Pickup wiring...

[Jazzer2020]

I have two Gibson hollow bodies that I did mods on a while back.

On both I removed the bridge pickup as I don't use them.

The pickup holes were plugged with a piece of wood.

 

I don't remember what I clipped or where I clipped, but on one guitar, when I flip the

pickup switch to the mid or bridge position I get dead silence.

This is what I want.

 

On the second guitar, I am currently getting the same sound when I flip the

pickup to either neck or mid position and when I flip to the bridge position

I am not getting any pickup sound but a nasty hum instead.

 

Does anyone know off-hand how to wire the the second guitar like the first?

It's hard to get inside these guitars as you know.

Again, I just basically clipped a wire(s).

 

[onelife]

Did you remove the controls for the bridge pickup(s)?

[badpenguin]

IF was a true "clip", snipping the wires with wire cutters, and if you snipped the bridge pickup just right, it's grounding out the mid and bridge position on the switch. Hence the dead silence in both of those positions.

Take the remaining wire from the bridge pickup from the 3 way, and wire the hot to the ground of the neck pickup. Neck position should be normal, mid and bridge, should turn it off.

[Jazzer2020]

Did you remove the controls for the bridge pickup(s)?

 

Yes, both the tone and volume controls were removed (on both guitars).

[6down1togo]

The simple solution would have been to leave the three way switch in the neck position. Not to mention leaving the bridge pickup in place and having no hole to put a patch over. Sorry if I come off sounding snarky, but I don't get it.

[jtr654]

Removing the pickups and control WHY?? WHY did you leave the pickup selector?? You probably snipped the ground wire if you get a hum.

 

[jtr654]

Mbengs is this you under a different name?

[Jazzer2020]

The simple solution would have been to leave the three way switch in the neck position. Not to mention leaving the bridge pickup in place and having no hole to put a patch over. Sorry if I come off sounding snarky' date=' but I don't get it.[/quote']

 

I did this same mod twice and am happy with it (going with one pickup).

Why did I do it?

 

Because I:

a) Wanted to lighten the guitar

b) Don't use the bridge pickup ever

c) Don't care how the guitar looks

d) Don't care about re-sale value

e) Wanted to limit any possible rattles

 

 

[Jazzer2020]

Removing the pickups and control WHY??

 

Please read my post just above this one.

 

WHY did you leave the pickup selector??

 

Because I like to be able to go from full sound to dead silence just with the flip of a switch.

It comes in handy in performance situations.

 

You probably snipped the ground wire if you get a hum.

 

Well yes of course I snipped the ground wire. That is, the shielding ground of the pickup wire.

And no, that is not why I am getting the hum.

It is some combination of something else in the guitar + one particular amp that has a 2-prong power cord

instead of 3-pring.

 

Using this guitar with other amps that have 3-prong power cords yields these results:

 

Control switch:

Neck pickup: PU sounds

Middle position: PU sounds

Bridge pickup: Dead

 

So I have fished out the control switch and have to figure out which wire to disconnect etc. I may follow badpenguin's

wiring advice.

 

 

 

 

[Jazzer2020]

IF was a true "clip"' date=' snipping the wires with wire cutters, and if you snipped the bridge pickup [i']just right[/i], it's grounding out the mid and bridge position on the switch. Hence the dead silence in both of those positions.

Take the remaining wire from the bridge pickup from the 3 way, and wire the hot to the ground of the neck pickup. Neck position should be normal, mid and bridge, should turn it off.

 

This is just from peeking inside the f-holes...

 

I don't want to muck around too much inside with these wires, because it's not a lot of fun...

Something else is at play here.

When I took out the controls (vol/tone) for the bridge p/u I clipped at least one other wire (probably out of necessity).

There is a short wire remaining that is going to the neck tone pot.

 

I figure it must have been connected somewhere to the bridge vol/tone pots.

 

Just did a test, trying out the neck tone pot. It doesn't work as expected.

Full is OK. mid position doesn't darken the sound, and almost at 0, gives full sound again.

When you turn the pot you almost get a wah effect!

 

So now I'd like to get my neck tone pot working again and also have the toggle switch work as

described above.

 

Ideas?

 

[Freeman Keller]

Jazzer, I'm not going to take the time to try to troubleshoot your wiring, particularly since you haven't really given any information, but I will kick out a couple of ideas.

