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.

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.

Epiphone Sheraton II :: new guts courtesy of Lollar, Emerson & Bourns

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Epiphone Sheraton II :: new guts courtesy of Lollar, Emerson & Bourns.

This Sheraton is getting stripped down and refitted with a new wiring harness comprised of Bourns premium series sealed pots, Emerson Custom paper-in-oil caps and Switchcraft 3-way switch and output jack.  Lollar Imperial low-wind humbuckers top off this monster upgrade.