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Righty wiring kit in a lefty guitar? (Sheraton II)


BOSSMANiv

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Hey y'all, this is my fist post here.

 

I'm a lefty player and my main guitar is an Epiphone Sheraton II (chinese version I think). I am planning to change the stock pups to Seth Lovers soon and while I'm paying someone to mess around in there I figure it would be a good opportunity to replace the stock wiring/pots. My question is, if I order a pre-wired righty kit, are there any issues putting that in a lefty? A quick statement:

 

- I know the pots/knobs will (if wired correctly) rotate differently than the typical (on all my lefty's counter-clockwise increases volume to match the same motion as the rightys I presume), I don't really care which way they rotate I just want knobs that actually work. I can get used to the rest. (I'm looking at you, tone knob)

 

So basically, If I take my guitar to a luthier will a kit such as this (link below) physically fit in a lefty sheraton even though it will remain wired like a righty? Or should I purchase the un-assembled kit? Or is there a better option?

 

http://www.mojotone.com/guitar-parts/Pre-Wired-Harnesses-Kits_x/Pre-Wired-ES-335-Style-PREMIUM-Wiring-Kit

 

Thanks.

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There won't be any issues. The knobs don't know/care they are going in a lefty. And the simple way of making the knobs go lefty is by wiring it backwards. Using this diagram, have your tech wire it opposite. ie: Where the hot from the pickup goes to lug one of the volume pot, and the ground of the pot is lug 3, make it hot to lug 3, ground to lug one. The same for the tone controls. Ground the pot on lug one, instead of 3.

https://guitarelectronics.com/2-humbuckers-3-way-toggle-switch-2-volumes-2-tones/

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Hey y'all, this is my fist post here.

 

I'm a lefty player and my main guitar is an Epiphone Sheraton II (chinese version I think). I am planning to change the stock pups to Seth Lovers soon and while I'm paying someone to mess around in there I figure it would be a good opportunity to replace the stock wiring/pots. My question is, if I order a pre-wired righty kit, are there any issues putting that in a lefty? A quick statement:

 

- I know the pots/knobs will (if wired correctly) rotate differently than the typical (on all my lefty's counter-clockwise increases volume to match the same motion as the rightys I presume), I don't really care which way they rotate I just want knobs that actually work. I can get used to the rest. (I'm looking at you, tone knob)

 

So basically, If I take my guitar to a luthier will a kit such as this (link below) physically fit in a lefty sheraton even though it will remain wired like a righty? Or should I purchase the un-assembled kit? Or is there a better option?

 

http://www.mojotone.com/guitar-parts/Pre-Wired-Harnesses-Kits_x/Pre-Wired-ES-335-Style-PREMIUM-Wiring-Kit

 

Thanks.

 

I wouldn't bother with a kit unless they offer it in a left-handed version.

 

The advantage of a kit is that it's pre-wired for easy, "drop-in" installation. A decent guitar tech or luthier can get you the parts and install them easily enough, and without the issues you'll have from trying to deal with a right-handed kit. A right-handed kit would have to be re-wired anyway, so there's really no advantage to it. If you tried to drop it straight into a left-handed guitar, the volume and tone controls will not only work/rotate "backwards", but will be located in the wrong positions on the guitar.

 

Since it would have to be re-wired anyway, it would actually be easier from the tech's viewpoint to start with the raw parts instead of having to desolder everything in the kit and rewire it.

 

BTW, welcome to Harmony Central! :wave:

 

 

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I am a builder who has made a left handed 335 clone for one of our forumites. If you brought me that prewired kit I would have to charge you extra because I would have to disassemble it and flip everything over. The pots, output jack, and switch are all wired in mirror image along their centerline. Unless my customer has something very special in mind for wiring I prefer to purchase the components myself (to meet his requirements).

 

I would also ask you, as I asked my client, which way you want the pots to turn - does clockwise increase volume / treble or do you want them reversed? If you want them reversed from normal right handed we would have to order new pots (the ones in the kit would be log or "audio" taper and would be backwards).

 

Here is a shot of the inside of a lefty 335. I had the advantage that I could actually mount the components and wire them rather than making a jig as you have to do on a finished guitar. On this and other 335's I have spliced the pickup wires in the cavities - that makes pickup wiring much easier and allows you to change pickups in the future without fishing the entire harness out thru the f-holes,

 

[ATTACH=JSON]{"data-align":"none","data-size":"full","title":"IMG_2582-2.jpg","data-attachmentid":32188278}[/ATTACH]

 

Before I forget my manners, welcome to HCEG

 

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I'll add two more thoughts. Your prewired kit is $140, the components usually cost $40 (or less if you buy them from Radio Shack or another parts store). Here is a perfectly good kit.

 

http://www.stewmac.com/Pickups_and_E...ul_Guitar.html

 

It would take me less than an hour to wire that into a harness like you are buying - that would be a substantial savings.

