Have you ever wanted to make a Les Paul sound like a Strat? Engage a kill switch with the flick of the wrist? Or maybe you want to capture that killer Queen sound of Brian May. If that’s you, then keep reading! In this article, we uncover the mysteries of the push-pull pot by taking a look at how it functions and also showing you some of the cool wiring options this handy gadget is capable of.

How It Works
The push-pull pot unlocks a lot of tonal possibilities by routing your pickups through different signal paths. It may seem a bit complicated at first glance, but it’s really pretty simple. We start with a stacked pot, so instead of one potentiometer, there are two — one stacked on top of the other — and you switch between them by pulling up or pushing down on the shaft, hence “push-pull.” When you pull up on the shaft of the pot, you activate the top four lugs, which are connected to the top pot, creating continuity between the top two left and top two right lugs. When you push down on the shaft of the pot, then the bottom lugs, connected to the bottom pot, are activated. You can probably see where this is going; by using two different pots, you can make your guitar sound two different ways, opening your guitar up to different tonal and even functional possibilities.

Coil Splitting
The most popular use of the push-pull pot is for coil splitting, and for good reason; it’s like having a Les Paul and a Strat in one guitar.

You’ll need a 4-conductor pickup if you’re going to try this mod. A 4-conductor humbucking pickup consists of two pickup coils connected by a series link. If you aren’t familiar with the tonal differences between a single-coil and humbucker pickup, it’s pretty apparent when comparing the sound of a Fender Stratocaster and a Gibson Les Paul. Let’s take a look at how you can achieve both of those sounds in the same guitar.

In the animation below, you can see that when the shaft is depressed, both coils are “on” because the series link is allowed to pass signal. This gives you the beefy, instantly recognizable sound that only a humbucker can deliver, because both coils are active.

But what if you’re after the bite that only a single-coil pickup can deliver? It’s no problem if you have a push-pull pot. You’ll notice that the top right lug goes directly to ground. If you remember, pulling up on the shaft of the push-pull pot creates a signal path from the middle lug to the top lug, forcing the series link to ground and only allowing one coil to pass signal. Voila! You’ve got yourself a single-coil pickup at your beck and call.

Phase Reverse
Another cool example of what you can do with a push-pull pot is the classic out-of-phase sound made famous by Brian May on “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen.

When two single-coil pickups are in phase with each other, they work together to create a nice full-bodied sound. Reversing the phase on one of the pickups creates a thin, hollowed-out sound, because they are working against each other.

Keep in mind that in order to achieve this mod, it’s necessary to have two pickups activated. In this example, pulling up on the shaft of the push-pull pot reverses the polarity of the hot and ground on one pickup. When used in conjunction with another pickup, you’ll have two pickups working out of phase with each other and an arsenal of unique tonal possibilities at your disposal.

The Kill Switch
Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, Eddie Van Halen, and Buckethead have all taken the kill switch to a new level. By sending your signal to ground, this mod “kills” your sound and allows you to tap out a rhythmic stuttering effect by turning your signal on and off. If you’ve ever wondered why a guitar has an arcade machine button from the 1980s on it, it’s because of this mod. But a push-pull pot will work just the same.

It’s also a quick and easy way to mute your guitar, but we think it’s more fun to push and pull out a catchy rhythmic pattern to get people’s heads bobbing. The animation below shows you how a push-pull pot can be turned into a kill switch for a single-coil pickup.

The Seven-sound Strat
Another way to stretch out the guitar’s sonic possibilities with a push-pull pot is the Seven-sound Strat mod. The 5-way selector switch on a Fender Stratocaster gives you a lot of pickup switching options, but there are some limitations. For example, you have three pickups but can’t activate all of them at once. This mod adds the bridge pickup in positions 4 and 5. The two additional switching options give you the bridge and neck pickup on together as well as all pickups on at once. This mod makes it really simple to access seven pickup configurations instead of the conventional five.

The Blower Switch
By engaging the blower switch mod, you bypass all the components and run a pickup straight to the output jack. This is a quick and easy way to get a bit of a boost from your signal. You can easily throw in a quick lead line with the flip of a switch, and it’s like dialing your volume to 10. When you’re done with your lead, you can quickly go right back to playing rhythm, and your volume and tone settings remain just the way they were. It’s kind of like having a dB boost at your disposal, without the need to worry about changing a dead battery.

The Bright/Mud Switch
The bright/mud switch is a 2-in-1 tone pot that allows you to tap into two different capacitors on your tone knob. In the example below, we have two capacitors with a value of 0.047 uf and 0.33 uf, but you can go with any values you want. The rule of thumb when considering your cap values is that the higher the capacitor value, the more roll-off of high frequencies you’ll get. This mod makes it easy to switch from a bright sound with lots of highs to a muddy tone that cuts those frequencies out. With this mod, a rockin’ new tone setting is only a push or pull away. No rolling required.

Series and Parallel Wiring
Series and parallel wiring is also a pretty common mod. Whenever two or more pickup coils are involved, they are either working in series or parallel. A pickup wired in series will send its signal into another pickup in the signal chain, affecting the overall tone and output. If you think of how a pedalboard works, it’s similar to that. When two pedals are turned on, the first pedal in the signal chain always affects the behavior of the next pedal in line. Pickups that are wired in series will have a higher output as well as a darker, fuller tone.

When pickups are wired in parallel, they are both running on different paths and are unaffected by the other. Pickups wired in parallel will have a brighter sound but less output. The animation below shows how leaving the shaft down allows both coils to output their signal independently, but pulling up on the push-pull pot sends the signal of the bridge pickup into the neck pickup and colors the overall sound.

Splitting Up and Phasing Out
If you’re comfortable with a soldering iron and are good at reading a wiring schematic, there are a lot of tonal tricks out there that you can unlock with just your guitar and a push-pull pot. Hopefully, this article has helped clear up some of the mystery that surrounds the push-pull pot and how it works. The mods we talked about are just some ideas to get you started; there are probably hundreds of different uses for the push-pull pot.

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7 Killer Mods with a Push-pull Pot

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