Hollowbody wiring harness :: Chubbuck Mousa 003

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Here I'm prewiring the electrical harness for Mousa 003.  Being a hollowbody without an access panel, the controls all go in through the treble side f hole.  To keep everything tidy, I prewire the harness as much as possible on a template.  This keeps the leads cleanly routed.  I don't want to look in through the f-hole and see a rat's nest (I see shoddy hollowbody wiring all the time - it looks like shit).  Now that the harness is ready, I can connect the pickup leads to the mini toggle switches, zip tie the wires and install it into the guitar.

The controls are master volume, master tone (both Bourns sealed 500k pots), Switchcraft 3 way toggle, mini toggle for neck series / split / parallel and another mini toggle for phase selection when both Lollar Imperial humbuckers pickups are on.  The tone cap is an Emerson Custom 0.022µf paper in oil.  Vintage style cloth wiring ties everything together.

Check out the video below from the daily vlog for the assembly of this harness.

New bridge & pots :: Warmoth Strat [8.0 lbs]

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This Warmoth Strat is approximately 30 years old and was tough to play.  The player and I found out that the bridge was vintage spaced and pushed the strings far too close to the edge of the fingerboard.  The solution was to swap it out for a new Callaham V/N bridge.  The "V" stands for vintage mount (6 screws) and the "N" is for narrow spacing.  Wow, what a difference in both playability and sustain.  (note the outer 2 bridge mounting screws were omitted as there must have been a 2 point bridge at some time with two large post holes in the body - we may opt to plug thesein the future).  We also replaced the pots as the old ones were pretty rough.  I used an Emerson Custom 500KA pot for the volume and went with Bourns pots for the tones.  I initially had Emersons in for the tones too but found the sweep far too subtle for most of the pot's travel for this guitar (around 2-3 they began to roll off rather quickly).  The Bill Lawrence bridge pickup's plastic mounting tabs were stripped out so they were plugged and re-tapped.

The pot swap was featured over on the vlog (video below).

Installing a middle pickup :: 1997 Fender Jaguar [8.9 lbs]

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Installing a middle pickup :: 1997 Fender Jaguar [8.9 lbs]

A made in Japan Jag in for a middle pickup installation.  This guitar has been in the shop a few times before to remove a Buzz Stop, replace a Tuneomatic with a Mastery bridge and swapping out the pickups for Lollars.

Adding a middle pickup involved routing the pickguard, copper top shield and the body (prep photo here).  The low-cut / strangle switch was moved to a Bourns 1 meg push-pull pot that replaced the stock tone pot.  The original Lollar neck pickup was moved to the middle position and a new Curtis Novak went up front.  All pickups are selected via the three-switch plate.

This setup sounds incredible.  Wow.

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Adding a 3rd pickup :: 1997 Fender Jaguar

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Adding a 3rd pickup :: 1996 Fender Jaguar

Stripping down and prepping for a middle pickup installation on a 90's Japanese Fender Jaguar.  The new pickup is a Curtis Novak, the other two are Lollars.

Epiphone Sheraton II [8.1 lbs] :: Lollar, Emerson, Bourns complete upgrade

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This circa 1990's Epiphone Sheraton II was stripped down and built back up with premium components.  The original lifeless dark-toned pickups were swapped for Lollar Imperial low-wind humbuckers.  The new wiring harness consists of Bourns 500K Premium Series sealed pots, Emerson Custom 0.022 µf paper-in-oil caps and a Switchcraft 3-way switch and output jack.  Even the tuners were replaced with 18:1 Grover Rotomatics which installed without modification.  A new unbleached bone nut and setup for DR Pure Blues 11-50 strings round out the upgrades.