion (switch in and out) and then a guitarfetish optical compressor switch in and out.

I am going to replace the pots for the modboard with trim pots, so basically (pun alert) 3 efx with in and out switching.

I can make a custom control plate with room for 3 push pull pots or replace a pot with a switch
I would love to use the traditional 2 hole control plate
or use a tele control plate, I have an old yamaha super switch, but can use a rotary switch too.

I am having trouble figuring out the wiring for a rotary or superswitch, but if needed will just put alligator clips on wires and keep trying different positions till they work.

So the options seem to me are:
Vol pot with coil cut switch-Black Ice on tone pot-additional switch for compressor in and out.
If I replace the Tone control with a rotary switch, then blk ice would use a trim pot if needed and be wired on rotary. Coil switch and rotary This would give these positions:

Kill switch
All Bypass, no effects
Pu-Black Ice-with compressor
Pu-compressor (no black ice)

Ideally this can be accomplished with the two push pull pots, but I am not asking you to draw this out for me, but to push (or pull) me in the right direction since I have never done this before. I have gone to various websites for single bass pu wiring, but have not found anything suitable. One of them offers a design service tho. Just trying to get your thoughts and advice here for direction. Also would be interested if you ever did anything like this?

[Jedi Clampett]

The black ice is just a couple of diodes taped together and mounted on the tone pot, but also can be wired to a switch without the tone pot. The tone pot is great turn counter clockwise to adjust the distortion, turn cw to get normal tone control. The problem is that the black ice is always turned on a bit so there is no true bypass. The black ice circuit should feed the compressor, since being a passive circuit will have a small volume drop, but not an issue if feeding a compressor. The compressor is preset so needs no adjust. The black ice can be preset as well.

[Jedi Clampett]

The other thing could be to have vol with a coilcut push/pull switch, A tone control wired for black ice, but with another push pull pot that allows compressor in and out (the disadvantage being that the blk ice is always in the circuit somewhat) no matter what people's advice, I will test this out before committing to a course of action. I have given this alot of thought, but wonder what you will come up with?

[David King]

Break it down in to tiny morsels then figure out what order they need to be in your signal chain. Do you want the V and T before or after the Black ice etc.

Understand that rotary switches are really ganged switches. Start with how many items to be switched and in what combinations. That determines the number of positions. The easiest way from there is to assign one switchable item to each available pole (A pole is an independent layer of switching). As long as your rotary isn't too big or too deep to fit inside the cavity then the sky (or your wallet) is the limit. Add jumpers to the poles corresponding to which positions that item will be active or inactive. If for some reason you need to switch both the input and output to a device simultaneously then that item will require 2 poles instead of one.

Personally I would have a separate toggle switch for each function so I could mix them and match them independently and in whatever order I chose. Maybe I would come up with 4 or 5 really useful sounds and then reengineer the system down to a 5 position rotary to minimize the guesswork

[Mark Swanson]

it would be much better to place the Black Ice after the compressor. Black Ice needs to be hit with a good amount of gain to work, some pickups will not distort at all because they are a bit too weak for it, others have hardly no effect. If you place it after the compressor you can boost the gain into the black ice and it'll work a lot better.

[Jedi Clampett]

both suggestions great and will do. Mark I assumed that putting the blk ice before the compressor would be the ticket since it would boast the signal, but certainly after the compressor in single coil mode is the ticket. David, I still haven't wrapped my head around the rotary switch wiring, but I assume that a 5p 4T switch means that I have 5 positions to choose and that each position has 4 switches so in each position I can effect multiple switching. The bass arrives today by UPS, but I am only keeping the wood parts and will strip, modify and reshape them. I hope to get as many ideas as possible. I am working on the electronics first before modifying the rest.

[David King]

Jedi,
A rotary switch is very simple once you look at it. It lets current pass from point A to point B or C or D or E etc. It can only connect A to one other point at a time. None of the other points will be connected to each other unless you put a jumper between them.
Each pole has a "common" terminal (A) and that common gets connected sequentially to one of 5 (or however many positions you choose.) terminals at a time. Think roundhouse in a rail yard.
Now stack a pile of roundhouses, one on top of the other, that are all doing the same thing at the same time. That's a rotary switch.
I you have a 4 pole switch you will have 4 different Commons.
When common A1 is connected to terminal D1 you can also be sure that Common A2 is connecting to D2, A3 to D3, A4 to D4 etc.

[Mark Swanson]

A 5P 4T switch is a switch with 5 poles (or commons), and four throws (positions).