Anyone rewired a guitar?

[TonyKL]

So, I've bought a few new guitars, my work horse (shitty old ibanez rg) has been giving me some grief with the electrics and not been sounding that great lately.  I've never re-wired a guitar before but today I decided to strip the whole thing down, completely back to the wood and I've now just ordered a complete replacement for it.  New pots, switch, jack and pickups (dimarzios).  Even had to order myself a soldering iron!!

I've never done this before and looking at the bare wood I wonder if I have bitten off more than I can chew.

Has anyone on here ever gone through this process before or offer any tips (don't do it doesn't count as a tip!)

[Moxie]

In short, hell no. I've avoided giving myself a brain cramp by intentionally outsourcing all wiring and special harness mods to a great guy named Tom Nerkowski in Connecticut, but he seems to have gone off the radar. The Duncan website has a great utility for generating wiring diagrams,, but you might want to check the TDPRI site for recommendations on anyone local who does good harness work.

[TonyKL]

I've looked at a few wiring options and it looks pretty straight forward. I've just guessed at what capacitors I need so we will Haiti wait how it dounds

[CocoPops]

40 minutes ago, TonyKL said:

... so we will Haiti wait how it dounds

Okay

pissed? Or predictive text?

[TonyKL]

7 hours ago, CocoPops said:

pissed? Or predictive text?

Maybe a little of both 

10 hours ago, Moxie said:

The Duncan website has a great utility for generating wiring diagrams,, but you might want to check the TDPRI site for recommendations on anyone local who does good harness work.

Thanks, I'll take a look at the Duncan site.  I think it's all pretty straight forward. I mean, how hard can it be? :-P

[ramjet]

I would have thought it a matter of drawing up what is in there and then simply reproducing it?

[DaveyT]

If you use shielded wire, you won't have the hassle of then having to shield the compartments as well.

my LPC still has original wiring, but shielding the compartments with ally chimney tape reduced noise by about half.

i take it you've gone for 500k pots?

[Chillidoggy]

I've rewired a couple of them before, My SG Custom, and an SG Standard I converted to P90's.

My tips would be  to use a good soldering iron, proper leaded solder, not that lead-free rubbish, and if you're putting P90's or single coils in, then it might be worth putting some copper shielding in like what I did, but that's your choice.

I also found it very useful to knock up a template of the control wiring holes out of a bit of thin ally, made it a lot easier doing it 'offboard'.

 

[TonyKL]

46 minutes ago, DaveyT said:

i take it you've gone for 500k pots?

Yes, got a couple of different ones but are both 500k.  I also know the difference between the linear and log pots so my volume should be correct :-)

I've recorded and photo'd the existing setup, probably remain similar with a HSH (3 pups) setup.

I forget about shielding the guitar, might has to see if maplins sell anything useable.

The wire I bought is shielded but I also have un-shielded pot wire that I';m not sure whether to use or just stick with the single shielded wire.

Edited March 14, 2016 by TonyKL

[DaveyT]

Ian, did you post that on YouTube? Looks very similar to the one I followed to do my SG copy (Vintage)!

Tony, I'd have used copper, but couldn't find anywhere to get it, and i had some chimney tape kicking around so tried that...worked a treat, I'll try and post the audio files of the sound reduction. Works better for humbuckers, from what I've read, than for single coils, but it did have an effect on the SG (P90s)

dont know if my LP pots are log or linear, but the volume stays fairly constant from 3-10, while the gain increases massively.?

[TonyKL]

1 hour ago, DaveyT said:

Idont know if my LP pots are log or linear, but the volume stays fairly constant from 3-10, while the gain increases massively.?

My understanding is that the volume would be audio (log) pots mainly due to the fact that if they were linear the volume increase would be too aggressive and would not sound natural.  We are trained to like a gradual increase, allows for more control lower down the volume.

[TonyKL]

4 hours ago, DaveyT said:

Tony, I'd have used copper, but couldn't find anywhere to get it, and i had some chimney tape kicking around so tried that...

Can you use any copper tape.  I think I have some that you use on garden pots to keep slugs off your plants - would that work?