 

First, remember that Gibson (and others) have used several different wiring schemes on their two HB guitars. The so called "50's wiring" has the characteristic that with the selector in the middle position if you turn one of the volumes all the way down it kills both pickups. There is a more modern scheme that eliminates this, each volume controls fades its p/u but does not affect the other - the are blended. It is possible that one guitar has one scheme, the other the other.

 

There are also a couple of different ways the tone circuit is connected to the volume - they work the same but the actual configuration is different. It is entirely possible that you snipped a wire at the same spot on each guitar but the wiring was different.

 

The only way that I, or anyone else here, can help you is if you draw a nice little diagram of how each guitar is wired now and we can sit down and compare them. Since you may have to do some soldering it would make sense to pull the harnesses out (tie fish strings on each component so you can pull it back). Photograph your harnesses or your wiring diagrams and post here.

[Jazzer2020]

First, remember that Gibson (and others) have used several different wiring schemes on their two HB guitars...

 

There are also a couple of different ways the tone circuit is connected to the volume - they work the same but the actual configuration is different. It is entirely possible that you snipped a wire at the same spot on each guitar but the wiring was different.

 

The only way that I, or anyone else here, can help you is if you draw a nice little diagram of how each guitar is wired now and we can sit down and compare them. Since you may have to do some soldering it would make sense to pull the harnesses out (tie fish strings on each component so you can pull it back). Photograph your harnesses or your wiring diagrams and post here.

 

Thanks Freeman for your help!

I am going to fish out the wires for my 'trouble guitar' today and I'll post what I see.

I don't know if I want to muck around with my 'good guitar'. I was going to do that yesterday and

only got as far as the selector switch. Because that guitar (ES-135) has a wood block in it

some of the wiring goes through it and I wasn't having any luck pulling/pushing the wires through it.

 

I had an idea of looking for the wiring diagram for a single pickup Gibson humbucker (volume/tone)

because that is basically what I have now, except for the toggle switch.

 

The guitars and dates are as follows:

'Good guitar': Gibson ES-135 (2001)

'Trouble guitar': Gibson ES-175 (1995)

[Freeman Keller]

 

Thanks Freeman for your help!

I am going to fish out the wires for my 'trouble guitar' today and I'll post what I see.

I don't know if I want to muck around with my 'good guitar'. I was going to do that yesterday and

only got as far as the selector switch. Because that guitar (ES-135) has a wood block in it

some of the wiring goes through it and I wasn't having any luck pulling/pushing the wires through it.

 

I had an idea of looking for the wiring diagram for a single pickup Gibson humbucker (volume/tone)

because that is basically what I have now, except for the toggle switch.

 

The guitars and dates are as follows:

'Good guitar': Gibson ES-135 (2001)

'Trouble guitar': Gibson ES-175 (1995)

 

 

The second diagram is a common Gibson wiring scheme. You will also sometime see that lower jumper from the volume to tone pot removed and the capacitor hooked from the bottom lug of the volume to the middle of the tone. The bottom lug of the volume is then grounded, the top floating.

 

https://www.stewmac.com/How-To/Onlin...le_Switch.html

 

Here is the wiring for a one pickup guitar like a LP Jr, in this case they used the alternate tone wiring that I described above

 

https://www.stewmac.com/How-To/Onlin...G_Juniors.html

 

You could certainly put a three way switch in the LP Jr circuit - the first and middle position would be the same (pickup), the third would kill it.

 

Seymour Duncan has about any wiring diagram that you can imagine on their website.

 

ps - I understand what you are saying about working on a semi hollow. I build them and have developed some tricks for getting things in and out. One little trick is to tie a piece of thin strong string on each component (I use dental floss) and as you pull the parts out tape the end of the string on the top. That makes it (somewhat) easier to pull the part back in to place. It also helps keep any washers that might be on the inside of the shafts from getting loose and hiding in some corner of the insides. Ask how I know.......

 

pps - I've done a trick on several semi hollows of cutting the pickup leads in the cavity (leave 3 or 4 inches on the pup) and then putting a splice in the cavity (I've both soldered them and put little terminals in the cavity). That way you don't have to thread the pickup wires in and out of the body and if you ever want to change the pup(s) you don't have to take all the other stuff out.

 

Good luck, report back

[Jazzer2020]

Thanks for the diagrams Freeman I'll check them out shortly.

I am going to post a bunch of photos I just took.

For me it's really complicated right now. I don't have a clue where everything is going.

I hope you or someone else can make sense of all these wires...

 

If you visit the site below, you will see the photos I took.

