Collings 290DCS
Well this was pretty crazy. I wired this guitar back when I used to work at Collings. I was asked to install a new pickup with some push/pull switches for series/parallel and coil splitting. This one was a lot of fun
The first thing I did was to remove the knobs, and this is the trick I learned at Collings to remove them without causing damage to the guitar or the knobs themselves. I used regular hook up wire and looped it once around the shaft below the knob and then very gently lifted up, rocking the knob side to side a bit until it loosened enough to pop right off. The trick is not to pull too hard or the knob will go flying and might even land back on the guitar, causing a dent. After the knobs were off, I removed the nuts and washers in preparation for taking the pots out.
Next up was getting into the control cavity. Collings does a great job making all of their guitars easy to work on, and I can vouch for the fact that a lot of time is spent on designing them to be that way. So, after removing two screws, I was back in familiar territory. I desoldered the pickup and the output jack leads and thanked my past self for leaving plenty of slack, and the pots popped right out. Removing the Lollar dogear pickup was painless too. The new pickup, made by Creamery (http://www.creamery-pickups.co.uk/custom-13-dirty-northern-p90-dogear-bridge.html this one has alnico 2 magnets), went right into place. I had more than enough extra wire from the pickup and ended up cutting it back three or four inches to ensure a nice, clean looking install.
Next, I had to come up with a wiring diagram since this mod combination isn’t a very common one. It took a little creativity, but I was able to design it so that the switch on the volume knob would change the two coils of the humbucker from being in series – as every humbucker is normally – to parallel, and the tone pot switch controlled the coil split – a mod which turns off one half of a humbucker, turning it into a single coil pickup. Very cool. I ended up designing it to shut off the coil closest to the bridge since I found that it sounded richer and more interesting, less bitey. Once I had my diagram all drawn up, I made a little fixture out of a cardboard box to space the pots the way they would be in the guitar and started wiring it up.
The wiring went beautifully, slipped right into place, and worked exactly as intended. I couldn’t have been happier. I was so excited to work on this guitar that I finished it the same day I got it. I had it back to the friend who dropped it off within six hours. What a great time!