 

Second, when your technician pulls out the old wiring have her tie a string on each component and pull a "fish wire" thru that hole. (She should know to do this but it doesn't hurt to remind her). The fish wire will allow each of the new parts to be pulled into position

 

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Thanks a ton y'all. Makes a lot of sense. Yea, I wasn't too excited about the price of the pre-assembled kit either. I'm going to stop by today or tomorrow at a local place and talk to the tech there to see what we can make happen in the coming weeks. I've already got the pickups, and I can leave the rest to the technician.

 

Freeman, do you have a website or anything? Would love to see some of your finished work. I love the idea of having a wine red custom lefty 335 clone some day, but that's for another day.The color and finish on my Sheraton isn't my favorite (wanted the wine red), but they limited the options on lefties, and recently quit making lefty sheratons altogether.

 

And thanks for the warm welcomes!

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No web page, I'm just a small time builder who likes posting on this forum. I sometimes post build threads here at HC, since this guitar was for a forumite here is the thread

 

http://www.harmonycentral.com/forum/forum/guitar/acapella-41/31499639-lets-build-something-that-looks-like-an-es-335

 

There is a really fun twist to that story, but if you don't want to wade thru all of it, here is one picture of the finished guitar. The owner wanted cherry red, but "not bubble gum", I hope he is happy with it. Since then I've done another right handed 335 and it would be relative easy (I think) to do one in wine red.

 

IMG_2857_zpsitottjld.jpg

 

Good luck with yours, report back as to the wiring mod.

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Hi and welcome to the Forum. Freeman has already given you excellent advice. Here's mine FWIW: I'm an "If it ain't broke" kind of guy. Just replace the pickups and don't worry about the pots and such if they work and aren't making noise.

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yeah hi there , i'm the proud owner of the above guitar :)

(no i will never sell it:))

 

2 thoughts of mine:

like deepend just said, why do you want to replace your complete wiring? whats wrong with it?

if you like you wrote unhappy with the tone knob, its mostly an "issue" with the tone capacitor, so just replacing that with one with a bigger or smaller value (depending how you want to change) should make it more effectiv

 

and second, $140 for 4 pots, two cabs, a switch a jack and some wires? thats nuts... for this money you get not only the parts, but you also could buy a good soldering iron and learn to do it yourself, not to mention if you buy the parts there are $100 left to pay someone to do the wiring for you

 

oh and if you change pickups, it might also change how the tone knobs react, as pickups are coils, pots are resistors and there is a capacitor in place, they all interact together and if you change one, the overall outcome is affected, so maybe the new pickups alone make the toneknobs more usable, you should try themfirst before you change everything at once

 

and i prefer my pots to work in the righty direction. altough badpenguin is right, changeing the direction is just swapping the two outer wires, if the pot is logaritmic, also the sensitivity is swapped, so silent you can turn the knob long way until something happens and on the loud the changes are too big...

and getting "lefty" pots which work reverse is not that easy cause mostly they are not produced...

 

so i want to have the pots on all my guitar in the same direction, because it confuses me, the need to think oh this turns lefty oh and this turn righty etc. and my choice was everything righty

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I agree with most of what you said Tele, but a raw beginner at soldering trying to install new electronics (including pots, caps and jacks) in a semi-hollowbody is a recipe for frustration... I'd recommend he leave the installation to a pro to avoid that and to avoid potential damage to the instrument.

 

As far as "lefty pots", the answer there is to use linear taper instead of logarithmic / audio taper pots so that even once you flip the two outer wires, the "throw" of the controls won't be quite as whacky. I generally prefer audio taper for volume controls on a right-handed guitar, but for a lefty, I'd probably opt for linear pots.

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I agree with most of what you said Tele, but a raw beginner at soldering trying to install new electronics (including pots, caps and jacks) in a semi-hollowbody is a recipe for frustration... I'd recommend he leave the installation to a pro to avoid that and to avoid potential damage to the instrument.

 

As far as "lefty pots", the answer there is to use linear taper instead of logarithmic / audio taper pots so that even once you flip the two outer wires, the "throw" of the controls won't be quite as whacky. I generally prefer audio taper for volume controls on a right-handed guitar, but for a lefty, I'd probably opt for linear pots.

 

Why would you need to flip the wires for a lefty install? :freak:

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I'm going to chime back in and say that I mostly agree with the last three comments (Deep, Tele and Phil) but one thing to keep in mind about an 335 - they are kind of a bitch to work on. Therefore don't do anything unless you really need to and then do anything and everything that needs to be done. You have to take the whole harness out of the guitar, even to do some minor chore like changing a cap, so think carefully about whether it makes sense or not.

 

Potentiometers uses for volume controls have logarithm taper because our hearing is logarthmic (thats also why we use a log scale like decibels) - do not flip the wires on a log (also called "audio taper") pot. You can get reversed ones or you can substitute a linear taper but remember that every other volume control is clockwise to increase - as Tele says why confuse yourself.

 

Whether you are going to replace components or not, if you do replace pickups consider splicing the wires in the pickup cavity. That will save you the hassle of pulling the pots and switch out and make is possible to easily change pots in the future. On the guitar shown here I simply solder spliced the leads in the cavity, on this one I installed a couple of little terminal strips in the bridge cavity and spliced the wires.