 

[Freeman Keller]

It is really hard to trace the wiring in a photo like that, particularly with all the shielded wires. One way to look at it would be to print out that first StewMac wiring diagram (or if you find another LP diagram print it). Take a marking pen (better yet white out) and mark out the neck pickup and the upper tone and volume control. Where the wire goes from the middle lug of the top volume pot to the top lug of the switch, mark that out. What you have left is a single pickup with tone and volume and a kill switch. Now take a different high lighter and trace your wiring one wire at a time and highlight on the drawing - when you are done you should have everything connected just as the drawing.

 

One thought came to me too, when you took out the neck controls you may have broken a ground wire somewhere. Basically all of those shielded cables should be grounded to a pot body and the two pots should be grounded to each other. You should also have a ground wire to the jack and the black wire that goes to the other side of the switch should be a ground.

 

I'm assuming that silver canister in the bottom pictures is the output jack? I've never seen one like it.

[Jazzer2020]

I'm assuming that silver canister in the bottom pictures is the output jack? I've never seen one like it.

 

Yes it is the output jack! Boy was I surprised as I was putting a string on the jack wire when I saw it.

I had never seen one of those before either. Not sure what it's all about.

Thanks for the wiring tips. I'll print out the diagram and see if I can start tracing all these wires.

 

 

[Jazzer2020]

Wow this is really frustrating!

 

Trying to simply trace the wires is very difficult.

Tracing by the shielding is useless because they are all touching.

So I needed to get to the ends of the wires.

But even that proved very difficult.

 

Here's a diagram of what I could come up with.

Not sure what is connected to the other two switch leads.

 

Any suggestions what to cut?

I'm think about cutting the two remaining wires going to the switch.

 

Don't know how to fix the tone pot problem.

But the cap connection is different from all the diagrams you supplied.

 

[Jazzer2020]

More frustrations...

 

I decided to do a test with the multimeter.

 

Switch:

Good guitar:

-Neck 80 k

-Mid 0 k

-Bridge 0 K

 

Bad guitar before cutting:

- Neck 80 k

- Mid 80 k

- Bridge 0 k

 

Bad guitar after cutting one lead to far contact (away from neck contact)

- Neck no reading

- Mid no reading

- Bridge no reading

 

The top two readings were as expected.

The last reading was not and was disappointing!

 

Suggestions?

[Freeman Keller]

The diagram is one pickup of the #0133 Les Paul wiring diagram that I linked. The pickup hot goes to the bottom lug of the volume which then goes to the bottom lug of the tone. The top lug of the volume is grounded, the wiper goes to the left terminal of the switch. Not shown would be the center terminal of the switch (usually two lugs that are bent together with a wire that goes to the nose of the jack (the hot output). Your tone capacitor is wired from the wiper of the tone pot to ground - its done a little bit differently than the StewMac drawing but the results are the same. Assuming that all of the grounds (pickup, switch, jack and both pots, are all tied together and nothing is touching the grounded parts or the shields it should work fine. Left and center of the switch will run the pup to the jack, the right position will kill the output.

 

Trying to check resistances with a wired circuit is next to impossible and often confusing because you get "back feed" thru components that might be wired in parallel with the one you are checking. Also if you have pots set at different positions you can get different readings. I will use a multimeter to check pickups and/or pots but I unwire them first.

 

The only thing you could do to that schematic to make it simpler is to take the the wire from the center terminal of the volume straight to the nose of the jack - that would eliminate the switch (and the kill function).

 

Short story - if your grounds are good (and they look OK in the pictures) and the solder joints are good (ditto) and you don't have any little bits of left over wires shorting something out and the pup is good, that should work.

 

ps - you understand why I was reluctant to try to trouble shoot your wiring - if you have trouble and can actually touch things think about one of use who is just looking at your pictures and reading what you say is happening.

[Jazzer2020]

The diagram is one pickup of the #0133 Les Paul wiring diagram that I linked. The pickup hot goes to the bottom lug of the volume which then goes to the bottom lug of the tone. The top lug of the volume is grounded, the wiper goes to the left terminal of the switch. Not shown would be the center terminal of the switch (usually two lugs that are bent together with a wire that goes to the nose of the jack (the hot output). Your tone capacitor is wired from the wiper of the tone pot to ground - its done a little bit differently than the StewMac drawing but the results are the same. Assuming that all of the grounds (pickup, switch, jack and both pots, are all tied together and nothing is touching the grounded parts or the shields it should work fine. Left and center of the switch will run the pup to the jack, the right position will kill the output....

