Easy Guitar Mods: Kill Switch

Easy mods that you can do yourself to unlock new tonal possibilities from your guitar.

Today we're going to talk about the kill switch.

This isn't really a tonal change in your guitar, but it's a really useful thing to have. A lot of players will instinctively, they get to the end of a song, they'll just roll that volume control all the way down to silence their guitar, and that works really well, except if you want your volume control to be at a very specific point because there's a sweet spot in terms of how much crunch you're getting, how much distortion you're getting at that sweet spot on the volume control.

And so a kill switch is a really good way to be able to leave that volume control exactly where it is, but still quickly, completely kill the output of your guitar.

I'm going to show you this with a push pull pot. You can also do it with a momentary switch if you want. I know there are some guitarists who really lean into the creative possibilities of having an arcade style button that you can just jab on that will just momentarily kill your output. But I'm talking more about the functional push pull, where you'll pull up on the knob to engage that kill switch and kill your output.

So first of all, what you are going to connect to terminal C1 is either the output from your switch, if you have individual pickup volume tone controls or the output from your master volume control, if you have a master volume control. 

The signal from your pickups goes through everything it needs to go to, and this kill switch is like the last stop before it gets to the output jack. So whatever that last stop is, either that lug two of a master volume control or the output from your switch, whichever one.

So on a Les Paul, for example, it'd be the output from the switch because both pickups go through individual volume and tone controls before they get to the switch. On a Strat, because you have a master volume, it would be the output from that master volume.

If you did want to have a kill switch for an individual pickup, it would work slightly differently because this push pull pot would come earlier in the signal chain.

You take the output from the pickup and connect that to C1. 

Terminal 2 is going to connect to the hot of your output jack.

Or if you're doing an individual pickup kill switch, terminal 2 would connect to your individual volume or tone control for that pickup or to your switch.

But again, I recommend you do this as a master kill switch, in which case terminal 2 is just going straight to your output jack.

And finally, you're going to connect terminal 1 to ground. This is a really, really simple mod, just three connections to make. You're not even using the right hand side of the switch at all. Just using the left hand side, and this is fairly straightforward.

So when the push pull is in the down position, terminal C1 and 2 are connected. The signal comes from your switch or your master volume output into C1, which is connected to 2, and then that goes to your output jack.

So there's a clean normal signal path there.

But when you pull up on the push pull, C1 is disconnected from 2 and instead it's connected to 1. So that signal from your switch or your master volume output comes into C1 that's connected to 1 and 1 shunts off to ground. So your entire signal gets shunted off to ground and silenced.

We love this mod. Sometimes it's not about amazing tonal possibilities. Sometimes it's just about making your guitar more usable and more pleasant to play, and that's what this kill switch does. This is really great if you're a gigging musician. You play live a lot just to be able to quickly silence your guitar without having to change any of your settings or affect your tone whatsoever. So grab your soldering iron and happy modding.