Wiring is fun!

Well hello again!

This week I’m just going through a pretty simple wiring job and thought it would be fun to break it down piece by piece. To me, all of this stuff is modular. It’s like a whole bunch of smaller pieces that can be put together if you follow some really simple principles.

First, there’s only signal and ground. Everything metal that’s not in the signal path needs to be grounded, yes everything: your strings, your bridge, your switch, your pots, your jack, all of it! Well… except for your strap buttons. BTW even though your frets aren’t technically grounded, as soon as the strings make contact with them, they become grounded, pretty cool.

So ground is simple enough. Then all we have to figure out is signal path!

Step 1: figure out what you want your guitar to do. For this project, I have two pickups with separate volume and tone controls, a switch, and a jack.

here’s how to wire a master volume: input from the pickup goes in the bottom lug, output goes out the middle lug, and the top lug gets grounded. In one, out two, ground three. If you want an independent volume control, just swap the input and output, but know that it will b a bit noisier than the master volume, I’ll explain in another post.

And here’s how to wire a tone pot: (notice it’s reversed from the previous image, cuz that’s how we’re going to wire it) Ground the bottom lug (3, remember it’s reversed), input from the middle lug (2) through a cap, and leave the top lug (1) alone. You can also put the capacitor between the bottom lug and the ground on the back of the pot and it’ll have the same effect. As long as a capacitor and variable resistor are in series (one after the other) to ground, they will function like a tone pot.

Since I want this tone pot in a “50’s wiring” AKA “output loading” arrangement, I connected the cap to the output (lug 2) of the volume. If I wanted “Modern wiring” AKA “coil/input loading” I would put it on the input (lug 1).

Then check out the volume pot. Remember that the input goes in lug one? look where the lead from the pickups is going! White is signal and red is ground, so red goes to the back of the pot. Still with me? Ok, since I have two pickups I need to do this the exact same way twice.

Since the inputs from both pickups and both tone pots are all wired up, then it’s just a matter of running the outputs to the switch!

Here’s where coaxial wire really shines. See, I can run the output signal through the inner cloth wire and I can connect all the chassis grounds with the outer shielding!

I put a little shrink tubing over the gap so nothing gets accidentally shorted, and now both of the pot chassis are connected, ready to be a part of the entire ground circuit!

Rinse, repeat, using a longer wire to reach all the way to the switch.

It’s looking pretty good now! Just need to add the switch and the output jack.

coooooool.

both outputs from each set of pickups and volume/tone pots go to either side of the switch and it all gets added together and sent to the output jack via the middle lug of the switch. Notice that I’m grounding everything together all along the way.

And there it is! Not too complicated now is it?

OK, happy weekend! I’m going swimming! Who’s coming with me?