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 tone cap :: 2010 Equator Languedoc copy [5.5 lbs]

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You may remember this one from another blog post where I scratched the shit out of the neck pickup cover ("Being a Professional Means that you Don't Make Excuses").

The hollowbody dropped by the shop recently to swap out the 0.022 mfd mica tone cap for a smaller 0.015 mfd Emerson paper in oil cap.  The player was looking to dial in the tonal sweep a little closer to his likes.  The general rule is that the higher value of the cap, the darker you can cut the tone.  Smaller values do not roll off the tone as deeply.

Gut & rewire :: Olson "Languedoc" [7.1 lbs]

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Gut & rewire :: Olson "Languedoc" [7.1 lbs]

This semi hollowbody clone had some funky wiring so it was gutted and re-wired.  Below is a quick tip for laying out clean hollowbody wiring. Use low tack drafting tape to copy the layout and transfer it to a piece of card stock. Drill the appropriate holes and install the components in your template to keep all of your leads nice and clean. Bonus points for cutting out the f-hole. No one wants to see wires passing through there.

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Spotty wiring :: 2005 Epiphone Dot [8.0 lbs]

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Spotty wiring :: 2005 Epiphone Dot [8.0 lbs]

One of the tone pots was not rolling off any treble so that is a sure sign of a broken lead.  I pulled the harness and found that the pot did not have a path to ground.  Also the output jack was poorly wired, so I clipped and resoldered the connection.  Once the circuit was repaired, everything was stuffed back in, tightened up and proceeded with the setup.

Late 60's Gibson Trini Lopez Standard [8.7 lbs] :: refret & bad pots

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Late 60's Gibson Trini Lopez Standard [8.7 lbs] :: refret & bad pots

This guitar had the deepest fingerboard divots I have ever seen.  These divots were addressed along with receiving new frets.  The pots were dirty as well since the "control cavity" is exposed to the elements on hollow guitars.  When attempting to pull the harness to clean it I was surprised to find that the knobs were glued on!  The neck volume pot broke upon removal and the bridge volume was replaced as well due to a bad taper.

Look for a blog post with more details sometime next month.