 

 

ps - you understand why I was reluctant to try to trouble shoot your wiring - if you have trouble and can actually touch things think about one of use who is just looking at your pictures and reading what you say is happening.

 

I hear ya!

I know it's not easy giving this advice from a distance. I appreciate it though.

 

Your tip at the beginning of this post is saying that the left/center position will run the pickup and right will kill it.

 

I have 4 wires coming to the switch and 4 possible places to connect them on the switch.

I have just spent the last 30 minutes or so trying all 16 possibilities (I think I got them all).

The best I could come up with was 'left/center position will run the pickup and right will kill it'.

 

But this is where I started the whole thing off!

 

Recall I am trying to have left work and center/right killed.

I'm scratching my head saying "Why can I do this on my ES-135 (with its 3-way switch) and not with this one?

 

And I haven't even addressed the non-functioning tone pot yet!

 

(BTW those readings in my previous post should have been 8 k)

[Freeman Keller]

Go back to my StewMac wiring diagrams. Look at the switch - that is physically the way the switch looks. The single terminal on one side should go to your common ground point - that is a black wire in your photo. The center of the three terminals on the other side goes to the jack - that is the yellow wire in the picture. One of the outside terminals comes from the wiper of your volume pot, that is also a black wire in your photo. The other outside terminal would go to the volume for the neck, it has a black wire that is probably clipped at the other end.

 

Find that wire and try grounding it. That way when you switch to that position it will ground the output to your amp. In the center position it will do the same. Grounding that wire might also clean up some hum

[Freeman Keller]

Jazz, I'm sure you already know this but you can check your wiring with everything outside the guitar,. Plug the jack into an amp and tap on the pickup with a screwdriver - I do it right on the pole piece. You should hear it in your amp, the volume control should make it louder or softer and the tone should roll the highs off. I always make it a point to check everything out this way before fishing it back inside the body.

[Jazzer2020]

Jazz' date=' I'm sure you already know this but you can check your wiring with everything outside the guitar,. Plug the jack into an amp and tap on the pickup with a screwdriver - I do it right on the pole piece. You should hear it in your amp, the volume control should make it louder or softer and the tone should roll the highs off. I always make it a point to check everything out this way before fishing it back inside the body.[/quote']

 

Well I knew this but didn't check and paid the price (well the price wasn't so high in this case).

 

I re-wired as you suggested two posts above. Put all the wires back, tuned up and plugged into an amp.

No sound in all three positions! Arghhhhhhh!!!!!

 

This time I wasn't going to mess with the two pots and output jack because I didn't do anything with them anyway.

 

So I just took out the pickup and switch.

I swapped the middle wire and the wire at the back of the switch.

I left the extra black lead grounded as you recommended.

 

Put the switch and pickup back inside and plugged her in.

 

Result this time:

Exactly the same as I started except now the switch is backwards.

Before Up/Middle gave sound and Down was killed.

Now Down/Middle give sound and Up is killed.

 

Maybe it will grow on me.

 

As far as the hum is concerned, I diagnosed that a few days ago.

The amp (Roland Cube 40XL) I was testing on has a 2-prong power plug!

I had a hunch that when I would plug it into another amp (with 3-prong power plug)

the hum would disappear.

 

That's what happened. It's my only amp that has a 2-prong power cord.

 

The tone control is a bit of a bummer. It kind of works as I go down to about mid position (5),

then it starts to go in reverse, as if I was going back to 10.

 

I think I'll just leave the switch in mid-position and if I can remember, put it Up to kill it.

 

 

 

[badpenguin]

Sounds as if you are missing the ground on the tone pot.

As for the switch, pull the switch, yeah I know a PITA, run a wire from the hot out of the switch where the wire of the pot went to, and connect it to ground. That will give you neck/off/off.

[Jazzer2020]

Sounds as if you are missing the ground on the tone pot.

As for the switch, pull the switch, yeah I know a PITA, run a wire from the hot out of the switch where the wire of the pot went to, and connect it to ground. That will give you neck/off/off.

 

As for the missing ground on the tone pot...

I didn't touch anything there. I see a cap going from the middle lead to the pot cover.

Maybe the cap is bad, giving the problem?

 

As for the switch.

I was thinking about it just now.

 

I think I goofed.

I took the vol pot lead _going to switch and grounded it. It never made it to the switch.

 

You think if I connected one end of it to the 3rd lead on the switch and grounded the other end

it would fix the switch (On,Off/Off) ?