[DaveyT]

Don't see why not...if you can solder it, then each section can be properly grounded.

That was the challenge I had with the ally tape. Ended up folding it over at the edges and clamping it down with the hardware screws/fixings, then buzzed it all out for continuity

[Mark Blanchard]

It's easy stuff wiring in new pot, pickups etc, just need a steady hand and patience.  I've wired up loads of Strats and LPs and you get the hang of it after a while.  Make sure you buy a powerful soldering iron, as you want the iron to be on the pots for the least amount of time as possible to prevent heat damage.

[Chillidoggy]

I got the self adhesive copper shielding from WD Music http://www.wdmusic.co.uk/electronics-c17/shielding-c72/8-x-12-copper-shielding-foil-p359 They're also very good for all kinds of knicky-knacky guitar things.

Dave - The conversion I did was reversible, I used a new scratch plate with P90's on the SG standard, but no, I didn't put it on YT. The photo is of my walnut '73 SG Custom wiring I did.

[Moxie]

I'll second that on WD. I've bought quite a few bits of stuff from them. But also wanted to mention the originals of guitar parts supplies, Stewart-MacDonald, at http://www.stewmac.com 

[DaveyT]

Didn't trust myself to do anything substantial to the LPC, so I left it to a Luthier in Reading to do a reversible Peter Green mod with a a push-push tone pot. Still got the that came off it, and no need to reverse the magnets.

it was only when someone in the pub pointed out that the SG was making noise on the drive channel that I looked into the shielding question...

[TonyKL]

I've decided not to use the slug copper tape that I have.  It is conductive however the adhesive isn't.  This would mean that I would need to solder each piece together which would be time consuming and error-prone.  So I'll order some online which has conductive adhesive which should make the shielding much easier.

[DaveyT]

Couple of sound files for you all, descriptions of setup within the soundbites.

I did this as there were many opinions on the LP forums about whether shielding made any difference at all. House is old, but has a pretty good electrical ring with current CU, and there was little difference moving room-to-room on the noise levels, so assume it was picking up RF.

The ONLY change here was the addition of shielding, though it's probable that better grounding of the hardware in each cavity happened as a result; jack, switch, control and p'up cavities were all shielded.

20151206 091343.m4a

20151206 124742.m4a

[Chillidoggy]

11 hours ago, TonyKL said:

I've decided not to use the slug copper tape that I have.  It is conductive however the adhesive isn't.  This would mean that I would need to solder each piece together which would be time consuming and error-prone.  So I'll order some online which has conductive adhesive which should make the shielding much easier.

 

You only need a blob of solder between each piece of copper shielding, Tony. Then check the continuity with a multi-meter. Gibson use some grey paint in the cavity, which is thin as hell. I also shielded the back of the scratchplate, and attached it to the guitar with a wire. You can see what I did in this photo, and then the finished job.

 

 

[C43]

On ‎13‎/‎03‎/‎2016 at 20:58, TonyKL said:

So, I've bought a few new guitars, my work horse (shitty old ibanez rg) has been giving me some grief with the electrics and not been sounding that great lately.  I've never re-wired a guitar before but today I decided to strip the whole thing down, completely back to the wood and I've now just ordered a complete replacement for it.  New pots, switch, jack and pickups (dimarzios).  Even had to order myself a soldering iron!!

I've never done this before and looking at the bare wood I wonder if I have bitten off more than I can chew.

Has anyone on here ever gone through this process before or offer any tips (don't do it doesn't count as a tip!)

Talk to Simon at Brooke Kensington and get your car and guitar done at the same time. I have used them for years for lots of Lotii and he makes a mean guitar..

C43

[Matthew Haskins]

I've done a few, it's also worth looking at some push pull tone controls to split the coils on the humbuckers - allows you to get a good clean tone more akin to a stratocaster. In my experience copper tape with conductive adhesive is the easiest route to go paying most attention to the single coil pick up cavity as this is the biggest area for noise.

Another point worth noting as we've all probably done it, make sure you connect the jack socket the right way as it'll work if you get it wrong but create a buzz when you're not touching the strings and will take you ages to diagnose what went wrong!!