Fix Your Guitar

Upgrade time: here’s how to put a super fun kill switch button into your guitar

Kill switches are great fun. They’re a great way to incorporate some hard-hitting rhythmic gated sounds into your playing technique, especially if the switch is somewhere easy to grab! The sound often used by Buckethead or Tom Morello creates a silence when the switch is depressed; release and your guitar sound comes back, simple. The way you use it is where the genius can strike! There’s lots of buttons and switches online so the choice is yours, but you must keep in mind the mechanical resistance – you’ll want it to be easy to activate and not tough like the button on an elevator! We’ll be using a momentary push-to-make button to do the switching for us so you can just slap the button down.

Where to put it though? Most push buttons require a drill-hole and a nut to fasten on the reverse of the switch, so as long as you have room, scratchplates, control plates or Les Paul pickup selector holes make great candidates. You can use this simple circuit and method on any guitar!

1 We’ ll be pop ping the kill switch button on our fender jaguar’ s control plate. due to the jag’ s design, this means we only have to take off the chrome control plated own the bottom. let’ s get rid of the knobs so they don’ t get scratched! some knobs will pull off, but our ones here needed a tiny grubs crew-loosening first.

2 To gain access to the electronics cavity we’ ll rather obviously need to take off the chrome plate. use aph1screwd river to remove the small screws holding it on. Take care not to lose the screws.

3 Under here, the jaguar will normally have at one pot and a volume pot next to the output jack (we have a custom circuit in this guitar, that’s why it looks different). Support the components from behind as you loosen them–turning the nuts on the top will likely just spin the components round inside instead of removing them.

4 With the plate loose, let’ s get the guitar out the way. tape up the guts so they don’ t fall out or get tangled in anything else. the guitar is going out of harm’ s way while we make ames soft he control plate. we’ ve replaced the nuts, washer sand star washer son each pots owe know where it all came from.

5 Let’s modify the control plate. First up, cover it in masking tape. This will allow us to mark it easily but also protects the face from scratch es. poke a hole in the old pot holes so we know where they are. tip: the lid on our ubiquitous paper mate® ball point pen was perfect for the job. remember, only the best tool will get the job done right!

6 Let’ s choose the location for the new kill switch button. we used a vernier ca li per to measure and mark where half-way was( it would have looked bad not totally in the middle) and drew abigx. consider the size of the knobs that will be replaced and make sure you have easy enough access to tap that awesome kill switch.

7

As we’re drilling metal, extra precaution is required. Drill bits like to wander off when they don’ t have a soft material to get stuck into, so let’ s help ourselves. A centre punch is the tool for the job, hammer that onto exactly the spot you marked to create a dimple for the drill bit to sit in. 8 Goggles on, lets makesomeswa rf( the name for waste metals havings)!a cone step drill bit is perfect for the job. As you touch the next step, it automatically counter sinks the hole you just made to take off the sharp burr edge. we use a pillar drill and a piece of scrap timber to chomp into our control plate. 9

Gorgeous. Dispose of all that swarf, it’s paint job killer. Drop in your new kill switch and have a look at the terminals. our switch here is actually aptm/p tb switch– that’ s‘ push to make/ break ’. our circuit requires a push to make a connection, so chop off the undesired terminal–many kill switch buttons have just two terminals. 10 This is the simple circuit that needs installing. we have the jack socket on the right with a wire from the hot( tip) and a wire from the ground( sleeve) going to the push button terminals. add this onto whatever guitar circuit you have going. It doesn’ t matter which wire goes to which terminal on the switch. 11 Reattach everything back onto the control plate and tight en up, remembering to support the components inside so the wires don’ t twist. let’ s make that drawing a reality. using just the right amount of cable, grafton the extra wires to the connection at the jack socket without disturbing what was there before. 12 Once you have those wire sin place, tin the terminal son the new switch button and attach onto there too. tip: tinning the new terminals really helps make the connection! plug it in and give it a test. what’ s happening is, as you press the button, your signal is sent to ‘ground’, which results in silence!