You know when you think... I'll just pop these new pickups in...

lovestrat74

 Then a few hours later your guitar looks like this!


I bought some blacktop filtertrons to replace the broadtrons. For a start, they don't fit! So I filed the routes a little to get them in.

I had previously replaced the crap pots with CTS 500k - 1 vol 1 tone for simplicity. I'm not really sure of the benefits of the master volume, 2x vol and 1x tone Gretsch setup.

Anyway, waffling... so I wired in the pickups - I wired hot and ground directly to the switch as I had done previously and got a loud BUZzzz.

So after several attempts to unwire and rewire I've given up! 

Might just buy a new bloody harness 

BillDL

Yes, I've been there more times than I care to remember.  I have found that the best thing to do is put it aside for a few days then come back to it.  I work on my guitars in my upstairs back room, and I have been known to launch the odd frustrating project out the window onto the slabs when something fiddly had annoyed me repeatedly for hours on end.  It's usually been something simple, but too late to go back and rectify it by that time.

My latest one (that I didn't launch out the window) was one where I had re-used some pots.  I wasn't sure about the wiring of an eight lug slider switch and was using diagrams sourced from the internet.  None of them worked, but by the time I had de-soldered and resoldered to the switch the lugs were wobbly and I thought I had buggered that up.  After having seen the correct wiring of the switch from ICBM and having realised it WAS one of the wiring schemes I had tried, I just assumed it was the switch and ordered two new ones.  While dismantling the loom I noticed a little soft click on the volume pot between 9 and 10, so I opened up the pot to discover a small blob of solder inside the casing.  Lesson learned - don't use pre-used pots because they're pretty cheap to buy.

The annoying thing about this whole waste of time and effort is that I then remembered the pots had been previously used in another project that was problematic and I had assumed the LP type toggle switch to have been the faulty component in that case.  After installing a new switch and starting from scratch with new pots it worked fine.  I should have ditched the pots along with the switch even though it hadn't actually been a faulty switch at all.

I tend to only use proper Switchcraft 3-way toggle switches now, but annoyingly the copies of them have the ground lug and common output lugs on different sides.

Proper Switchcraft

 

Switchcraft Copy

I find that heatshrink tubing is a must with the copy type because the lugs are so closely spaced with the ground in between, and I tend to feed the wires into those lugs from the inside (i.e. in next to the leaves squeezed together for the ground lugs and the bare end to the outsides where I solder them so that if the wires are touching it will just be the insulation and not bare wire.  There's more space to solder the wires on a proper Switchcraft.

I find that working with single insulated core and braid screen cable is more fiddly than using the externally braided screen Gavitt cable that has a push-back core, because you are using the outside wire screen as your ground wherever the cable goes and not mucking around with a separate internal braid that has to be teased out and twisted together.  You do have to slide sheathing like heatshrink tubing over the cable in places though.

Incidentally, what it that rubber object sitting partially across the F-Hole?  I assume you use it for pinning down loose wires, but what was it originally?

lovestrat74

Hey Bill!!

Thanks for chiming in as always

I "borrowed" that rubber thing from work. Not sure what it is exactly but I thought it would make a useful holder for soldering

BillDL

I think it's like a toilet roll holder but for different widths of dental floss 

BillDL

I'm far from being clever with electronics and figuring out where the wires need to go, so I just memorise different common schemes and can be fuddled by ones I've never or rarely before done.  I would say, however, that I am good at doing the actual wiring and can do a very neat job as well as feeling that I am able to offer practical tips.

One thing I've found with multicore cable is that it is best to make the live wire longer than the internal braid that you twist together, and solder the braid to the grounding connection so that it takes the strain of the cable much better if it is tugged or stretched rather than the strain being on the much thinner live wire.

This is why I like the Gavitt external braid wire (although shown with an "import" switch with the live common out on its own on the left and the ground on the right between the input lugs), but I would also slide up some heatshrink tubing to cover the fabric wire insulation ends as well:

The braids are all now grounded together using the bare wire from the ground lug wound around them.

You use the braid as your ground at each pot and it takes the strain if the cable is tugged (different switch design below from images above):

Personally I hate using plastic sheathed multicore and internal screen braid cables, especially at the switch end where it just feels a lot less substantial and is more of a faff having to twist all the braided screen wires together.

ICBM

If it’s buzzing loudly, did you undo the jack connections? If yes, and the guitar produces signal as well as the buzz, you may have wired it backwards. If no, and there is no signal, just buzz, then the ground connection has come off.

stickyfiddle

Every 3 years or so I get the idea that it’s not that bad… 

I am genuinely considering doing this semi-regularly under a new endeavour. I am an idiot. 

relic245

What are those tubes you put over the pots?

I understand what they are for, more interested in what they are called and where you get them.

stickyfiddle

relic245 said:

What are those tubes you put over the pots?

I understand what they are for, more interested in what they are called and where you get them.

I’d have to check tbh as it’s been a while, but I think they were marketed as either surgical tubing or something for aquariums 

lovestrat74

Yes they are surgical tubes - I have those too. Luckily, mines fully hollow, so more room to work with under the top

lovestrat74

ICBM said:

If it’s buzzing loudly, did you undo the jack connections? If yes, and the guitar produces signal as well as the buzz, you may have wired it backwards. If no, and there is no signal, just buzz, then the ground connection has come off.

I think there was a dodgy ground on the tone pot, but I'd dismantled too much by the time I got to it, so cannot confirm. I did the continuity test beforehand and it seemed ok, but you never know...  I am having a break for now so I can go back to it with a fresh impetus!  Think I will reinstate the master, 2 vol, 1 tone layout when I get back on to it...

Yorkie

One does not simply change the pickups on a Semi!