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Installing A Killswitch - Easiest Guitar Wiring Mod EVER!

Posted by Jonathan Beals on 2020 Oct 8th

Brett wanted to install a momentary killswitch in one of his "beater" guitars, so we used the opportunity to make a video of it, and a song demo of the killswitch in action.

It is definitely one of the easiest guitar wiring mods you can do!  A lot of people think "backwards" when it comes to killswitches.  We get calls all the time from people who think it somehow stops the signal, or cuts it off somehow.  That leads to confusion about how to wire it into the guitar.  But, it actually does the opposite.  It bridges the signal path from hot to ground.  That's exactly what your volume pot is doing when you turn it down.  It is sending more and more of the "hot" signal to ground as your turn it down, until the sound completely cuts out when the full signal is being sent to ground.  A momentary killswitch does the same, only instantly.

So, pressing the killswitch is the same as instantly turning your volume knob all the way off.

That means, it's incredibly simple to wire into your guitar!

These two drawings demonstrate the two most common ways to wire it into a guitar.
Drawing One
Drawing Two

In Brett's case, he had already done some "shifty" mods to his guitar so he had a spare hole where a pot used to be. He had to use some extra washers to get the switch to sit nicely in the hole (not pictured in the video), but the result was functional.

We only offer one type, but there are a very wide variety of killswitches on the market today, requiring many different hole sizes.  If you are doing this kind of mod to a guitar you'd like to keep in nicer shape, we recommend the assistance of a professional luthier/repair shop to do any new drilling required.

Mod safe, and mod awesome!