 

[ATTACH=JSON]{"data-align":"none","data-size":"full","title":"IMG_3395-2.jpg","data-attachmentid":32188944}[/ATTACH]

 

[ATTACH=JSON]{"data-align":"none","data-size":"full","title":"IMG_3324-2.jpg","data-attachmentid":32188945}[/ATTACH]

 

The terminals that I used in that guitar were special designed for very low signal levels (strain gauges and load cells) - remember that the signal from a guitar pickup is pretty low.

 

Also in that picture you can see the little pieces of string (actually dental floss) that I used to fish each component to its final location. Did I mention that wiring a 335 is a bitch?

 

Lastly, I do agree that soldering is a skill that must be learned by practice - whether the OP or his technician has those skills is very important before starting a project like this. One of the things I really advise is after hooking everything up on a breadboard outside of the guitar (including the pickups) then plug it into an amp and tap on the pups. Make sure the switch operates in the correct direction (up neck, down bridge), make sure the pots do what you think they should with the correct pups. Particularly if you've flipped things over for a lefty. Wiggle every solder connection and make sure you don't have cold joints - particularly make sure the common ground point is noise free.

 

Here is one more picture of nice clean 335 wiring in place with the back off. This one is a righty

 

[ATTACH=JSON]{"data-align":"none","data-size":"full","title":"IMG_3327-2.jpg","data-attachmentid":32188946}[/ATTACH]

 

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You mirror the position of the volume and tone so they work the correct pup (as you hold the guitar you want the neck controls to be "up"). You also mirror the switch. However as we have discuss if you mirror the pot wiring too then turning a volume clockwise will reduce volume (and gets into the issues of logarithmic taper). That is why I asked the OP (and Tele) if he wanted them CW or CCW.

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I agree with most of what you said Tele, but a raw beginner at soldering trying to install new electronics (including pots, caps and jacks) in a semi-hollowbody is a recipe for frustration... I'd recommend he leave the installation to a pro to avoid that and to avoid potential damage to the instrument.

 

no matter how experienced you are in soldering, soldering pots and connecting the groundwire to the housing will always be a PITA and you have to start somewhere.

you could also start soldering some wire models (aeroplanes are cool) like we did in electronic engineering school, but as those are only toys and do not carry any electricity, with that you never will learn what a bad solder joint is electrically :)

 

my main point was $140 for a pre-wired kit is too much money, a good tech will solder it for less than half the price

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no matter how experienced you are in soldering, soldering pots and connecting the groundwire to the housing will always be a PITA and you have to start somewhere.

you could also start soldering some wire models (aeroplanes are cool) like we did in electronic engineering school, but as those are only toys and do not carry any electricity, with that you never will learn what a bad solder joint is electrically :)

 

I agree with you on all of that, but the idea of re-wiring a hollowbody or semi-hollowbody guitar is somewhat like building a ship in a bottle - IMO, it's probably better to get started learning how to solder on something that doesn't have that added degree of difficulty and complexity. :)

 

my main point was $140 for a pre-wired kit is too much money, a good tech will solder it for less than half the price

 

That kit costs waaaaay too much! I couldn't agree with you more on that!

 

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Thanks again for all the helpful input. I'm definitely not going for any pre-wired kit. I talked to a technician at a local music store that I respect and guitar tech was swamped at the time and said his turn around time for the semi hollow body would be a few weeks and didn't feel that was acceptable so he referred me to another local guy that only does guitar repairs/upgrades. I'll reach out to him soon. But basically I'm probably going to only get the new pickups in to begin with, then try it for a while and decide if I truly need the re wire at a later date, and if so determine if I truly need a full rewire or just to change a pot or two.

 

In the meantime, I have a really cheap ebay lefty strat kit I got a while back as a "learner" to learn how to do my own electronics, fret work, set-up, etc... It's been sitting in the closet un-assembled ever since. Maybe I'll pull that out to see about learning/practicing doing future work myself. In a few months, my wife and I are moving and I'll have the actual space to be able set up and do some stuff myself.

 

Freeman, I read through the entire build on that 335 copy and it looks amazing. Thanks for sharing!

 

Tele, I'm definitely jealous of your guitar, or the looks of it anyway, haha. Now I'm jonesing for my own custom semi-hollow....

 

Thanks again everyone! Guess I'm just naturally more complicated being a lefty player that prefers semi-hollow bodies, haha. But y'all have above and beyond answered my question and I learned a good bit too.

 

 

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I think you've made a good decision on the Sheraton, let us know how you like it with different pickups. There is rarely anything "wrong" with the electronics other than possibly dirty pots. You can affect the sound of your guitar by changing the VALUE of some of the components but changing the brand or type of a pot or cap makes difference, Ask your tech to consider splicing the p/u wires in the cavity, that saves taking the entire wiring harness out,

 

When you get ready to build the strat let us know - I've got lots of references for you. And please remain active on HC

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